Aspects of Cybernetics – website section – Jenkinson (2021)

Covers:

Fundamentals

This is the core of cybernetic theory and practice, the essentially transdiciplinary from which all the specialist fields grow and feed back.

This is an essential field of enquiry and learning.

Think of context and feedback and variety, of markers and cues and signs, of navigation and outcome…

Design

Almost all cybernetic activity that is not pure theory is also design work, incldujgn the design of scientific method, of theory, of its communication.

But there are also core fields recognised as belonging to design such as…

Architecture and interior design

Business design

Apps, products, services and materials design — R&D, innovation

Designing social futures and what is needed for them

Methods design, such as Agile and Lean

Social planning and social architecture

Ethical aspects of design.

For the specialist there is a long and nuanced list. Tags can be used to mark these.

Knowing

This includes

Philosophy and history of science, and scientific paradigms and cybernetics as revolutionary or stable social processes

Core tools and concepts of cybernetics and their implications, including Ternary Theory, Directiveness, Context, Feedback, Cues and Signals, and more

Scientific Method & Philosophy of Science

Cross Discipline/Trans-Discipline/Integration as practice

Second, recursive, reflexive, and observer-dependent orders of science and cybernetics; observation and interpretation, constructivism

Noetic Sciences — a very long list related to what and how we know, how we understand mind, and how we work with it… Consider just these…

Appearances

Artificial intelligence as a concept and paradigm

Autonomy and freedom, agency

Brain, nervous system, and brain sciences

Cognition and sensory perception

Cognition

Cognitive biases, frames, and paradigms

Communication — in nature, humans, machines

Concepts and ideas and what they are or do

Consciousness studies

Constructivism, idealism

Context theory

Cross discipline/trans discipline/integration as practice

Cybernetic influence on scientific paradigms

Determinism

Directiveness and autonomy

Double bind and other pathologies

Embodied intelligence

Emotion (affect, feelings) and its effects and intelligence

Epistemology and Ontology

Neuroscience and Psychological Theories…

And more

Matter

Physics and chemistry especially work with material substances and the forces and organization of these, but they play a role in many fields. But from the design of research to the construction of things out of these materials and substances for a purpose, cybernetics can and does play a useful role. It dances with

Physical and Chemical Organization

Catalysis and Autocatalysis

Organic products, eg protein.

Physico-Chemical Self Organization

Anatomy and the physiome

Global Warming

Gaia

and so on...

Life

All Life Sciences

Formative principles of life and ecology, eg Context and Feedback, Persistence and Change, Individuation and Speciation.

Systems Biology & Morphology, inc genome and physionome studies

Autopoiesis

Ethology

Perceptual Control Theory (PCT)

Veterinary Science

Ecology and Ecosystems

Evolution

and so on…

Machine

Machine Cybernetics and a few more…

Robotics

AI software

Autonomous vehicles, autopilots…

Assistive tech, eg for surgery

Designing machine systems, e.g. AI, IoT, software, and other smart technologies

Ethical and functional consequences

Homeostatic devices and signal systems

Smart software systems (feedback and controls)

Software systems and coding practices

The internet

Semantic web and advanced coding

People

Sociology and Anthropology

Sociology and social structuration, and its concepts, eg recursive situations, context, reflexive monitoring of the flux of encounters, speech acts, Erving Goffman face-to-face social interaction as a PCT theorist…

Social Ecology/social autopoiesis

Economics, macro and micro, Nudge, behavioural economics

Integrated Sociology: General theory, Political Theory; Economic Theory, Cultural Theory

Social anthropology

History

Human Synthesis & Meta Levels, eg

Domain Analysis & Transdisciplinary Methods

Therapeutics (inc Psychotherapy, PCT Theory of Levels, Medical Science)

Social Planning

Aid and development

Crisis Solutions ( Global Warming, Degradation, Political Breakdown, Etc)

Change Design

Governance and the law

Education & training

Design thinking and practices

Architecture

Social planning and social architecture

Product design

Systems

How important has systemic thinking become!

Cybernetics is routinely equated with the systems sciences, but despite its affinities with all of them, it has a particular orientation that marks a distinction. Yet many problems are resolved when a systems discipline is united with a cybernetic.

Systems science disciplines

See the introduction to consider this further and perhaps write an article.