Arantzazu Saratxaga Arregi

Kategorie: Komplexität

  • CYBERNETICS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: A LONG REVIEW

    CYBERNETICS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: A LONG REVIEW

    We are delighted that there is an anthology on the topicality of cybernetics, which can only reflect its reconstruction for the present. The title Cybernetics for the 21st Century may indeed immediately raise the question: why cybernetics, and why now? (Hui 2024, 11). Cybernetics is no longer history; it has often been relegated by media studies to material on the news technologies of the second half of the 20th century. It is still presented as history, as material for an archaeology of the digital turn, in order at best to place communication at the forefront of a history of the emergence of AI, and at worst to equate digitality with an ideology of control. Cybernetics is categorised as a discipline of control of and through communication. Indeed, Norbert Wiener defined it in 1948 as the science of communication and control (1948). However, this is to be understood as control and regulation, whose formal term „circular causality“ contributed the title of the conference: „Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems“, which constituted cybernetics as a science.

    The history of cybernetics is thus the application of feedback mechanisms through data processing and information in their respective contexts. As a science that emerged in the post-war period, it has been categorised as a rationalisation model of technical mobilisation, with government strategy focused on ensuring security and order for the civilian population (operational research) and the promise of perpetual peace through control. Examples of this, as explained in the second part of this review, are the application of cybernetics to the one-child policy in China (Dylan Levi King), the ambivalence towards the concept of control in Soviet cybernetics (Slava Gerovitch), and the opening up of the relationship between AI and political power, which was welcomed early in Poland (Michał Krzykawski).

    Yet the cybernetics of the 21st century is not the cybernetics of the post-war period, nor is it cybernetics with a K, as Claus Pias believed, whose reception in the 1970s and 1980s led to an epistemological movement called constructivism, having an enormous impact on the soft sciences and triggering an epistemic turn in philosophy. Similarly, the cybernetics of the 21st century is not the cybernetics with a C that represented an emancipatory ideal of posthumanist ideas in the context of American subcultures.
    The cybernetics of the 21st century includes the historicity of cybernetics. It is not limited to a critical revision of its programme and application in different contexts. Nor is it limited to the question of the sincerity of the cybernetic programme in its application to organisational and management policy.

    This work is about the present of cybernetics. The anthology Cybernetics for the 21st Century consists of 12 essays on the reconstruction of cybernetics. Its aim, to design a cybernetics for this century, has been achieved, as can be expected, because it shows the complexity of its conception and the diversity of its fields of application. This is precisely what this book is about. Even if it is almost unavoidable, especially in the practice of scientific research, to refer repeatedly to the origin from which cybernetics supposedly emerged – be this Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics, Andrè-Marie Amperè’s use of the term “cybernetyka” in 1834, or the Macy conferences, a reconstruction aiming to show the diversity of applications of a technical model with different objectives in different geographies. The point is not to speak of cybernetics in the singular but, rather, following Yuk Hui’s welcome term “cosmotechnics”, to bring up diversity as the locus of its singular interpretations. This is an attempt to map cybernetics.

    The first part of the anthology deals with the basic ideas of cybernetics. Philosophical and epistemological disputes with cybernetic approaches are discussed. But why is cybernetics relevant today? This question already reveals the timeliness of its discourse. The extent to which this model contributes to understanding and problematising contemporary reality is part of its reconstruction. The first part analyses cybernetics as a model of thought from various perspectives. Cybernetics could be described as an epistemological model. In his book Recursivity and Contingency (Hui 2019), Yuk Hui argues that cybernetics is a reflexive philosophy of technology, since the reflexive movement of this interactive process (self-reference) takes place through communication and control loops. This thesis can be well supported by the philosophies of consciousness if the tradition anchored in philosophy around the reflexivity of consciousness confirms the foundations of cybernetics as a philosophy. Hui goes so far as to suggest that the 19th century philosophies of reflexivity provided the epistemological building blocks of the cybernetic model.

    Technical reflexivity, automation, cannot be understood without the emergence of the philosophy of consciousness. To this end, this volume presents the epistemological interpretation of cybernetics. The second part of the anthology, entitled „Territories“, demonstrates that cybernetics is an applied model of thought and cognition. There are as many cyberneticists as there are places of application. „Because cybernetics could be applied in the realisation of a socialist, a communist as well as an arch-liberal management“ (Hui 2024, 14). Part 2 is devoted to reconstructing the localised history of cybernetics in Poland, Chile, the Soviet Union, China, Japan, the USA and the UK.


    Cybernetics as a philosophical project

    The topicality of cybernetics is introduced by a clear and concise statement by Hui, actually based on his proposal for this volume: “Cybernetics has been a philosophical project since the beginning” (Hui 2024, 12). He proposes two paths leading to the statement that cybernetics is a philosophical project. The positive statement inherent in this is that there were cybernetic elements in philosophy before it became a communication technology as a programme. This new epistemology, which in fact brings cybernetics to fruition through communication channels, is not new; rather, it was already present in the history of philosophy. Yet this positive assertion is argued via negationis. Hui draws upon a negative statement as an introduction to a reflection on the philosophy of cybernetics. This goes back to Martin Heidegger’s statement in the so-called interview in Der Spiegel in 1966: „Only a God can save us“. This comment was made in relation to the dissolution of philosophy into individual sciences such as psychology, political science, etc., followed by the question: „And who will take the place of philosophy?“ His answer was: „Cybernetics“ (Heidegger 1976, 212). Hui comments on this:

    He [Heidegger] announced that cybernetics marked the end of Western philosophy. This assertion is dramatic but significant for reflecting not only on the history and future of philosophy, but also on the future of cybernetics. (Hui 2024, 12)

    Heidegger clearly equates the end of philosophy with cybernetics. However, such a vague statement, which presupposes an eschatological view of philosophy that is not explained in this article, raises too many questions. Speaking of an end brought about by the victors and losers is, in my opinion, a repetition of the myth of control, which in most cases testifies to a convenience of thinking, an end that the victors of technological domination will have to tolerate and from which thinking must say goodbye.

    The statement about the end of philosophy reveals cybernetics to be a philosophical project

    The end is the completion of a beginning. Hui thus derives an even more promising approach from the end of philosophy on the basis of cybernetics: cybernetics was a philosophical project from the very beginning.

    For Heidegger, the triumph of cybernetics therefore equally means the end of philosophy. In view of such end of philosophy, Heidegger calls for a thinking to come; a thinking that is able to overcome the latest and last stage of Western philosophy: cybernetics. (Hui 2024, 12)

    Of course, cybernetics has displaced philosophy, as Hui points out. Cybernetics as universal reflexive thinking has displaced philosophy from its traditional place (Hörl 2008, 163-198). Michael Hagner speaks of the fourth disease of man as a consequence of the first, cosmological repression, the second, psychoanalytical, the third, anthropological, and the fourth, spiritual repression (Hagner 2008, 38). Spiritual repression, which manifests itself in various forms, such as the „objectification of drives“ through a high degree of automation of institutions (Gehlen 2004, 74-78), the „reification and objectification of certain processes that constitute the essence of man“ (Hagner 2008, 57), or the replacement of the self-reflection of consciousness by information technology, heralded the dissolution of subjective thought. For Heidegger, reflection is indeed one of the fundamental characteristics of thinking, as he shows in his essay „On the Question of the Determination of the Matter of Thinking“ (Heidegger 1984). In cybernetics, which is essentially based on circuits, Heidegger sees a technical model of reflection that can to some extent replace the formal operation of thinking. Yet here cybernetics reflects the universalism of thought and announces its end because, as its historicity shows us, it initiated its fragmentation into several approaches to thinking.

    Nevertheless, when approached as a philosophical project, cybernetics has opened up new ways of thinking. Gotthard Günther’s project is the end of reflection-logical idealism and the opening, even the redemption, of Aristotelian dual-valued logic to a polycontextual multivalence (Günther 1976), a liberating ontology that was warmly welcomed by the new cybernetic thinking. In terms of the philosophical-anthropological perspective of a new philosophy, Max Bense speaks of technical being, of man as a technical being (Bense 1969). He sees it not just as a further step in the history of technology but as a meta-technology, a philosophical matter in which the foundations, objects and connections of the positive sciences, the humanities and the natural sciences, are examined. Abraham Moles speaks of cybernetics as a philosophical-aesthetic project, the emphasis on objectivity (Moles 1971). Arnold Gehlen sees feedback as the essence of the human being (Gehlen 2007). Cybernetics wants nothing more than to transfer the characteristics of this essence to technology and thus complete it. Hui locates epistemology in reflexivity, which he calls “recursivity” in his book Recursivity and Contingency. This is the reflexivity that founded philosophy as a theory of knowledge and consciousness in the first place, namely the return to the self, from whose movement the light of the mind emerges.

    This volume aims to show that cybernetics is not just a control technology, but also a philosophy, and that its topicality is due to the different epistemologies of cybernetics. An epistemological reconstruction reveals the philosophy underlying cybernetics, which has made it a universal science whose legitimacy today lies exclusively in AI and technical formalism. This volume aims to reclaim the philosophy.


    The beginning of a philosophy that became cybernetic

    This volume shows the philosophical background of cybernetics not only via negationis, for example, in that an end – or a completion in the sense of Heidegger – reveals the essence of a beginning. It is precisely the completion of philosophy by cybernetics that reveals the philosophical nature of cybernetics from the very start. In this sense, the volume provides the argument, beyond the negative paths, that cybernetics is based on a philosophical project. I will consider the two paths that the volume points out, which provide good reasons for a philosophical reconstruction of cybernetics: 1) the reflexive logic of the machine, i.e. automation, responds to the transfer of the self-reflexivity of consciousness to the machine; 2) cybernetics as a project in the philosophy of technology that aims to abolish the hitherto irreconcilable views of mechanism and vitalism. Cybernetics has thus programmatically introduced the system-philosophical claim of scientific universalism.

    Reflexivity and automation

    Nietzsche warns that every genealogy reconstructs a history. We can even rethink and reshape the history of Western philosophy in the light of a cybernetic perspective says Brunella Antomarini (Antomarini 2024, 23). Whether we locate the beginnings of cybernetics in Plato’s metaphysics or in Leibniz’s monistic philosophy (Hui 2024, 12) depends on which story we want to tell. According to Heidegger, Plato’s metaphysics anticipates the arrival of cybernetics. Norbert Wiener sees Leibniz’s mathematics – the differential equation – as a fundamental basis for what he understands by cybernetics. As is well known, the name “cybernetics” comes from the title of Wiener’s 1948 book Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. This is the Greek translation of the title „On Governors“, which James Clerk Maxwell used in 1868 for an article on the mechanisms of temperature regulation. Wiener adopted the Greek word „κυβέρνησις“, which Plato used in the figurative sense of „ruler of a government“ to describe the principle of communication regulation.

    We have Brunella Antomarini to thank for reconstructing cybernetics following Leibniz’s metaphysics. This is not an anachronism – of course, cybernetics was not yet possible in the 20th century – but a genealogical perspective, and it shows us another line of thought in Wiener’s cybernetics that is just as important as that of control: automation. It shows nicely how automation emerged from the Western philosophy of self-reflection, the formalisation of which we owe to Leibnizʼs metaphysics. In fact, Leibniz’s metaphysics and mathematics were fundamental contributions to Wiener’s concept of automation based on control and signal transmission: „Leibniz as the patron saint of cybernetics“ (Antomarini 2024, 23). According to Antomarini, the circular logic that cybernetics implies through the communication channels, i.e. self-regulation, self-reference, can be found in the idea of self-motion conceived by Leibniz. Self-motion is said to be driven by a force vive (Antomarini 2024, 32) based on the mechanical impact of bodies. The conservation of energy, which was physically and mathematically proven in the following century, was already secured by Leibniz in the three philosophical principles („theorem of sufficient reason“, „theorem of the identity of the indistinguishable“ and „presupposed harmony“). The self-sustaining movement follows the mechanical dream of the perpetuum mobile, the second form of which cybernetics seeks to realise with its fully automatic claims (Antomarini 2024, 35). The author points out the harbingers of cybernetics and the completion of metaphysics in Leibniz’s metaphysics, since Leibniz had already anticipated a life force that could be realised through operational differential equations.

    The abolition of dualisms

    The second argument in favour of a philosophical foundation for cybernetics is the abolition of the mind/matter dualism that has held together Western thought culture in every respect. Mind and matter should merge in communication circuits through information, which is neither energy nor matter, but a unit of measurement for probabilities. We have already pointed out regarding Antomarini’s contribution that Leibniz’s self-moving force was an expression of the collapse of the separation between the organic and the inorganic maintained by early modern philosophy. With the transfer of the concept of self-regulation (haemostasis) from physiology to information-based communication circuits, the bridge between the mechanistic view of the world and living systems was finally built. The first attempt to build a self-regulating machine was based on its interaction with an environment. The steam engine, an environmental machine in that it converted heat into power, held all the promise of a perpetual motion machine of the second kind. One example of the technical realisation of this promise is Carnot’s “ideal circle” but it is only with information-based control systems that the machine adapts by interacting with its environment, i.e. it stores information and learns. The machine-environment interaction occurs operationally in that the machine is embedded in an open environment – thermodynamically open – with which it is in constant exchange and to which the system adapts, changes and transforms, etc.

    Rather, and above all, it is the science of organisms and their effect on the environment. This says nothing a priori about the inner nature of the organisms in question. They may be biological, mechanical or sociological. Cybernetics deliberately leaves open the question of whether the mechanism under study consists of ‚living cells‘, of a community of chemical reactions, of a group of individuals acting collectively, of interlocks or relays. (Moles 1959, 8)

    Yuk Hui’s contribution does not focus on the technical-scientific revolution of a „transclassical machine“, as Max Bense calls it, but instead sees it as exemplary in the abolition of dualisms, which, as already indicated, underlie Western metaphysics. In his contribution „Environment and Machine“, he emphasises the dissolution of dualism through recursive information machines.

    Cybernetics endeavours to eliminate dualism; it wants to create a connection between different orders or magnitude to what Hans Jonas describes in Phenomenon of Life, regarding cybernetics as ‘an overcoming to dualism which classical materials had left in possession by default’. (Hui 2024, 45)

    In fact, the end of duality and opposites had raised hopes for all theories and epistemologies that build bridges to seek connections where there were divisions. Reconciling man as a natural and spiritual being with technology was a challenge of the anthropological philosophy of the time, a challenge that Arnold Gehlen took up. However, an abolition of dualisms requires a reconstruction of the meaning of “environment”. In his article „Environment and Machine“, he describes the unnatural interpretation of environment. Based on the idea of „homeostasis“, which cybernetics partly borrows from physiology, environment means what surrounds the machine, with which it exchanges both energy and information. Machines imitate living systems in that they transform communication systems that must adapt to the environment in order to survive, and that adapt through self-regulation. What is actually being equated is not communication systems with living systems, as the title of Wiener’s work „Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine“ suggests, but the environments. The environment of the machine is similar to the environment of the organism in that it is what surrounds the system and exchanges information. “In this sense, a cybernetic machine is no longer merely mechanistic, but rather assimilates certain behaviours of organisms” (Hui 2024, 46). The machines interact with the environment, which allows information to be generated for adaptation – learning. In this sense, a transclassical machine is closer to the behaviour of an organism than that of a machine. Both are in a thermodynamically open relationship with the environment. The environment affects the system, which responds by affecting the environment. In this feedback game, the system should regulate itself and thus adapt optimally to its environment.

    The volume presents another example of the denaturalisation of the concept of the environment on the basis of cybernetics. Katherine Hayles and Dorion Sagan consider the metaphorisation of the Earth as a cybernetic entity. Lovelock and Margulis‘ Gaia theory promised a holistic view of the Earth as a symbiotic and self-regulating organic being. Margulis‘ preliminary work on endosymbiont theories of prokaryotic cells, from which he derived a new taxonomy or evolutionary tree (Margulis 1998), led to a new taxonomy and order in the morphogenesis of living organisms through biochemical processes that had less to do with the claims of a holistic and totalitarian system, and rather revealed relationships and connections where classical taxonomy maintained divisions. Gaia theory, as Bruce Clarke shows well in Neocybernetics (Clarke 2020) after Luhmann, can only be observed as a blind spot.


    The historicity of cybernetics proves it to be an applied philosophy

    The abolition of dualisms between social, biological and technical systems through communication is followed by the dream of a total operative technology that can control communication systems in general. Peter Galison’s 1992 thesis of a Big Science tells of central control technologies in connection with the establishment of totalitarian models of government, although the illusion of absolute and total, holistic and systemic control over all subsystems goes back to the scientific mobilisation of the Second World War (Galison 1992). However, the utopia of totalitarian power in the post-war period (Bowker 1999, 107-127) turns out to be a dystopia. Mathieu Tricolt’s contribution „Ontology and the Politics of Information in Early Cybernetics“ sheds light on the darker side of cybernetics. Cybernetics as a universal science served as an ideology of mobilisation. The universal claim of a science was the basis for the very skilful technique of the art of government, which was capable of creating a total and global governmentality.

    The second part of the volume shows how a philosophy that invoked the overcoming of divisions and relational thinking nevertheless sought to realise totalitarian dreams of control. However, as Pickering’s contribution makes clear, the historical discourse of cybernetics has focused too much on the global technology of government and completely ignored the diversity, locality, ambiguity of control and governance, etc. (Pickering 2024, 112f.). The second part of the volume, „Territories“, which presents the real-political history of cybernetics in a variety of ways, bears witness to this. Six documented cases of application show that cybernetics is not a universal science. Cybernetics may be a map to which no territory can be assigned, but it creates the applied practice by marking places on it. There is as many cybernetics as there are applications of localisation, and as many interpretations of the term’s control, freedom, etc. as there are contexts of application. Consequently, there can be no question of global and total knowledge.

    Control and freedom

    Andrew Pickering is right when he says that critics have become one-sidedly fixated on the word “control” in cybernetics (Pickering 2024, 112). He implies that there are multiple interpretations of a control machine.

    Cybernetics was invented in the 1940s, around the time of World War II. In 1948 Norbert Wiener defined it as the science of communication and control, describing is as a synthesis of ideas about information, digital computing and feedback. These fields have since developed in very different ways in different times and places (Pickering 2024, 111)

    The application of cybernetic systems to different political, cultural and social contexts leads to different cybernetic designs. This leads to a vast ambiguity of basic concepts. For example, the term „control“ takes on its meaning in the context in which it is used. The same goes for the other side of the coin: freedom.

    Let’s take the operational meaning of control that Pickering’s essay addresses. Ashby understands control as the strategy of reducing an excess of complexity. It is not about eliminating uncertainties that disrupt the system, but about reducing an excess of complexity. A self-regulating system must maintain a certain level of complexity, but an excess can destroy the system. In his essay „On Self-organising Systems and their Environments“ (1985), Heinz von Foerster poses the question: „How much perturbation can a system tolerate?“ Operationally, the relationship between control and complexity is at the heart of regulation, which promises stability and order. According to Jakob Tanner, abstract „computational models“ were responsible for coping with increasing complexity during the Cold War, but the homeostatic model was inadequate for an excess of complexity. Control is a matter of stability. How does the system maintain order? In the UK, control means conversation:

    As I have said, the best we can do with such systems is to get along with them, hopefully drawing them into our activities in a non-hierarchical process which another cyberneticist, Gordon Past, suggestively called ‚conversation‘. (Pickering 2024, 113)

    The stability achieved through control in favour of the community meant freedom for the Soviet Union. In her contribution, Slava Gerovitch beautifully demonstrates the ambivalence of freedom depending on where the cybernetic model of control is applied. At the same time, North American ideology equates freedom with choice. The ideology of freedom is thus embedded in control. Jérôme Bruner’s cognitive psychology places freedom of choice at the centre of a model of intelligent activity in which choice is the basis of the right choice.

    Brunerʼs work showcased the ‘cognitive revolution’ in psychology, closely associated with the work of the American AI pioneers Herbert Simon and Allen Newell, who placed choice at the heart of their ‘heuristic research’ model of intellectual activity. (Gerovitch 2024, 131)

    The Soviet psychologist Andrei Brushlinskii, on the other hand, does not see free choice as a prerequisite for free decision.

    Extending the control strategy to civil society: policy and control

    The history of the application of cybernetics is varied. It was originally conceived as a rational model of warfare. It was applied in the post-war period with the aim of modernising war strategy in the governmental system, provided that the complexity of an organisation (government) was managed. In the Cold War era, it was concluded that the scientific-technological and epistemological-cultural conditions of the Second World War had changed. Some works argue that Big Science, i.e. universal science according to Galison, emerged from the scientific mobilisation of the world war (Hacking 1986, 237-260; Heims 1980; Falison/Bruce 1992; Galison 1997). As early as 1947, Crowther and Whiddington (1993, 595-642) drew up a knowledge balance sheet according to which leadership and events did not depend on the intuitions of the “leader”. Operational research (OR) was the new war strategy of the post-war period. The development of OR and cybernetics during the Cold War was rapid and unequivocal: OR meant planning not for the stability of the respective blocs, but for ensuring economic growth in the context of a bipolar bloc constellation between a capitalist market economy and a socialist planned economy. „Both American and Soviet scientists believed in the existence of a general, universal, ahistorical mechanism of human thought“ (Gerovitch 2024, 129).

    As Dylan Levi King’s A Brief History of Chinese Cybernetics and Slava Gerovitch’s „Cybernetics Across Cultures“ show in detail, cybernetics became a model for the management of social systems in an increasingly complex governmentality, i.e. large populations whose behaviour had to be brought under control. The rational choice that Gerovitch speaks of is a consequence of the new rationality in post-war military strategy. Cybernetics emerged as an applied science for warfare. It attracted civilian scientists, and operational research remained in practice a strategy and method for problem-solving and decision-making. Michał Krzykawski explains how the model is used to manage organisations and social systems for civil purposes, in particular the planning strategy used to model macroeconomic processes.

    Integration of cybernetics to define the economic model of distribution and plan: The relevance of Langeʼs approach to cybernetics consists in his demonstration that economic models based on cybernetic thinking can be effectively used for analyzing the dynamics of the economic processes. (Krzykawski 2024, 159f.)

    The articles by Michał Krzykawski and Daisuke Harashima show how the new information processing techniques and the resulting control behaviour have been implemented in various fields of application.


    The failure of cybernetics is partly justified

    If a new volume is devoted to the reconstruction of cybernetics, it is because, in addition to the end of thinking, the end of cybernetics is also being proclaimed. Wolfgang Coy gave two reasons for this: „the breadth of its claims“ and „the narrowness of its method“ (Coy 2004, 257). The breadth of its claims refers to its claim to be a universal science. We have already emphasised that from its inception cybernetics has been hailed as a science with universal aspirations. The disappointment with cybernetics is justified, but only in part, because despite the development of a new logic for the rationalisation of war strategy and its implementation in operational research, cybernetics in particular has given rise to a new way of thinking and aesthetic expression. Warren McCulloch formulated the central questions of a 20th century teleology: „What characteristics of a machine are responsible for its telos, its purpose, its goal? And what characteristics of a machine define its purpose, goal, or telos?“ (von Foerster 1993, 122). A new teleology was born: circular teleology or the teleology of self-reference, a new causality that leads the epistemic relationship between subject/object to a total de-trivialisation. The complaint of anthropological philosophies about the objectification of thinking, which represents the last technical step in the history of mankind (Gehlen 2007), was followed by a de-trivialisation of the relationship between man and machine.

    Nam June Paik’s television montages such as „Internet Dream“ are an expression of an early cybernetic aesthetic. Max Bense speaks of a technical being that leads aesthetics to futuristic positions. In his information-aesthetic programme, Abraham Moles shows how cybernetics ushered in a new epoch centred on computer simulation. An age of modelling and simulation could present the artist as a creator of new worldviews. For the humanities and aesthetics, especially architecture and design, cybernetics was undoubtedly an avant-garde. The essay by David Maulén de los Reyes demonstrates that the cyberneticisation of art in Latin America has led to a revolutionary movement in which constructivist models have brought about modernisation. However, this movement would not have been possible without the institutional cooperation between European and Latin American partners, which originated in the state art academies. As Maulén shows, the reconciliation of art with a technology that was not instrumental, but coupling and operative, produced an avant-garde in Europe. The Chinese cyberneticist Qian Xuesen „proposed a complete reorganisation of human thought that managed to integrate extrasensory perception, an alternative scientific method and a cybernetic theory of everything“ (Maulén 2024, 190).

    Cybernetics as a closed model

    One wonders why cybernetics failed as an avant-garde and liberating model. Why has this model, which transcended the old divisions that underpinned rationalist metaphysics, which taught relationality and environmentalism, become a model that restricts freedoms? Katherine Hayle argues in her contribution that the failure is due to the closed nature of the organisation. We already know that closure is a formal expression, the logic of circularity, according to which a system can set limits on itself that are in fact binding rather than definitive. The operation, i.e. the organisation, is closed insofar as it directs the system towards its own laws: auto-nomos. The closed nature of organisation and operation ensures the autonomy of the system. I believe, however, that while unity demonstrates autonomy, it can neither define an order nor promise its maintenance. On the contrary, closure is the core of the system’s constant differentiation and diversification. The rhizomatic hydra is the model of an operative closure that abolishes bivalent logic in favour of further differentiation in an open environment.


    Conclusion: an eschatological view of the history of cybernetics

    In the theological tradition, talk of the end of time („eschaton“) is called eschatology. As much as this term has triggered a discussion in Western philosophy of history, in which the end has been understood as a suspension, as completion, and as the discursive prelude to a revolutionary turning point in history (Taubes 1947, 106-117), the end and its discourse are beyond an apocalyptic vision. The end of thinking through cybernetics in its eschatological view shows the other side of completion: every end is followed by a new beginning. The end of universal knowledge, which triggered dualism, leaves room for reflexive, recursive, paradoxical, multivalent logical thinking. Its proponents, such as Ranulph Glanville and Gotthard Günther, have argued in favour of polycontextual multivalence, etc.

    Redemption: the control of control

    And so the end of thinking promises redemption (Erlösung) from trivial thinking. Second-order cybernetics could be salvation from control: as long as control can be controlled, if the observation of observation, the thinking of thinking, the way out to a critical statement, is guaranteed. In any case, in first-order cybernetics – because there is no first-order cybernetics – control, in its two forms of regulation and control, is assigned to communication. Control is through communication. Anyone who has studied communication theory knows that communication does not just mean mediation (Luhmann 1987, 193). Communication, as first formulated in Shannon and Weaver’s mathematical model of communication, is selection, choice, coding, decoding and transmission. According to Michel Serres, transmission is a transduction, i.e. the translation of one coded signal into another. What is more, the entire selection process is conditioned by the contingency of the outside, the unpredictable environment. In this sense, control means selection. This produces an ordered structure that creates a stable order through repetition, i.e. redundancy. Ordo ab Chao (Mersch 2013) can be seen as a form of control of the new power technology that brings order to the “outside” and creates stability where contingency prevails. Through communication Ordo ab Chao can also mean creating an order whose stability depends directly on non-linear processes. Communication means creating order, i.e. creating the world. In this respect, control through communication is never absolute. Second-order cybernetics, which benefits from operational closure and even constructs an entire epistemology, does not assert closure as an exclusively total form; rather, this form is always in relation to other observers who observe it and are observed at the same time. Operational closure is the basis of a control of control, a choice of choice, namely the decision, the choice of freedom, that the control can be observed. Observation as a formal expression is to be understood as any operation, including criticism. Observing control therefore means that control, in any form of order-making, is open to observation, i.e. to criticism (Saratxaga Arregi 2023).

    Third-order cybernetics

    Therefore, I do not believe that third-order cybernetics is necessary. As Dirk Baecker said in an interview (Baecker und Unterluggauer Ö1 16 May 20/22), the third order is contained in the second order, if we understand it as the operation of repetition and recursion of difference. However, there is already a third-order cybernetics, which is attributed to Russian cybernetics – Vladimir Lepskiy – and which focuses on the management and organisation of social agents. This is because third-order cybernetics cannot be ascribed to omniscient observers such as Google, Facebook and Amazon (Triclot 2024, 67), which are always to be observed and criticised.


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    • Günther. Gotthard (1976). Beiträge zur Grundlegung einer operationsfähigen Dialektik. Meiner, 1976.
    • Hui, Yuk (ed). Cybernetics fort he 21st Century. Vol.1: Epistemological Reconstruction. Hanart Press, 2024.
    • Hui, Yuk. Recursivity and Contingency, Rowman & Littlefield, 2019.
    • Heidegger, Martin & Rudolf Augstein, „Nur Gott kann uns retten“, Spiegel, n.23, 31st May1976.
    • Heidegger, Martin. Zur Sache nach der Bestimmung der Sache des Denkens. Eker-Verlag, 1984.
    • Hacking, Ian. “Weapons Research and the Form of Scientific Knowledege”,  Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplement 12 (1986): 237-260.
    • Hagner, Michael. “Vom Aufstieg und Fall der Kybernetik als Universalwissenschaft”. In Die Transformationen des Humanen, editet by Hörl, Erich & Hagner, Michael. Suhrkamp, 2008.
    • Heims, Steve. John von Neuman and Norbert Wiener. From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, M.I.T. Press, 1980.
    • Hörl, Erich. “Das kybernetische Bild des Denkens”. In Die Transformationen des Humanen, editet by Hörl, Erich & Hagner, Michael. Suhrkamp, 2008.
    • Margulis, Lynn. Five Kingdoms, an Illustrated Guide to the Phyla of Life on Earth. Freeman, 1998.
    • Mersch, Dieter. Ordo ab chao. Diaphanes, 2013.
    • Moles Abraham, A. “Die Kybernetik, eine Revolution in der Stille”. In Epoche Atom und Automation. Enzyklopädie des technischen Zeitalters, Genf Band VII, 1959.
    • Moles, Abraham, A. Informationstheorie und ästhetische Wahrnehmung, DuMont Schauberg, 1971.
    • Galison, Peter, Hevly, Bruce. Big Science. The Growth of Large Scale Research. Stanford University Press, 1929.
    • Galison, Peter. Image and Logic. A Material Cultural of Microphysic. University Chicago Press, 1997.
    • Luhmann, Niklas. Soziale Systeme. Grundriss einer allgemeinen Theorie. Suhrkamp, 1987.
    • Saratxaga Arregi, Arantzazu (2023): “Wenn die Kontrolle hinterherkommt. Ein Essay zur Kybernetik”, Medienimpulse, 60, no.4 (2023)
    • Schelsky, Helmuth. Der Mensch in der wissenschaftlichen Zivilisation. Springer, 1961.
    • Galison, Peter. Big Science. The Growth of Large Scale Research. University Press,1992.
    • Radio interview:
    • Cybernetics 3rd order. On the renaissance of a discipline, by Mariann Unterluggauer, 16-May 2022, 19:05, Ö1 https://oe1.orf.at/programm/20220516/678842/Kybernetik-3-Ordnung
  • Das Rätsel, ob negative Entropie zu simulieren ist: Ein Kommentar zu Henri Atlans Text „The Mother Machine“.

    Das Rätsel, ob negative Entropie zu simulieren ist: Ein Kommentar zu Henri Atlans Text „The Mother Machine“.

    Als ich in den gesammelten Schriften des Biophysikers Henri Atlan nachschlug, erweckte sein 2005 veröffentlichter Text The Mother Machine meine Aufmerksamkeit.

    Im ersten Augenblick war ich erstaunt darüber, dass ein Naturwissenschaftler, der den kybernetischen Theorien sehr nahesteht, sich überhaupt für die weibliche Seite der Reproduktion interessiert, denn der Diskurs der Selbstorganisation sowohl in den Naturwissenschaften als auch in den Kommunikations- und Informationstheorien ist im Wesentlichen männlich dominiert, während Frauen die Rolle von echten Information-Maschinistinnen einnahmen, wie schon Friedrich Kittler in seinen beiden Büchern zeigt und wie es auch die schöne Geschichte der Musikelektronik (sisterswithtransistors) beweist.

    Es handelt sich um eine Rezension des Buches von Gena Corea aus dem Jahr 1985: The Mother Machine: Reproductive Technologies from Artificial Insemination to Artificial Womb. Henri Atlan muss nichts anderes tun, als die Hauptthese Coreas bestätigen. Der rote Faden des Buches besagt, dass die Fortschritte in der Reproduktionsmedizin den Traum von der Selbstbestimmung der Frauen über ihren Körper nicht erfüllen, sondern Frauen vielmehr ihrer Handlungsmacht über ihren Körper berauben. Warum? Wegen der „Wiederaneignung der bisher von Männern monopolisierten reproduktiven Techniken“ (Atlan 2005: 345).

    Auch wenn sich in den letzten 40 Jahren die Gleichberechtigung in der Arbeits- und Forschungswelt verbessert hat, folgt die gesamte technische und medizinisch-pharmazeutische Industrie nach wie vor neoliberalen biopolitischen Kriterien, die mit weiblicher Emanzipation schwer vereinbar sind. Dies liegt nicht nur an der männlichen Dominanz in den gesellschaftlichen Strukturen, sondern vor allem an der seit der Nachkriegszeit beschleunigten Etablierung einer neoliberalen, produktions- und vor allem leistungsorientierten Arbeitskultur.

    Reproduktionstechnologien und Emanzipation

    Das erste Argument, das Atlan anführt, bezieht sich auf eine These, der Corea einen Artikel gewidmet hat: „The hidden malpratice: how American medicine mistreats women“ (Atlan 2005: 1985). Darin geht es um die Missachtung des weiblichen Körpers in medizinischen Studien im Allgemeinen. Medizinische Studien würden ihr Verfahren auf die Verallgemeinerung des Geschlechts legen, sodass durch die Nichtberücksichtigung der weiblichen biologischen Voraussetzungen bei Frauen viel mehr negative Auswirkungen als bei Männern eintreten. Die schädliche Konsequenz einer „hypermediacalized procreation“ (Atlan 2005: 343) wird mit einem zweiten Argument aufgezeigt: Die Reproduktionstechnologien, so die These, sollen Frauen nicht von der Reproduzierbarkeit ihres Körpers befreien, sondern ihn im Gegenteil unausweichlich in den Dienst der Reproduktion stellen, trotz schwieriger Bedingungen. Sie sollen ihren Körper in den Dienst der Sicherung des Nachwuchses stellen, durch klinische Verfahren und trotz auftretender Schwierigkeiten. Ihre Körper werden „unjustifiably sacrificed on the altar of reproduction“ (Atlan 2005: 343).

    „But this is only the beginning of a long history of medical interventions, paved with good intentions, to be sure, but in which womenʼs bodies have been unjustifiably sacrificed on the altar of reproduction“ (Atlan 2005: 343).

    So geht es in seinem Kommentar nicht um die ethischen Aspekte der Reproduktionstechnologien. Der emanzipatorische Diskurs und die emanzipatorische Haltung, die in der Tat sehr viel zur sozialen Bewegung der Frauenemanzipation beigetragen haben, bedeuten für Gena Corea jedoch, so Atlan, zwei Seiten einer Medaille. Laut ihnen bleibt die Asymmetrie der Geschlechter durch die Reproduktionstechnologien aufrechterhalten. Sollten die Reproduktionstechnologien eine emanzipatorische Bewegung vorantreiben, wenn Frauen unabhängig von gesellschaftlichen Strukturen über ihren Körper selbst bestimmen könnten, so ist das Gegenteil der Fall, falls eine illegitime Aneignung des weiblichen Körpers durch die technomedizinische Institution stattfindet. „This frankly astonishing observation joins many others accumulated by Corea in support of her thesis of the medical mistreatment of woman of reproductive technology“ (Atlan 2005: 344). Tatsächlich ist nicht die Technik das Problem, sondern die gesellschaftlichen Strukturen, in denen sie operiert.

    Aufhebung sozialer Asymmetrien

    Mit dem provokanten Titel „Mother Machine“ wollte Henri Atlan die sozialen Konsequenzen als Herausforderung an die Gesellschaft darstellen, von dem, was sozialtechnisch noch als Irrealität, aber nicht als Unmöglichkeit erscheint, nämlich die künstliche Reproduktion einer Gebärmutter. In diesem Zusammenhang stellt er die Frage, ob eine exo-mütterliche Gebärmutter die Asymmetrie der Geschlechter ausgleichen könnte. Man könnte hoffen, dass eine künstliche Gebärmutter die Ungleichheiten bei der Versorgung Neugeborener ausgleichen würde. Aber es wäre nicht notwendig, die Geschlechterdifferenz aufzulösen, wenn sie viel weiter geht als die mütterliche vs. väterliche Rolle, die ein bestimmtes bürgerliches Dreieck „Vater/Mutter/Kind“ der westlichen Länder einnehmen würde.

    „What will comprise the masculine and feminine genders and their articulations in a world where the asymmetric of the sexes in reproduction will have disappeared?“ (Atlan 2005: 350)
     

    Die Simulation der generativen Bildungskraft

    Beim Titel „Mother Machine“ weiß man bzw. ich nicht genau, welche Simulation gemeint ist: die der Mutter – nämlich die der äußeren (allo)mütterlichen Instanz – oder die der Gebärmutter – nämlich ein dem Körper der Mutter innerlicher ontogenetischer Prozess.

    Die Simulation der Gebärmutter und der Mutter sind sehr unterschiedliche Dinge. Tatsächlich bezieht Atlan sich auf die Simulation der Gebärmutter, d.h. auf die Simulation einer ökologischen Nische, die in der Welt nicht entäußert ist. Aber er verweist kaum auf den radikalen ontologischen Unterschied zwischen den beiden, nämlich auf das unterschiedliche Verhältnis, das sie jeweils zur Welt haben. Insofern die Mutter ein in der Welt befindliches Wesen ist, ist der Uterus ein inneres Organ im Körper der Mutter, in dem die Morphogenese des Embryos stattfindet. Die Simulation einer mütterlichen Maschine wäre eigentlich das Abbild bzw. die Kopie eines Wesens, das mütterliche Eigenschaften besitzt und ausführt. Die Simulation einer Nische, die aber innerlich im Körper der Mutter existiert, mit ontogenetischen Eigenschaften, wäre eine Simulation zweiter Ordnung: erstens die Erfindung einer aus dem Körper der Mutter externalisierten und entäußerten Bildungsmaschine und zweitens die einer Maschine, die Ontogenese und Morphogenese ausführt.

    Atlan selbst widmete sich wissenschaftlich dem Bildungstrieb. Als Autor und Erforscher der Selbstorganisation sowohl in organischen als auch in anorganischen und technischen Systemen plädierte er dafür, die Organisation eines Systems, d.h. die Organisation der Strukturen eines bestimmten Systems, sei es organisch oder nicht, sei informationell. Sie ist eine Eigenschaft, die alle Systeme besitzen, sofern sie mit einem Außen in Wechselwirkung stehen und ein Austausch von Energie und Materie stattfindet, während Information um ihrer selbst willen erzeugt wird. Je nachdem, wie viel Energie abgeführt oder vergeudet wird und wie groß die Fähigkeit und die Kapazität des Individuums sind, Arbeit zu verrichten oder Informationen aufzunehmen, laufen unterschiedliche Organisationsprozesse ab.

    Aber ist die Gebärmutter ein selbstorganisierender Körper, par excellence, simulierbar? Ist die negative Entropie ein simulierbarer Entstehungsmotor?

    Als die Alchemist*innen sich daran machten, das Leben zu simulieren, versuchten sie in Wirklichkeit,
    das zu überwinden, was die Naturwissenschaften später als 2. Hauptsatz der Thermodynamik bezeichneten, den Ludwig Boltzmann und andere ebenso zu überwinden trachteten. In der Geschichte der technischen Utopien und vor allem in der literarischen Geschichte der Science Fiction hat man sich nie vorstellen können, das zweite Gesetz der Thermodynamik zu überwinden, ohne eine dritte Art, ein drittes Geschlecht zu postulieren.

    Eine Womb Machine würde also nicht die Geschlechterdifferenz aufheben, sondern allenfalls die Asymmetrie zweier Geschlechter durch die Schaffung eines dritten Geschlechts ausgleichen.

  • SUB-ENSEMBLE: PHILOSOPHICAL COURAGE

    SUB-ENSEMBLE: PHILOSOPHICAL COURAGE

    Seit dem letzten Beitrag über die Geontologie von Elisabeth von Povinelli habe ich nichts mehr geschrieben.

    Teilweise liegt dies an der intensiven Befassung mit meinem Buchprojekt über die Kontingenz der Ordnung, anhand einer Reise über Entropie, die Zeit, die vergeht ohne wiederzukehren, und die Unordnung verursacht oder die Unvollständigkeit des Wissens offenbart. Tatsächlich ist dies eine Gelegenheit, das Blogprojekt zu unterbrechen. Es war mehr als eine Pause, es war eine Atempause. Zu welchem Zweck? Über den Sinn des philosophischen Schreibens nachzudenken. Warum? Weil im Kontext der Akademie und der Wissenschaftsproduktion, wenn Wissenschaft immer positiver gedacht und praktiziert wird, immer wieder die Frage gestellt wird, ob es überhaupt noch einen Rahmen für philosophisches Denken geben wird. Ich will nicht dem Ende des Denkens das Wort reden, aber der Drang und der Durst danach werden leicht durch die positivistische Wissenschaft, durch den metaphysischen Dogmatismus erstickt. Denken, wozu? Es klingt, als sei das Denken viel zu anstrengend, auch für die WissenschaftlerInnen, sodass sie lieber die Maschinen es berechnen lassen. Außerdem sei die Muse des Denkens so nutzlos, dass man heute keine Zeit mehr habe, sich ihr zu widmen. Ich nehme an, dass es viel Theorie gibt, auch angewandte Philosophie. Aber die spekulativen Denkrichtungen sind Wege, die von den akademischen wissenschaftlichen Forschungsrichtungen immer ausgeschlossen werden, weil sie nicht in der Lage sind, die positive Kraft der Wissenschaft zu erfüllen. Außerhalb des Verständigungsrahmens des etablierten Wissens zu denken und über das Unbekannte zu sprechen, dieses Paradoxon, in dem sich die Philosophie immer bewegt hat, ist heute die Kunst.


    Ich erinnere mich noch gut an jenen Tag, an dem dieser Blog begann. Für den ersten Eintrag habe ich einen paraphysischen Text geschrieben. Er sollte den Blog einweihen und man sollte wissen, worum es geht. Ich wollte keine Erklärung geben, sondern es den Augen der Leserinnen und Leser überlassen. Die aus Wörtern zusammengesetzte Gedankencollage diente freilich einem konkreten Versuch: die Züge loser Stücke wiederzufinden, also scheinbar Verpasstes, Verlorenes, Vergangenes, Unwiederbringliches wiederzugewinnen.

    SUB-ENSEMBLE: PHILOSOPHICAL COURAGE

    Eines Tages fragte die Dame von Amboto, einer Göttin, die auf einem Berg im Nordwesten der iberischen Halbinsel lebte und Mari hieß, wo ihre Gefährtinnen seien. Die Ortsangabe ist nicht so wichtig wie ihr Vorhaben: Sie begaben sich auf die Suche nach dem Nichts (ezaren bila). Die Gefährtinnen der Göttin Mari gingen auf die Suche nach dem Nichts, nach dem, was einem genommen worden war.

    Ein Hirte sollte 100 Schafe haben, von denen er eines Tages nur noch 90 hatte. Die Gefährtinnen machten sich auf die Suche nach den fehlenden 10 Schafen. Sucherinnen des Verlorenen, Siegerinnen des Verstoßenen, Bejaherinnen der Einheit sind die Gefährtinnen Maris. Wir haben sie benutzt, um den Überbleibseln jenes Umbruchs eine Stimme zu geben, all denen, die auf dem Weg verloren gegangen sind, die zurückgewiesen, ignoriert oder nicht gehört wurden.

    Verstümmelte Stücke, lose Teile, verlorene Partikel, wo sind die fehlenden 10 Schafe?

    Brocken sind zerbrochene Stücke. Lose Teile zeugen von einem verlorenen Zusammenhang. Zeichen eines abwesenden Objekts, jeder lose Brocken zeugt von einem Bruch. Er ist ein Rest, kein Gegenstand. In den rohen Stücken, den Partikeln eines zerbrochenen Zusammenhangs, lässt sich etwas Unvollständiges erkennen. Bruchstücke wollen nicht die Wahrheit sagen. Sie bleiben stumm in ihrer Unvollkommenheit, Teil einer verlorenen Geschichte und Zeuge einer Verneinung. Ein Brocken ist, wie jedes zerbrochene Stück, ein Zeichen dieses Bruchs. Abbrüche und Brüche sind Zeichen eines verlorenen Zusammenhangs. Wenn der Gegenstand des Zeichens abwesend ist, kommen die Gefährtinnen, um ihn zu jagen. Nur dann kann man den abwesenden Objekten auf die Spur kommen.

    Dieser Blog wird jedem Brocken, der für sich und bei dir steht, seine Stimme geben. Wir wollen die Ohren öffnen und uns auf die Resonanz unselbstständiger Zeichen, unvollendeter Denkmuster einlassen. Wir wollen nicht mehr sehen, wir vertrauen der Unmittelbarkeit sinnlicher Gewissheit. Diese ist ein Raum der paroles, wo das Herz die Stimme nachholt und sie im Vordergrund des Schreibers steht. Logo-Dilexie, Logo-Aphasie; eine Disruption der Wahrnehmung in der Sprache. Das Nichts-Sagen-Können wird hier durch Alles-Wahrnehmen-Können ersetzt. Ein Behälter von Brocken jeder Art. Von einem Podcast über ein Bild bis zu einer Zeile. Interviews, Essays, Kommentare, Bild-Kommentare, Ereignis-Kommentare, Kommentare über Kommentare, Text von Texten, Stimme von Stimmen. Apokryphen, vergessene Stimmen, verbrannte Körper; ein Schlachtruf gegen das Schweigen, gegen die Verschämtheit.

    Sub- ist noch kein Teil, es ist ein Anschlussteil

    Ein unselbstständiges Stück, da ihm ohne Anschlüsse an Worte keine Bedeutung beigemessen wird. Ein selbstständiger Brocken als ein in sich vor dem folgenden Wort mehrdeutiger Trägerpotenzieller Bedeutungen. Eine Ode an die Autonomie und dafür, voneinander unabhängig zu bleiben. Sub- befindet sich im Regime der Möglichkeiten der Potenz.(Sub)Ensemble: Kreislauf von Anschlüssen und Bindungen. Jedes Stück istnotwendigerweise angeschlossen; jedes bleibt aber unabhängig von den anderen. DieStücke werden nicht im Prozess der rekursiven Kausalität dem Ganzen unterworfen,sie bleiben unabhängig voneinander.Sub- steht für eine Tiefe. Eine Tiefe in der Dimension einer Struktur. Sub- ist demBlick des Beobachters entzogen. Die Tiefe ist unsichtbar, man nennt diese Sub-, mansieht sie aber nicht.

    Keine Extraktion! Ist das epistemische Lemma.

    Sub- bleiben voneinander unabhängig, aneinander angebunden; sub-irdisch, sub-bewusst; sub-somatisch.


    Der Blog war und ist ein Sammelbecken für Buchbesprechungen, Kommentare, Interviews etc. Aber der ursprüngliche Anspruch bleibt, Spuren zu lesen, Spuren von Geschichten, die nicht verloren gegangen sind, wieder aufzuschreiben. Das Verleugnete, das Geraubte, das Fehlende, das Verlorene, das nicht Wiederkehrende sind nicht verschwunden. Es kehrt zurück in der Differenz der Differenz. In anderer Form, in anderer Gestalt, in anderer Erscheinung, wiederkehrend. Es geht hier nicht um den Widerstand gegen den Verlust. Es geht vielmehr darum, die Erwiderung jenes Verlusts in Anspruch zu nehmen.

  • Interview on Cybernetics with Stuart A. Umpleby

    Interview on Cybernetics with Stuart A. Umpleby

    Arantzazu Saratxaga Arregi (ASA): Dear Mr. Umpleby, thank you for agreeing to be interviewed for my own blog. I am delighted to have you as a contributor.

    Let me to introduce you briefly: Stuart A. Umpleby is a North American cybernetician. He was a Professor in the Department of Management and Director of the Center for Social and Organizational Learning in the School of Business at George Washington University. He has served as the President of the American Society of Cybernetics (ASC) and as associate editor of Cybernetics and Systems. Some of his publications include  „A History of the Cybernetics Movement in the United States“ (2005), „The Design of Intellectual Movements“ (2002), „Knowledge Management from the Perspective of Systems Theory and Cybernetics“ (2000), „Cybernetics of Conceptual Systems“ (1994), and „The Science of Cybernetics and the Cybernetics of Science“, in: Cybernetics and Systems (1990). He has extensively published on cybernetics and systems thinking topics.

    First experiences and memories of your first encounters with the BCL

    ASA: In 1967, you worked in the Computer-Based Education Research Laboratory (PLATO) and the Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL) as a graduate student at the University of Illinois. Prior to that, you worked. at the Institute of Communications Research.

    SU:  Yes, The University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) was among the few US universities that had created a communication curriculum at the doctoral level. At UIUC students have the option to pursue a major in behavioral science, cultural studies, or cybernetics.

    The cybernetics program maintains affiliations with both the Institute for Communications Research in the College of Communications and the Biological Computer Laboratory in the College of Engineering. During the 1940s, multiple universities across the United States established Institutes for Communications Research. Other universities such as the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, and Stanford University also established multidisciplinary programs in the social sciences.

    ASA:  Heinz von Foerster participated in the Macy Foundation Conferences (1946-1953). In 1958, he founded BCL to continue work on the topics he learned about at the Macy conferences.  One of their most important contributions was the successful interdisciplinary research effort that brought together fields from the natural, social, and engineering sciences. The Macy Conferences greatly influenced Heinz’s thinking and his teaching and research.  And the opportunity to study communications from a cybernetics point of view continued in the College of communication. Most students in the communications program chose to study the field through the behavioral science or cultural studies tracks, rather than cybernetics.   Heinz von Foerster continued to work on the ideas discussed at the Macy Conferences.  He conducted Special Problems courses on topics like heuristics or cybernetics that attracted students from a wide range of departments. But he approached these courses not as part of a fixed curriculum in a course catalogue.  Instead, he treated each course as a research endeavor, not as part of a curriculum that would be repeated each semester.

    SU: Yes, self-organization, particularly Ross Ashby’s explanation of it, was discussed at BCL.  But more important than the concept of self-organization was the interest in epistemology that had been discussed at the Macy conferences and continued to motivate most of the work in BCL.

    ASA:  You collaborated with Heinz von Foerster and Ross Ashby at BCL during the early 1970s. You earned your PhD in communications under the supervision of Heinz von Foerster. Two monographs, published in Austria, „An Unfinished Revolution“ (edited by Albert Müller and Karl Müller), and the „History of BCL“ by Albert Müller pay tribute to the work conducted over 16 years at BCL. The institution was a research site for self-organization and facilitated fruitful exchanges between scientists, providing an ideal environment for knowledge acquisition. Additionally, Heinz von Foerster, following Warren McCulloch’s lead, was interested in epistemology. Von Foerster embarked on an epistemological shift, referred to as second-order cybernetics or later constructivism.

     Your career was very much shaped by your doctoral studies at BCL. One could say that you were dedicated to promoting cybernetic approaches and extending them towards the social sciences and management.  Could you discuss how BCL impacted your career path and sparked your interest in this field? What specifically intrigued you about BCL, and could you recount your most significant experience during your time there?  

    SU:  Students who pursue engineering begin by studying physics. I really liked the style of thought in physics—the way it was organized and investigated. However, my interest was in social systems. I wanted to study social systems using a style of thought similar to physics.  BCL’s practice of cybernetics offered exactly what I was seeking.

    Second Order Cybernetics

    A Scientific Revolution

    ASA: Could you briefly explain your view of „cybernetic orders“?

    SU: Sure. Let me explain my views on „higher orders of cybernetics.“

    Early cybernetics focused on engineering problems, for example an automatic pilot or an automatic assembly line. Examples of control included biological processes in homeostasis and accounting activities in businesses.

    Second Order Cybernetics (SOC) was developed by Heinz von Foerster.  It was his way of drawing attention to the biology of cognition, a subject of interest to him and McCulloch and Maturana and Varela.  This was known as „biological cybernetics,“ quite different from the early engineering work in cybernetics and quite different from artificial intelligence (AI).  SOC aimed to understand human cognition, while AI aimed to create computer systems replicating human cognition. These are two separate objectives.

    Current AI has created machine intelligence that can replace some instances of human cognitive activity, for example producing summaries of literature or writing classroom papers, also generating vast quantities of „personalized“ propaganda.

    SOC called attention to the role of observers in producing any description.  Contrary to early scientific practices, cyberneticians claimed that observers could not be eliminated from science.  Not only did observers design, conduct, and interpret experiments, but their intentions, values, and purposes were also integral to the scientific process and must not be ignored.

    ASA: Beautiful, true.

    ASA:  Second order cybernetics was characterized as a paradigm shift, in the words of Thomas Kuhn. Numerous monographs and books appeared in the 1960s and 1970s during the discussions of self-organization.

    SU:  A leading scholar in cybernetics at UIUC was Ross Ashby. Ashby formulated two laws: 1.  The law of requisite variety (the amount of regulation that can be performed is limited by the amount of information available), and 2. the principle of self-organization (every isolated, determinate, dynamic system obeying unchanging laws, will develop organisms that are adapted to their environments).  His goal was to create a theory explaining how the brain engages in adaptive behavior.

    ASA:  You mentioned 2nd order cybernetics, a field that focused on experimental epistemology. To that end, you mention the McCulloch’s research on brain functionality. It’s very interesting that this work led to a second-order epistemic turn, exploring how to describe brain functionality since science is conducted using the brain.Warren McCulloch’s work is not widely known, but it is fundamental.  Consider the titles of some of his articles, “What is in the brain that ink may character?” “A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous activity.” (cite more article titles) For me, the turn from the first to the second order is that experimental epistemology or neurophysiological research is not limited to describing brain activity through mapping theories but ventures into metalanguage in an attempt to describe brain activity.

    SU:  Yes, second order cybernetics involves paradox.  This approach is, of course, made possible by the introduction of observers into the description of brain activity. The disciplinary basis of second order cybernetics was rooted in neurophysiology.

    Second order science

    ASA:  Perhaps the introduction of a „second order“ into the language of science was revolutionary. Heinz von Foerster expanded the concept to the sciences in general since it relates to the language game of recursive facts. Second-order organization is referred to as the organization of organization, while second-order observation refers to the observation of observation.

    SU:  Yes, Observers have always been fundamental to science.  Observers formulate hypotheses, test hypotheses, and evaluate research.  However, for many years scientists said that the observer should be excluded from consideration in order to achieve objectivity.  The current view is that science without an observer is not physically possible.  Who would formulate theories and hypotheses and conduct experiments and present results?

    ASA:  You mention the concept of a „second-order science.“ Can you describe a little bit more what the science of science would be, how cybernetics has contributed to this second order, and what is the gain for the sciences when you speak of a second order?

    SU:  According to Karl Mueller, second-order cybernetics gives rise to second-order science, where the observer becomes a central object of analysis.  Thus, when one acknowledges the role of the observer, they enter the realm of second-order observations. 

    Second-order cybernetics for social systems.

    ASA:  Moreover, this research aims to enhance the applicability of cybernetics to social systems. It has been noted that second-order cybernetics was predominantly focused on the cognitive/biological aspects linked to the nervous system. Moreover, this research aims to enhance the applicability of cybernetics to social systems. Therefore, the focus must shift toward social systems, going beyond biological cybernetics.

    It is imperative to question whether the inherent non-social nature of the second-order cybernetics approach lies in its emphasis on communication systems. One example is the research conducted by Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, who aimed to enhance the effectiveness of feedback mechanisms and circular causality in social systems. Both Mead and Bateson played a significant role in the Macy conferences, which led to the formation of cybernetics. In what ways do you believe that cybernetics lacks emphasis on social research?

    SU: I do not believe that the field of cybernetics lacks emphasis on social research.  Some scientists may hold a different view.

    Cybernetics of the third order

    Three Words on Third Order Cybernetics

    ASA: The purpose of this issue of „Neocybernetics“ is to highlight the new paths of cybernetics. It should be noted that these developments cannot be generalized systematically, as cybernetics‘ history represents a diverse practice of knowledge. Previously, we discussed the paradigm shift of second-order cybernetics in the sciences. Now, I will delve into the ways cybernetics is continuously growing and changing.

    The foundations of third-order cybernetics draw upon concepts attributed to V.S. Tepid and V.A. Lectorsky of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Vladimir Lepskiy conceptualized third-order cybernetics, which was further developed by him and his colleagues at the Institute of Philosophy at the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). 

     The search for theoretical foundations and practical provisions of third-order cybernetics has recently become a topic of scientific interest. Would you kindly provide a brief explanation of the core concern of third-order cybernetics? 

    SU:  Third order cybernetics was concerned with the context of social processes.

    Coupling between society and idea

    ASA: The interrelationship between social systems and ideas appears to be a crucial aspect of third-order cybernetics, potentially fostering the development of a humane society (Umpleby 1992, 2002).

    But is not the interaction between ideas and society already present in the second order, insofar as the systems consist of observers, shaped by their respective ideas and prejudices, from whose interaction a collective intelligence emerges?

    SU: Each “order” of cybernetics calls attention to phenomena that require examination.  The issues involved might pertain to a discipline that the scientist may not be familiar with, for example neurophysiology or government and law or environmental concerns.

    Management for a humanitarian model of society

    ASA: The realization of achieving a humanitarian social system, a key concern in third-order cybernetics, can be achieved through organizational science or management. Therefore, the focus of third-order cybernetics is to look at modern management theory and practice from a new approach, addressing the philosophical foundations. The goal of the new cybernetics is to develop management mechanisms that are suitable for human nature and can overcome its lack of subjectivity. Can you provide some examples of these mechanisms?

    SU: An example of considerations that the scientists may not be familiar with would be the political factors at work in Chile in the early 1970’s when Beer’s Viable System Model was used in managing government processes in Chile.

    Another example would be the environmental consequences of CO2, as would be the buildup of plastics in the environment.

    ASA: Do you think that the interaction between society and ideas can be observed and managed with a technical-organizational tool?

    SU: Yes, the participatory management methods developed by the Institute of Cultural Affairs provide ways of bringing citizens, govt officials and scientists to assemble information and hold meetingsThinking and reflection are involved in these processes.

    Third order Cybernetics

    ASA:  Finally, I want to address a crucial aspect of third-order cybernetics. Certain individuals argue that the third order is redundant since the second order demonstrates the infinite recursion of self-reference. Does this imply that the third order is implicit within the second?

    SU: It is essential that we clarify our intended message, examine comprehensible themes, and avoid complex concepts causing ambiguity.

    Lepskiy was interested in third-order cybernetics or the social and political context of control processes. building upon the disciplinary basis of sociology and political science. 

    Matjaz Mulej suggested fourth order cybernetics or the environmental context of control processes. He pointed out that industrial processes that disregarded the sustainability of the environment could not endure. He emphasized the ethical aspects of any activity. Hence, one can imagine a hierarchy of control processes based in several academic disciplines.

    Von Foerster pointed out that only second-order cybernetics is needed.  Observers have the freedom to incorporate any relevant factors they wish.

    Second-order cybernetics has the capacity to accommodate these supplementary factors.

    Complexity Research

    Third order and global governance

    ASA: Cybernetics involves the self-organization of social systems or societies at the macro level, resulting in self-governing societies, provided that society is understood as a reflexive system. This concern reminds me very much of the main concern of complexity research, insofar as it deals with the governability of global social orders. A mulitude of interactions and interdependencies are purported to underpin a collective intelligence. To this end, complexity research is concerned with „order parameters“ to ensure the global governability of the planet, to minimize conflicts, and to reduce complexity. 

    SU: Complexity issues can be dealt with often using the Law of Requisite Variety.  Complexity requires that either the system observed needs to be simplified or the regulator needs to increase its capabilities.

    LRV is often not used by complexity scholars.  They more often focus on emergence of new patterns or processes. Your interpretation should adhere to the language used in the original formulations.

    ASA: Would you agree with the idea of an overlap of third-order cybernetics and complexity research?

    SU:   Yes these fields discuss many of the same concerns but they often use varying language, terms or principles.

    Complexity research and modeling

    ASA:   Let’s talk a little bit about complexity research. It has self-organization and emergence as its central research agenda. The main question for complexity research is how self-organization comes about, and how to recognize orders and patterns that emerge in a system. Complexity research was founded on the scientific revolution of self-organization that explores how order emerges from disorder.. At first glance, this seems very close to second-order cybernetics, in particular the surface concern of self-organization that Heinz von Foerster reveals in his article „On Self-Organizing Systems and Their Environments“: „Order from Noise“.

    How, if at all, do you think BCL’s research on self-organization differs from complexity research?

    SU:  Self-organization is a natural process – systems tend to go toward their stable equilibrial states.  Think of self-organization as an expanded version of the second law of thermodynamics.  It is not mysterious.  It is ubiquitous.  Emergence produces something new (in the mind of an observer) but it is the result of the same process – systems moving toward their equilibrial states.

    The BCL view is that self-organization is a natural process – systems moving toward equilibrium. Complexity scholars view the emergence of new order as somewhat miraculous, but in  essence, the processes remain the same. This fact is not surprising for cyberneticians but remarkable and wonderful for complexity researchers.  The difference lies in the observers.  BCL was an early research site for self-organization.    (It would be helpful to know when and where the terms “self-organization” and “complexity” were first used.)  The Santa Fe Institute commonly utilized complexity, whereas BCL  did not adopt complexity as a scientific concept  and instead used requisite variety.  Complexity research did not employ either term.

    ASA:  In your previous article, you mentioned that BCL had to shut down due to lack of funding. Coincidentally, the Santa Fe Institute for Complex Systems was established around the same time. Do you believe that Santa Fe Institute established itself as a research institute for self-organization and obtained funding, while BCL did not? Would you assert that Santa Fe Institute continued the work previously done by BCL?

    SU: No, see above.  Complexity and cybernetics interpret novelty differently.  I would say that complexity researchers are confused about what is going on.  Old familiar processes (second law) are adequate explanations.  No new scientific phenomenon has been observed or discovered in the literature on complexity.  Elements came together to form something new, but the process was a movement toward equilibrium.  Stick with fundamentals, cybernetics, avoid hype.

    One organization was doing science, the other was looking for attention.

    I see systems, cybernetics, and complexity as three different fields, each with its own leading figures and favored research questions.  The people in these three fields may have heard of people in the other groups, but they did not know each other well. They did not attend the same conferences or cite the same authors in their references. They were working on different problems.  Each group may have thought that they were working on the important problems, and the other two groups were doing less interesting work.

    In cybernetics there is Ross Ashby’s Principle of Self-Organization – “every isolated, determinate, dynamic system obeying unchanging laws will develop organisms that are adapted to their environments.”  Hence, self-organizing systems develop naturally, automatically.  They may contain organisms and environments. They are not deliberately constructed by a designer.  A complex system, on the other hand, is often created by a designer.  Cybernetics and complexity are two different ways of thinking.  See the table describing the three points of view in the 2019 paper, “Systems, Cybernetics, and Complexity.”

    ASA: Thank you very much for the conversation.

  • Alexandre Kojève bezeugt Diogenesʼ Schweigen

    Alexandre Kojève bezeugt Diogenesʼ Schweigen

    Diogenes von Sinope soll um Zenons Darlegung der Bewegungsparadoxien schweigend umhergelaufen sein. Er scheint den Zirkelschluss von Paradoxien zu verschweigen und somit die Unmöglichkeit der Vielheit und der Bewegung mit einem Schlag zu verneinen. Aufs Spiel gesetzt wird die Rechtfertigung des ideologischen Projekts, das die ganze westliche Weltsicht Jahrhunderte hindurch massiv bestimmt hat: das rationalistische monistische und metaphysische Projekt, nach dem das Sein einzig, unveränderlich, unbeweglich, ewig und vollständig sei. Alexandre Kojève bezeugt im Gegensatz zu dem, was Aristoteles behauptet, dass dem doppelzüngigen Mann doch zu entgehen ist, indem er den Zeugen von Diogenesʼ Schweigen in seinem 1929 verfassten Essay „Zum Problem der diskreten Welt“ als Entzugsform des Zirkelschlusses des monistischen Rationalismus nimmt:

    „Indem nun Diogenes schweigend umherging, deutete er an, dass die Tatsache der Unmöglichkeit des Redens (Irrationalität) in Bezug auf die Frage nach der Wirklichkeit eines Phänomens von keiner entscheidenden Bedeutung ist“. (S.7)

    Dem Merve Verlag ist für die 2023 erfolgte Publikation dieses Texts zu danken. Nicht weniger ist der Leser Isabel Jacobs für die Herausgabe und die exzellente Einführung in den Text Dank schuldig.

    ÜBER DIE MÖGLICHKEIT EINER UNMÖGLICHKEIT: DIE MÖGLICHKEIT DER BEWEGUNG IN EINER WELT, DIE DISKRETE VIELHEIT IST.

    Alexandre Kojève präsentiert das Schweigen als Akt, der Tautologie der Bewegungsparadoxie zu entgehen, um die Möglichkeit der Bewegung in einer diskreten Welt zu postulieren. Nicht weil davon nicht zu reden ist, wenn man sich hier erlaubt, Wittgensteins sprachphilosophisches Axiom zu paraphrasieren, sondern weil Diogenesʼ schweigendes Umherlaufen „ein Protest gegen die These des radikalen Rationalismus [ist]: nur das Vernünftige ist wirklich; ohne eine ‚Widerlegung‘ zu sein, ist es doch sinnvoll“ (S.7).

    Der Autor behandelt das Problem des radikalen Rationalismus in seinem 1929 veröffentlichten Buch „Zum Problem der ‚diskreten‘ Welt“. Die aus einer unendlichen Vielfalt bestehende Welt wird zum Problem für das identitätslogische Postulat. Dagegen will Kojève die Legitimation der Bewegung in einer als diskret mannigfaltig aufgefassten Welt postulieren. Damit greift er das alte Problem namens Bewegungsparadoxie auf, dem zufolge die Bewegung nur im Kontext eines Kontinuums von Zeit und Raum möglich ist. Soll aber die Absolutheit der Zeit der klassischen Mechanik beseitigt werden – wie es die Relativitätstheorie Einsteins tut – dann sei die Bewegung eine Unmöglichkeit. Die erkenntnistheoretischen Konsequenzen einer solchen Sackgasse sind aber sehr weitreichend. Es würde bedeuten, wie Kojève prägnant ausführt, dass die Bewegung in einer diskreten Welt oder für die diskrete Vielfalt weder sprechbar noch denkbar ist oder dass die Bewegung ausschließlich in einem Zeit-Raum-Kontinuum erfolgen kann.

     …Wie fliegt dann der Pfeil der Zeit in einer Welt, die aus Atomen besteht?

    Der Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts war durch leidenschaftliche Diskussionen um die Beschaffenheit physikalischer Phänomene gekennzeichnet. Es herrschte große Verwirrung unter den Wissenschaftlern, ob Teile und Wellen bzw. die damals bekannte kontinuierliche und diskontinuierliche Qualität der Materie vereinbar sein können. Als beobachtet wurde, dass ein Elektron, „das man für ein Teilchen hielt, Wellen-Aspekte zeigt, und ein elektromagnetisches Feld, das man für eine Welle hielt, einen korpuskularen Aspekt besitzt“, kehrte das alte Dilemma Zenons zurück, nämlich, ob Teilchen und somit die diskontinuierliche Qualität der Materie überhaupt die Zeit betreffen.

    Alexandre Kojève soll an den heftigen Kontroversen und zugleich der Verwirrung bezüglich der Eigenschaften der neuen Physik beteiligt gewesen sein. In der von Isabel Jacobs verfassten Einleitung erfahren wir, dass Kojève die vom Physiker und Nobelpreisträger des Jahres 1938, Enrico Fermi, am Institut Henri Poincaré gehaltenen Vorlesungen zur Quantenmechanik verfolgte. Darüber hinaus besuchte er ab November 1929 und 1930 Seminare bei Max Born, Paul Langevin, Louis de Broglie und anderen. Der junge Kojève studierte unter Anleitung von Alexandre Koyré Mathematik und theoretische Physik (S. 9). Er war der Sonderfall eines von ganz wenigen Philosophen, die sich den frühen philosophischen Reflexionen zur Relativitätstheorie widmeten. Deshalb begann er 1930 das Buchprojekt „L‘idée du déterminisme dans la physique classique et dans la physique moderne“, in dem er die von den Wissenschaften ausgelöste Krise der Kausalität und des mechanischen Determinismus behandelte.

    ERKENNTNISTHEORIE: EINE SCHNITTSTELLE ZWISCHEN WISSENSCHAFT UND PHILOSOPHIE

    Meiner Ansicht nach ist es das große Verdienst Kojèves, das Problem, das eine Krise der Quantenmechanik auslöste, auf die Ebene der Epistemologie überführt zu haben. Das Anliegen seines Buches besteht darin, die Hypothese einer diskreten „Welt“ aufzustellen und ihre Eigenschaften so zu präsentieren, dass eine Bewegung sowie die Änderung gerecht bleiben. Hier handelt es sich nicht um die Repräsentanz einer physikalischen Welt, sondern um die vom Geist erfassbare Welt, die nach dem Parameter des klassischen Denkens entweder dem Irrationalismus fehlt oder unaussprechlich ist. Die Formulierung des Problems ist dann eine philosophische.

    Zuerst wollen wir einen Blick auf die von Kojève bemerkte Distinktion zwischen Philosophie und Wissenschaft werfen. Dies ist heute ebenso wichtig wie nötig, denn bei den akademischen Institutionen scheint diese Unterscheidung in Vergessenheit geraten zu sein, da man gefordert ist, Philosophie wissenschaftlich zu betreiben. Kojève erinnert uns daran, dass Philosophie nicht Wissenschaft ist, wie umgekehrt Wissenschaft betreiben offensichtlich nicht philosophieren bedeutet. Doch wenn der Anspruch besteht, Philosophie zu betreiben, ist die Kernfrage eine der anderen Qualität des Wissenschaftlichen. Die Philosophie beschäftigt sich mit der Sache selbst, nämlich der „Totalität des Seienden“ (S.21), denn die Wissenschaft hat Gegenstände als Forschungsbereiche. Mit „Totalität des Seienden“ ist die Einheit dessen, was die Sache ist und nicht ist, gemeint. Die Wissenschaft (damit sind vor allem die Naturwissenschaften wie Physik und Mathematik gemeint) beschäftigt sich mit isolierten Systemen, mit Abstraktionen. Das heißt, es sind Annährungen an Gegenstände, ohne dass das Subjekt in die Herstellung des Objekts involviert ist. Die Quantenmechanik bewirkte jedoch eine Wende im Postulat der objektiven Wirklichkeit: das Korrespondenzprinzip von Bohr, die Unschärferelation von Heisenberg, das Relativitätsprinzip von Einstein. Auch wenn alle drei verschiedene Ansätze verfolgen, münden alle in die Verleugnung einer objektiven absoluten Wirklichkeit.

    Kojèves Anspruch besteht darin, das philosophisch-erkenntnistheoretische Problem der diskreten Welt zu präsentieren und epistemologisch zu behandeln. Die Erkenntnistheorie steht an der Schnittstelle zwischen Philosophie und Wissenschaft. Eine epistemologische Annäherung soll sich auf den Gegenstand richten und zugleich den Unterschied zwischen der Sache und der Nicht-Sache berücksichtigen. In dieser Weise zählt die Erkenntnistheorie nicht zur Seite des erkennenden Subjekts, wie es die damals herrschende kantianische bzw. die Marburger Schule des Idealismus formulierten, sondern das Objekt wird in seiner Sachlichkeit und Nicht-Sachlichkeit berücksichtigt und die Erkenntnis als eine Verwicklung zwischen dem erkennenden Subjekt, der Sache selbst und dem, was nicht die Sache ist, interpretiert.

    SACKGASSE DER PARADOXIEN

    Alexandre Kojève vertritt eine finitistische Hypothese:

    „Die finitistische Hypothese nimmt an, dass die ‚Welt‘ kein Kontinuum ist, sondern aus Atomen besteht. Diese Hypothese ist nicht in dem Sinne finitistisch, als ob sie die Endlichkeit der ‚Welt‘ behauptete. Im Gegenteil, es ist nicht einzusehen, wie eine diskrete ‚Welt‘ endlich sein könnte“ (S.33)

    Unendlich viele Teilchen bilden die Welt, doch scheint diese Welt problematisch zu sein, weil ihre Existenz nicht möglich ist. In einer solchen Welt wären die Zeit und damit die Bewegung, die Änderung ausgeschlossen. Dieser Ansatz scheint mir mehr als die Schlussfolgerung der Paradoxien der monistisch-rationalistischen Lehre der eleatischen Schule zu sein.

    Ich habe den Eindruck, dass die Paradoxien der monistisch-rationalistischen Lehre der eleatischen Schule in eine Sackgasse geraten sind. Egal, ob durch Negation oder Bejahung einer unendlichen Welt, lautet die Schlussfolgerung, dass das Sein der Bewegung, nämlich der Zeit, ausgeschlossen ist. Es ist Kojèves  Anspruch, die Prinzipien der ontotheologischen Metaphysik der eleatischen Schule zu beseitigen. Kojève bejaht die Bewegung und Änderung in einer Welt der diskreten Vielfalt und des Diskreten.

    Die Fundamentalparadoxie der Teilbarkeit: Bewegung ist ausgeschlossen.

    Zenon von Elea (490-430 v. Chr.) gehörte einer der ältesten philosophischen Schulen an, jener der Eleaten, deren wichtigster Vertreter Parmenides von Elea war. Diese Schule weitete die Lehre ihrer wichtigsten Vertreter aus, nämlich den metaphysischen Monismus: Das Sein ist etwas Unveränderliches, Ewiges, Einziges, das Eine.

    Zenon von Elea übernahm es, die monistische Lehre gegen die Einwände der ihr entgegengesetzten vorsokratischen Schulen zu verteidigen. Die Unmöglichkeit von Bewegung, Vielheit, Veränderung und Diversität sollte durch eine strenge Beweisführung auf die Probe gestellt werden. Dies hat er in mehreren Trugschlüssen, von denen zehn überliefert sind, dargelegt. Die Bewegungsparadoxien, der Trugschluss von Achilles und der Schildkröte sowie die Pfeil- und Stadion-Paradoxien sind die am meisten kommentierten. Alle vier zielen darauf ab ab, die Unveränderlichkeit (Paradoxie der Bewegung), die Unteilbarkeit (Dichotomie von Paradoxon und Paradoxie von Achilles und der Schildkröte) sowie die Kontinuität (Pfeilparadoxien) als Wahrheiten zu postulieren.

    Das Dichotomie-Paradoxon, auch Teilungsparadoxon genannt, präsentiert das erste Argument gegen die Möglichkeit der Bewegung. „Sie besteht darin, dass das sich Fortbewegende früher bei der Hälfte ankommen muss als beim Ende“. Die zeitliche Interpretation des Paradoxons besagt, dass es unmöglich sei, „in einer endlichen Zeit eine unendliche Strecke zu durchlaufen“, wie das Paradoxon von Achilles und der Schildkröte zeigt. Ergo: Die Kontinuität von Raum und Zeitstrecke setzt die Unteilbarkeit und Ausdehnungslosigkeit von Raum und Zeitpunkt voraus. Die Kontinuität einer Raumstrecke setzt die Unteilbarkeit und Ausdehnungslosigkeit eines Raumpunkts voraus. Zwei Aussagen lassen sich daraus ableiten: a) Ein Raum- und Zeitpunkt ist unteilbar und ausdehnungslos; b) eine Raum- und Zeitschrecke ist ein Kontinuum.

    Diese zwei Sätze scheinen die Paradoxien in eine Sackgasse zu führen, wobei behauptet wird, egal ob aus der Sicht der diskontinuierlichen oder der kontinuierlichen Hypothesen: Die Bewegung ist ein Problem für die monistische rationalistische Schule.

    ABSURDITÄT DES UNENDLICHKEITSDILEMMAS

    Die Affirmation der Bewegung einer diskreten Welt ist keine Paradoxie, es sei denn, man geht von den fundamentalontologischen Ansätzen des Parmenides aus. Die Paradoxie liegt dem Fundament Parmenidesʼ zugrunde, das der Philosoph und Kybernetiker Gotthard Günter ontotheologische Tautologie (Sein = Sein) nennt. Aus dieser tautologischen Gleichung erschließt sich, dass die Negation des Seins und dessen Qualitäten (Ewigkeit, Einheit, Einzigartigkeit) zum Nicht-Sein zählen. Ergo entsprechen das Werden, die Veränderungen, die Transformationen und die Vielfalt nicht der objektiven Wirklichkeit, sondern sind einer Illusion der Wahrnehmung zugeschrieben: In der Wirklichkeit ist die Wirklichkeit in sich unverändert.

    Diese Aussage ist das Resultat eines Paralogismus, nicht einer Paradoxie, sagt Kojève. Es handelt sich um sophistische Argumentationen zur Verteidigung einer unveränderlichen Welt. Alles, was das ewige Sein verleugnet, nämlich die Bewegung, ist eine Täuschung. Ein Paralogismus, aber anstatt einer Paradoxie.

    EINE ERKENNBARE DISKRETE WELT: DIE ANNAHME EINES NICHTS-JETZ

    Das Problem der diskreten Welt ist ein philosophisches und erkenntnistheoretisches. Es geht darum, die Möglichkeit der Bewegung in einer als diskret mannigfaltig aufgefassten Welt als erkennbar und erfassbar zu behaupten. Es handelt sich darum, eine sich bewegende Welt einer objektiven Wirklichkeit zuzuschreiben und Änderungen und Transformationen als solche zu erkennen.

    In einer diskreten Welt, wie sie Kojève unterstellt, kann natürlich keine kontinuierliche Zeit mehr bestehen. Die Änderungen können nur sprunghaft erfolgen (S.73-74). Was heißt dann Änderung in einem Weltbild, in dem die kontinuierliche Zeit nicht mehr existiert?

    Es bedeutet, dass die Änderungen drei Konfigurationen annehmen, das Nicht-mehr, das Jetzt und das noch nicht Seiende. Die Jetzt-Dinge, die Noch-nicht-jetzt-Dinge und die Nicht-mehr-Dinge sind qualitativ unterschieden. Das Geworden ist im Werden enthalten. Die Jetzkonfiguration ist eine Qualität der objektiven Wirklichkeit, wie das Noch-nicht oder das Nicht-mehr. Was die Zeitlichkeit beschreibt, ist eine Momentaufnahme. Die kausale Relation zwischen der Jetztkonfiguration und dem Noch-nicht und dem Nicht-mehr ist aber laut Kojèves diskreter Welt nicht linear. Beide, das Noch-nicht und das Nicht-mehr, sind in der Jetzkonfiguration ebenso enthalten wie das Noch-nicht auch eine gleiche objektive Wirklichkeit bezeichnet, die die Qualität einer Potenzialität beschreibt. Der Sprung von einem Zustand zu einem anderen entspricht nicht einer kausalen Logik, eher sind es qualitative Änderungen. Und die Welt, die Welt des Diskreten, ist jener Ort, wo es solche Änderungen gibt. Hoffentlich betrachten wir das Problem der diskreten Welt als Hoffnungsansatz dafür, dass sprunghafte Änderungen den Zustand der Wirklichkeit bezeichnen.