Emergence and Embodiment: New Essays in Second-Order Systems Theory

Bruce Clarke

Research output: Book/ReportBookpeer-review

Abstract

Emergence and Embodiment focuses on cybernetic developments that stem from the second-order turn in the 1970s, when the cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster catalyzed new thinking about the cognitive implications of self-referential systems. The crucial shift he inspired was from first-order cybernetics’ attention to homeostasis as a mode of autonomous self-regulation in mechanical and informatic systems, to second-order concepts of self-organization and autopoiesis in embodied and metabiotic systems. The collection opens with an interview with von Foerster and then traces the lines of neocybernetic thought that have followed from his work.
Original languageEnglish
PublisherDuke University Press
StatePublished - Nov 2009

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