Sociocybernetics

Dear Gaston, although you pointed out that the terms: ‘system theory’ and ‘cybernetics “come from different tradition and are not used uniformly in different languages and national traditions”, I believe it is important to note that they cannot be considered as ‘perfect’ (if I may say so) synonyms because while general system theory focuses on structure to understand organization, cybernetics follows a complementary methodology for examining dynamical behaviour, autonomously in relation to the internal system structure. Complementarity is vindicated because structure can be a constraint on the system’s dynamics, while the dynamics regulates the formation of structure. According to Geyer, F., 2002 [“The march of self-reference”, Kybernetes, Vol. 31 Nos 7/8, pp. 1021-42] ”….. rather than employing a negative feedback model which can only return the system to the status quo, socio-cybernetics emphasizes adaptation, change, and movement. While classical systems theory focused on system internal components, socio-cybernetics concentrated on communication with the environment and other actors as well. It centered on self-steering rather than on deterministic control and as a second-order paradigm stressed the subjective time- and observer-dependent nature of knowledge. Linkages subsist not only among components of the observed system, but also between the system and the observer, being a part of the system”. A major quest has characterized the third stage of development of cybernetics: given that individuals construct different realities, how do people reach agreement on shared purposes? Trying to answer the question, the classical ‘social cybernetics’ was succeeded by the modern socio-cybernetics about the beginning of the nineties. It acknowledged that social systems self-observe, self-organize and steer themselves, change their structure in order to better handle challenges coming from the environment. Then, socio-cyberneticians claimed to have done their best to account for the features of social phenomena, in all their intricacies, flexibility and randomness. I’d make a further remark on your mentioning the ‘interdisciplinary spirit of system science”. Generally speaking, I feel uncomfortable whenever the term: ‘interdisciplinary’ is mentioned. The design of a 'concept' that intends to use the same verbal expression in an inter-disciplinary perspective is not the simple result of a process of ‘summing up' the knowledge attained by each individual disciplines or sciences, but the outcome of a complex and somewhat hard task of conceptual ‘integration’ in which all the contributing sciences are involved, considering such a new concept as belonging to all and not exclusively to every one of them. An inter-disciplinary methodology, so conceived, is a goal still far away, difficult and for me perhaps Utopian to get to when faced by the provoking demand whether it is actually achievable and what alternatives are available when we express our distress for the limits of our own discipline’s conceptual and methodological instruments. Hence, I believe we can say that we are only involved in the preliminary stage of a plain 'multi'-disciplinary nature assumed as an attempt to reach some sort of 'agreement' through the 'overlapping' of subjects and /or level of analysis that is common to pairs of disciplines and that does not transcend the 'set' of criteria used by each of them.