Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics - Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition - page 288

rightly could be considered the mamas and papas of cybernetic thought and
action. First there is Margaret Mead, whose name I am sure is familiar to all
of you. In an address to the American Society of Cybernetics she remarked:
As an anthropologist, I have been interested in the effects that the theories of
Cybernetics have within our society. I am not referring to computers or to the elec-
tronic revolution as a whole, or to the end of dependence on script for knowledge,
or to the way that dress has succeeded the mimeographing machine as a form of
communication among the dissenting young. Let me repeat that, I am not referring
to the way that dress has succeeded the mimeographing machine as a form of com-
munication among the dissenting young.
And she then continues:
I specifically want to consider the significance of the set of cross-disciplinary ideas
which we first called “feed-back” and then called “teleological mechanisms” and
then called it “cybernetics,” a form of cross-disciplinary thought which made it pos-
sible for members of many disciplines to communicate with each other easily in a
language which all could understand.
And here is the voice of her third husband, the epistemologist, anthro-
pologist, cybernetician, and as some say, the papa of family therapy,
Gregory Bateson, “Cybernetics is a branch of mathematics dealing with
problems of control, recursiveness and information.”
And here is the organizational philosopher and managerial wizard
Stafford Beer, “Cybernetics is the science of effective organization.”
And finally, here the poetic reflection of “Mister Cybernetics,” as we
fondly call him, the Cybernetician's cybernetician; Gordon Pask, “Cyber-
netics is the science of defensible metaphors.”
It seems that cybernetics is many different things to many different
people. But this is because of the richness of its conceptual base; and I
believe that this is very good, otherwise cybernetics would become a some-
what boring exercise. However, all of those perspectives arise from one
central theme; that of circularity. When, perhaps a half century ago, the
fecundity of this concept was seen, it was sheer euphoria to philosophize,
epistemologize, and theorize about its unifying power and its consequences
and ramification on various fields. While this was going on, something
strange evolved among the philosophers, the epistemologists and the theo-
reticians. They began to see themselves more and more as being included
in a larger circularity; maybe within the circularity of their family; or that
of their society and culture; or even being included in a circularity of cosmic
proportions!
What appears to us today as being most natural to see and think, was
then not only difficult to see, but wasn't even allowed to be thought. Why?
Because it would violate the basic principle of scientific discourse which
demands the separation of the observer from the observed. It is the prin-
ciple of objectivity. The properties of the observer shall not enter the
description of his observations.