From 1997 to 2001, Karl H. Müller was head of the Departments of Political Science and Sociology at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS) in Vienna. Currently, he is head of WISDOM, Austria’s infra-structural centre for the social sciences and President of the Heinz von Foerster Society.
His main research interests range from issues in complex modeling within the social sciences and from interdisciplinary analyses of innovation processes in science, technology and economy to the history and the current potential of inter- and transdisciplinary research, to the frontiers of second order cybernetics and radical constructivism or to the newly emerging risk-potentials for contemporary societies in general.
His recent publications reflect these various interests, namely Market Expansion and Knowledge Integration. Double Movements within Modernity (Frankfurt:Campus-Verlag 1999), Socio-Economic Models and Societal Complexity. Intermediation & Design (Marburg:Metropolis-Verlag 1998), Advancing Socio-Economics (together with J. Rogers Hollingsworth and Ellen Jane Hollingsworth) (Lanham: Rowman&Littlefield 2002), An Unfinished Revolution? Heinz von Foerster and the Biological Computer Laboratory 1958 – 1976 (Wien:edition echoraum 2007) (together with Albert Müller), Gordon Pask, Philosopher Mechanic. An Introduction to the Cybernetician’s Cyberrnetician (Wien:edition echoraum 2007)(together with Ranulph Glanville), The New Science of Cybernetics. The Evolution of Living Research Designs. Vol. I. Methodology (Wien:edition echoraum 2008), Modern RISC-Societies. Towards a New Paradigm for Societal Evolution (Wien:edition echoraum)(together with Ivan Svetlik et al.) and The New Science of Cybernetics. The Evolution of Living Research Designs. Vol. II. Theory (Wien:edition echoraum 2011).
The presentation will be focused on the new science of cybernetics (NSC) which has been developed in two volumes over the last years. The new science of cybernetics can be viewed as a transformation of Heinz von Foerster’s vision of second-order cybernetics and can be described as a science of self-reflexivity or as a science of living systems by living systems for living systems.
The talk will start with the main differences between two stages in the evolution of science which have been labeled as Science I and Science II. Science I corresponds to the organization of science from its initial modern phase in the 16th century to the 1940s and 1950s approximately. Science I is the long-term period of majestic clockworks, culminating at an early stage in the “Principia Mathematica” of Sir Isaac Newton in 1687. In contrast, Science II operates with blind watchmakers (Richard Dawkins) or, to use another metaphor from Karl R. Popper, works in a configuration of clouds.
The major part of the presentation will be centered on three areas.
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First, the lecture wants to provide a short general historical account on the co-evolution of three different layers of scientific research at the first-order, the zero-order and the second-order level.
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Second, the presentation will offer an overview on the three different modes of the new science and cybernetics (NSC) and their current cognitive potentials.
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Finally, the lecture will point out the major differences between first-order cybernetics as a transdisciplinary first-order research field and second-order cybernetics as a transdisciplinary domain at the second-order level.
Relevant Literature:
Müller, K.H. (2008),
The New Science of Cybernetics. The Evolution of Living Research Designs, vol. I:
Methodology. Wien:edition echoraum
Müller, K.H. (2011),
The New Science of Cybernetics. The Evolution of Living Research Designs, vol. II:
Theory. Wien:edition echoraum
