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. Until 2014 he was head of WISDOM, Austria’s infra-structural centre for the social sciences and President of the Heinz von Foerster Society. Now he is Director of The Steinbeis Transfer Center New Cybernetics, Vienna, Austria and Professor at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
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).
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. Until 2014 he was head of WISDOM, Austria’s infra-structural centre for the social sciences and President of the Heinz von Foerster Society. Now he is Director of The Steinbeis Transfer Center New Cybernetics, Vienna, Austria and Professor at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
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).
Second-order cybernetics was developed, following Ranulph Glanville, in the period between 1968 and 1975 by authors like Heinz von Foerster, Gordon Pask, Louis H. Kauffman or Ranulph Glanville himself. Even forty years after the emergence of second-order cybernetics its scope and dimensions remain rather unclear. On the contrary, the argument has been made recently that the road from first-order to second-order cybernetics was unsuccessful at best and a blind alley from the start (Kline, 2015)
However, looking at contemporary authors like Louis H. Kauffman, Stuart A. Umpleby, Bernard Scott and others a surprisingly coherent and strong research agenda can be built for second-order cybernetics for today’s science landscapes. The lecture provides a fresh and rather new summary on the mostly unfulfilled research program of second-order cybernetics.
Literature:
Kline R.R. (2015) The Cybernetics Moment or Why We Call our Age the Information Age. Baltimore:The Johns Hopkins University Press
Riegler, A., Müller, K.H. (2016)(eds.), Varieties of Second-Order Cybernetics. Special Issue of Constructivist Foundations, 11(3)
