Cybernetics

I anticipate that biology will go through a transforming revelation/revolution that is like the revolution that happened in physics with the development of quantum mechanics nearly 100 years ago. In biology this will involve the realisation that to make sense of the complexity of gene activity in development, the prevailing model of local mechanical causality will have to be abandoned. In its place we will have a model of interactive relationships within gene transcription networks that is like the pattern of interactions between words in a language, where ambiguity is essential to the creation of emergent meaning that is sensitive to cultural history and to context. The organism itself is the emergent meaning of the developmental process as embodied form, sensitive to both historical constraint within the genome and to environmental context, as we see in the adaptive creativity of evolution. What contemporary studies have revealed is that genes are not independent units of information

SYMVIABILITY  is defined as long-term viability of human and accompanying Life through cultivation of SYMBIOSES between our cultures and Nature, and among our cultures which all too frequently compete crimepetitively for everybody's Brainspace and Lebensraum.

I am a Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA. I am also a designer and play numerous roles.

The double bind refers to a communication paradox described first in families with a schizophrenic member. Full double bind requires several conditions to be met: The victim of double bind receives contradictory injunctions or emotional messages on different levels of communication; No metacommunication is possible; The victim cannot leave the communication field; Failing to fulfill the contradictory injunctions is punished, e.g. by withdrawal of love. Creatura and Pleroma: the basic idea captured in this distinction is that meaning and organization are projected onto the world. Pleroma refers to the non-living world that is undifferentiated by subjectivity; Creatura for the living world, subject to perceptual difference, distinction, and information.

[to get an...] economic life closer to our biological environment: smaller companies, richer ecology, no leverage.

Principia Cybernetica tries to tackle age-old philosophical questions with the help of the most recent cybernetic theories and technologies.

Herbert Brun's website