Emergence and Embodiment (eBook, PDF)

New Essays on Second-Order Systems Theory
Redaktion: Bruce Clarke, Clarke

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

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

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Duke University Press
• Seitenzahl: 294
• Erscheinungstermin: 30. Oktober 2009
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780822391388
• Artikelnr.: 54909773

Autorenporträt

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.

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Neocybernetic Emergence / Bruce Clarke and Mark B. N26.
Hansen 1
Interview with Heinz von Foerster / Interviewer: Bruce Clarke 26
Heinz von Foerster's Demons: The Emergence of Second-Order Systems Theory /
Bruce Clarke 34
The Early Days of Autopoiesis / Francisco J. Varela 62
Life and Mind: From Autopoiesis to Neurophenomenology / Evan Tompson 77
Beyond Autopoiesis: Inflections of Emergence and Politics in Francisco
Varela / John Protevi 94
System-Environment Hybrids / Mark B. N. Hansen 113
Self-Organization and Autopoiesis / Niklas Luhmann 143
Space is the Place: The Laws of Form and Social Systems / Michael Schiltz
157
Improvisation: Form and Event—A Spencer-Brownian Calculation / Edgar
Landgraf 179
Communication versus Communion in Modern Psychic Systems: Maturana,
Lohmann, and Cognitive Neurology / Linda Brigham 205
Meaning as Event-Machine, or Systems Theory and "The Reconstruction of
Deconstruction": Derrida and Luhmann / Cary Wolfe 220
Complex Visuality: The Radical Middleground / Ira Livingston 246
Bibliography 263
Contributors 279
Index 281