Description
Book SynopsisHeinz 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 Heinz von Foerster's cybernetic ideas and of the philosophy latent within them.
Trade Review"Heinz Von Foerster spent most of his career seeking to understand cognition based on neurophysiology, mathematics, and philosophy. He came to a new understanding of knowledge which led to a new epistemology. What this book reveals is that after retiring from the University of Illinois, von Foerster reinterpreted his earlier professional training in physics and the sciences generally from the new perspective. The conversational structure and style of the book brilliantly gives von Foerster the opportunity to retell the story of creation by referring to all of the various branches of natural science, but with the additional insight of the new epistemology. This is a remarkable achievement which will delight any serious student of the natural sciences or of scientific writing. The scholarship that went into the conversation that the book records, both the questions and the answers, is impressive. The ideas here will be of particular interest to ambitious younger scientists looking for new lines of research." -- -Stuart Umpleby George Washington University "I know of no other such a broad and coherent statement of Foerster's essential thinking." -- -Ranulph Glanville Professor Emeritus of Architecture and Cybernetics, The Bartlett, University College London, UK
Table of ContentsA 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
