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precisely. . . . A scientific observer seeks to confirm as many hypotheses as
possible.
Leaving aside questions of confirmation versus falsification, here we recog-
nize a standard stereotype of the hypothesis-testing scientist. Note that on
this stereotype, the scientist's access to matter passes through representa-
tions: a hypothesis is a verbal formulation—“If I do X then Y will happen”—it-
self embedded in all sorts of statements, theoretical and empirical. On the
other hand (173; my italics),
a cybernetician is a participant observer who decides upon a move which will
modify
the assemblage and, in general, favour his interaction with it. But, in
order to achieve interaction he must be able to infer similarity with the assem-
blage. In the same way cybernetic control mechanisms must be similar to the
controlled assemblage. The development of this similarity is the
development of
a common language
. . . . [The cybernetician needs] to adopt
new languages
, in
order to interact with an assemblage. [There is] an ignorance on the observer's
part, about the kind of enquiry he should make. A common language is a
dy-
namic
idea, and once built up must be used. Thus if a conversation is disturbed
it must be restarted, and one of the structured regions we have discussed must
continually rebuild itself. . . . A cybernetician tries, by interaction, to bring
about a state of a macrosystem which exhibits a consistent pattern of behaviour
that may be represented by a logically tractable analogy.
There is, I think, an original philosophy of science adumbrated in these few
sentences, which deserves a brief exegesis. Most important, the emphasis is
on performative interaction with the object to be known, modification which
might promote further interaction. One can recall here the earlier discussion
of chemical computers and of the manager coming to terms with the control-
ler in the same way as the controller comes to terms with the factory—by each
interfering performatively with the other until some mutually acceptable, not
pregiven, equilibrium is found. What Pask adds is that cyberneticians learn
in
general
about their objects in just the same way: they interfere with them as
much as possible in an exploratory fashion to see what they will do, with each
observation provoking new, situated interferences. But what, then, of Pask's
references to language and analogy? Does this return us to the hypothesis-
testing model he just associated with “science”? No, because, first, Pask does
not regard language as a given and stable medium in which hypotheses can
