The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name: Seven Days with Second-Order Cybernetics
Heinz von Foerster was the inventor of second-order cybernetics, which recognizes the investigator as part of the system he is investigating. The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name provides an accessible, nonmathematical, and comprehensive overview of von Foerster's cybernetic ideas and of the philosophy latent within them. It distills concepts scattered across the lifework of this scientific polymath and influential interdisciplinarian. At the same time, as a book-length interview, it does justice to von Foerster's élan as a speaker and improviser, his skill as a raconteur.

Developed from a week-long conversation between the editors and von Foerster near the end of his life, this work playfully engages von Foerster in developing the difference his notion of second-order cybernetics makes for topics ranging from emergence, life, order, and thermodynamics to observation, recursion, cognition, perception, memory, and communication.

The book gives an English-speaking audience a new ease of access to the rich thought and generous spirit of this remarkable and protean thinker.
1118901884
The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name: Seven Days with Second-Order Cybernetics
Heinz von Foerster was the inventor of second-order cybernetics, which recognizes the investigator as part of the system he is investigating. The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name provides an accessible, nonmathematical, and comprehensive overview of von Foerster's cybernetic ideas and of the philosophy latent within them. It distills concepts scattered across the lifework of this scientific polymath and influential interdisciplinarian. At the same time, as a book-length interview, it does justice to von Foerster's élan as a speaker and improviser, his skill as a raconteur.

Developed from a week-long conversation between the editors and von Foerster near the end of his life, this work playfully engages von Foerster in developing the difference his notion of second-order cybernetics makes for topics ranging from emergence, life, order, and thermodynamics to observation, recursion, cognition, perception, memory, and communication.

The book gives an English-speaking audience a new ease of access to the rich thought and generous spirit of this remarkable and protean thinker.
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The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name: Seven Days with Second-Order Cybernetics

The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name: Seven Days with Second-Order Cybernetics

The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name: Seven Days with Second-Order Cybernetics

The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name: Seven Days with Second-Order Cybernetics

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Overview

Heinz von Foerster was the inventor of second-order cybernetics, which recognizes the investigator as part of the system he is investigating. The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name provides an accessible, nonmathematical, and comprehensive overview of von Foerster's cybernetic ideas and of the philosophy latent within them. It distills concepts scattered across the lifework of this scientific polymath and influential interdisciplinarian. At the same time, as a book-length interview, it does justice to von Foerster's élan as a speaker and improviser, his skill as a raconteur.

Developed from a week-long conversation between the editors and von Foerster near the end of his life, this work playfully engages von Foerster in developing the difference his notion of second-order cybernetics makes for topics ranging from emergence, life, order, and thermodynamics to observation, recursion, cognition, perception, memory, and communication.

The book gives an English-speaking audience a new ease of access to the rich thought and generous spirit of this remarkable and protean thinker.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780823255610
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Publication date: 12/02/2013
Series: Meaning Systems
Pages: 236
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Heinz von Foerster is one of the most consequential thinkers in the history of cybernetics. Von Foerster wrote nearly two hundred professional papers, gaining renown in fields from computer science and artificial intelligence to epistemology and family therapy.

Albert Müller is Professor of History in the Institut fur Zeitgeschichte at the University of Vienna and the general secretary of the Heinz von Foerster Society.

Michael Kasenbacher is a social scientist and translator.

Karl H. Müller is Head of the Vienna Institute for Social Scientific Documentation and Methodology (WISDOM) and the president of the Heinz von Foerster Society.

Table of Contents

A Fore-word by the Series Editor
An Author's Fore-words
Fore-wards with Two Editors
Fore-taste of an Author with Two Editors
1. First Day: Building Blocks, Observers, Emergence, Trivial Machines
2. Second Day: Innovation, Life, Order, Thermodynamics
3. Third Day: Movement, Species, Recursion, Selectivity
4. Fourth Day: Cognition, Perception, Memory, Symbols
5. Fifth Day: Communicating, Talking, Thinking, Falling
6. Sixth Day: Experiences, Heuristics, Plans, Futures
7. Seventh Day: Rest, Rest, Rest, Rest
Epilogue in Heaven . . .
Translators' Notes
Notes
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