Sociocybernetics

The sociocybernetics summarizes the application of cybernetic together insights on social phenomena, d. that is, it tries to model social phenomena as complex interactions of several dynamic elements. An important problem in sociocybernetics is second-order cybernetics , since sociocybernetics is a social self-description.

What is sociocybernetics?

Sociocybernetics can - in a nutshell - be described as a systems science in sociology and other social sciences . In addition to fundamental theoretical, epistemological and other philosophical questions, the field of socio-cybernetics extends to different topics of applied research , empiricism , methodology and ethics . What connects them is less in a certain uniform research field, but in the common orientation towards specific theoretical and methodological basic assumptions as well as the focus on complexity problems in society. Sociocybernetics is less interested in the isolated analysis of specific causal relationships , but more in the mutual influence of dynamic self-regulating systems . It follows the claim formulated by W. Ross Ashby as early as 1956 , not to focus on the special properties of the research object, but rather on its forms of operation: "It does not ask 'What is a thing', but rather 'What does it do?'" ). System processes, especially the relationship between systems and their environment, are understood as "informational processes". Information is the factor that is responsible for the formation of structures and thus for the internal order of systems. But information contains contingencies and requires selection; here there are no necessities in terms of strict causality. Systems with self-organizing (dissipative) structures therefore react unpredictably to attempts at control from their environment, which has made them the privileged subject of socio-cybernetic research.

Basic cybernetic principles

Using a cybernetic approach in sociological research means engaging in some fundamental principles that were emphasized differently by the classics of systems theory and cybernetics. B. be discussed in the Society for Economic and Social Cybernetics .

While the mathematician Norbert Wiener emphasizes the aspects of control and communication in scientific and human-scientific contexts, the neurophilosist Warren McCulloch defines cybernetics as an epistemology that deals with the generation of knowledge through communication. Stafford Beer sees cybernetics as the science of the organization of complex social and natural systems. For Ludwig von Bertalanffy , cybernetic systems are a special case of systems that differ from other systems through the principle of self-regulation. According to Bertalanffy, cybernetics as a scientific discipline is characterized by the fact that it focuses on research into control mechanisms and is based on information and feedback as central concepts. Walter Buckley formulates similarly when he wants to understand cybernetics less as a theory and more as a theoretical framework and a set of methodological tools that can be applied in various fields of research. The philosopher Georg Klaus sees cybernetics as a fruitful epistemological provocation. For Niklas Luhmann , the fascination of cybernetics lies in the fact that the problem of the constancy and invariance of systems in an extremely complex, changeable world is taken up and explained by processes of information and communication. For Heinz von Foerster , self-referentiality is the fundamental principle of cybernetic thinking. He speaks of circularity and means all concepts that can be applied to oneself, processes in which a state ultimately reproduces itself.

The relationship between the humanities and the natural sciences

Sociocybernetics is a research area in which sociology meets with some neighboring disciplines from the natural and technical sciences, around the view, which has been common since CP Snow , that the social and human sciences on the one hand and the natural and technical sciences on the other hand stand side by side as different scientific cultures have nothing to say to overcome in everyday science. Not only for sociologists in research areas related to the natural or technical sciences, such as science or technology research, media and communication sociology, sociology and ecology or modeling and simulation, but also for colleagues who deal with questions of sociological theory the separation into two "scientific cultures" is always a very questionable problem that often hinders practical research work. But the same is true for scientists, for example in the fields of medical or environmental research, or engineering scientists, such as from computer science , who saw very early that without taking note of the humanities and social science research results in enormous difficulties in their R & D encounter -Work .

In view of the increased public reflection on how precautionary strategies for cross-system risks can be worked out, how traditional forms of production and consumption patterns can change in an ecologically more appropriate direction, which social control instruments should be used, for example in order to be able to face the most serious problems of globalization , and how If global social standards were to be implemented or how realistic strategies for sustainable development could be developed, socio-cybernetics is recommended as an approach to address the complexity and dynamic problems associated with such questions.

Not only through its epistemological and paradigmatic foundations, but also through the intensive use of information technology-based computer systems, cybernetics is increasingly able to practice a mutual relationship between the two scientific cultures. This makes it increasingly possible to work on traditional sociological problems with mathematical methods. With increasing success, for example, the new methods of computer modeling are being applied to more and more areas of the social sciences and humanities - from the simulation of language acquisition and language production processes to the simulation of market processes of economic action to the formal modeling of the evolution of societies. In no way can these procedures replace the tried and tested research methods of sociology, but with their help it could be possible to grasp the problem of the overcomplexity of social phenomena in a more scientifically adequate manner. Conversely, computer modeling is always dependent on the methodological and content-related know-how of established sociological research, without the best models having to remain empty.

Changes that have become possible through the use of common description languages and modeling methods can also be observed in the opposite direction: In the field of software engineering, for example, the influence of neocybernetic thinking has helped to overcome naive ideas about the observation and modeling of social facts to be replaced by new methods (e.g. evolutionary and cyclical software development processes based on a constructivist epistemology).

Web links

literature

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Gregory Bateson : Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chandler, New York 1972.
Stafford Beer : Cybernetics and Management. English Universities Press, London 1959.
Stafford Beer: Brain of the firm: the managerial cybernetics of organization. J. Wiley, Chichester / New York 1981.
Ludwig von Bertalanffy: General System Theory. Foundations, Development, Applications. Braziller, New York 1968.
Walter Buckley: Sociology and Modern System Theory. Prentice Hall Inc., New Jersey (UK) 1967.
Walter Buckley: Society - A Complex Adaptive System. Essays in Social Theory. Gordon and Breach, Amsterdam 1998.
Heinz von Foerster: Knowledge and Conscience. Attempt a bridge. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1993.
Georg Klaus: Cybernetics and Society. German Science Publishing House, Berlin 1965.
Niklas Luhmann: Concept of Purpose and System Rationality. About the function of purposes in social systems. Mohr (Siebeck), Tübingen 1968.
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