Emergence and Embodiment: New Essays on Second-Order Systems Theory

Bruce Clarke|Mark B. N. Hansen

ISBN 10: 0822346001 / ISBN 13: 9780822346005

Published by Duke University Press, 2009

About this Item

Explores the cultural legacy of cybernetics and neocybernetics that offers new insight on the role of the human in an era of the posthuman.&Uumlber den AutorBruce Clarke and Mark B. N. Hansen, eds.Inhaltsverzeichnis.

Seller Inventory # 595069569

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Emergence and Embodiment: New Essays on Second-Order Systems Theory
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Publication Date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822346001
• ISBN 13: 9780822346005
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Emerging in the 1940s, the first cybernetics—the study of communication and control systems—was mainstreamed under the names artificial intelligence and computer science and taken up by the social sciences, the humanities, and the creative arts. In Emergence and Embodiment, Bruce Clarke and Mark B. N. Hansen focus on cybernetic developments that stem from the second-order turn in the 1970s, when the cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster catalyzed new thinking about the cognitive implications of self-referential systems. The crucial shift he inspired was from first-order cybernetics’ attention to homeostasis as a mode of autonomous self-regulation in mechanical and informatic systems, to second-order concepts of self-organization and autopoiesis in embodied and metabiotic systems. The collection opens with an interview with von Foerster and then traces the lines of neocybernetic thought that have followed from his work.

In response to the apparent dissolution of boundaries at work in the contemporary technosciences of emergence, neocybernetics observes that cognitive systems are operationally bounded, semi-autonomous entities coupled with their environments and other systems. Second-order systems theory stresses the recursive complexities of observation, mediation, and communication. Focused on the neocybernetic contributions of von Foerster, Francisco Varela, and Niklas Luhmann, this collection advances theoretical debates about the cultural, philosophical, and literary uses of their ideas. In addition to the interview with von Foerster, Emergence and Embodiment includes essays by Varela and Luhmann. It engages with Humberto Maturana’s and Varela’s creation of the concept of autopoiesis, Varela’s later work on neurophenomenology, and Luhmann’s adaptations of autopoiesis to social systems theory. Taken together, these essays illuminate the shared commitments uniting the broader discourse of neocybernetics.

Contributors. Linda Brigham, Bruce Clarke, Mark B. N. Hansen, Edgar Landgraf, Ira Livingston, Niklas Luhmann, Hans-Georg Moeller, John Protevi, Michael Schiltz, Evan Thompson, Francisco J. Varela, Cary Wolfe

About the Author

Bruce Clarke is Professor of English at Texas Tech University and a past president of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. His books include Posthuman Metamorphosis: Narrative and Systems and Energy Forms: Allegory and Science in the Era of Classical Thermodynamics.

Mark B. N. Hansen is Professor of Literature at Duke University. He is the author of New Philosophy for New Media and Bodies in Code: Interfaces with Digital Media.