Second-order cybernetics is the cybernetics of observing systems: the study of how observers, including scientists, make the distinctions through which a world appears to them. It grew in the late 1960s and 1970s through a handful of remarkable people with very different backgrounds. Let us meet them one by one.
Heinz von Foerster (1911–2002)
Background. Born in Vienna into a family connected to Ludwig Wittgenstein, trained as a physicist, and an amateur magician all his life. Magic taught him how perception can be steered.
Where his thinking came from. Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language, the Vienna Circle (which he reacted against), McCulloch’s neurophysiology, and the experience of editing the Macy Conference proceedings.
What he aimed at. A science that includes the scientist. At his Biological Computer Laboratory (1958–c.1976) he built an interdisciplinary home for that work. His essays “On Constructing a Reality” (1973) and the collection Cybernetics of Cybernetics (1974) set the agenda. His ethical imperative, “Act always so as to increase the number of choices,” makes responsibility central.
Humberto Maturana (1928–2021)
Background. Chilean biologist trained in medicine and in neuroscience at Harvard and MIT. He co-wrote the classic 1959 paper “What the Frog’s Eye Tells the Frog’s Brain” with Lettvin, McCulloch, and Pitts.
Where his thinking came from. Studying colour vision, he found that the nervous system produces its own patterns of activity, triggered by the outside world but shaped by its own structure. That led him to ask what a living system is.
What he aimed at. A biology of cognition. With Varela he introduced autopoiesis (self-production) in 1972. His slogan “Anything said is said by an observer” became a cornerstone. Later he focused on language, emotion, and love as the basis of social life.
Francisco Varela (1946–2001)
Background. Maturana’s student in Santiago, then a PhD in biology at Harvard. He left Chile after the 1973 coup and worked in the US, Costa Rica, and finally Paris.
Where his thinking came from. Maturana’s biology, mathematics of self-reference (George Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form), phenomenology (Husserl, Merleau-Ponty), and Tibetan Buddhist practice.
What he aimed at. A science of mind that takes lived experience seriously. The Embodied Mind (1991, with Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch) launched the enactive approach in cognitive science. He co-founded the Mind and Life Institute’s dialogues with the Dalai Lama.
Gordon Pask (1928–1996)
Background. British polymath, trained in medicine and psychology, theatrical in dress and manner. He built adaptive machines like Musicolour (1953), which reacted to musicians and grew “bored” of repetition, and the Colloquy of Mobiles (1968).
What he aimed at. Conversation Theory: a formal account of how understanding forms between participants, whether people or machines. It shaped educational technology, architecture (he worked with Cedric Price on the Fun Palace), and interaction design.
Ernst von Glasersfeld (1917–2010)
Background. Born in Munich, raised across Europe, worked as a farmer in Ireland during the war, later a linguist on machine translation.
Where his thinking came from. Jean Piaget’s genetic epistemology and the eighteenth-century philosopher Giambattista Vico (“the true is the made”).
What he aimed at. Radical constructivism: knowledge is judged by whether it fits experience. Whether it matches a reality beyond experience is something we can never check. This had a large impact on mathematics and science education.
Gregory Bateson (1904–1980)
A founder in the first generation and a bridge to the second. Bateson’s interest in learning, levels of logical type, and “the pattern which connects” made him a guide for later thinkers. His idea that information is “a difference that makes a difference” puts the observer’s capacity to notice differences at the centre.
Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998)
A German sociologist who adapted autopoiesis and Spencer-Brown’s calculus of distinctions to society. In Social Systems (1984) he argued that societies are made of communications, which reproduce themselves. Maturana disagreed with this use of his concept, but Luhmann’s version has been the most influential in European social science.
Ranulph Glanville (1946–2014)
An architect and design theorist, a student of Pask, and later president of the American Society for Cybernetics. Glanville argued that design is a form of second-order cybernetics in action: a conversation between designer, sketch, and situation. He wrote extensively on the black box and the ethics of not-knowing.
What they shared
They came from physics, biology, psychology, linguistics, sociology, and design. Yet they agreed on something important: that knowing is an activity, that observers are participants, and that this places responsibility on anyone who claims to describe the world.
Further reading
- Heinz von Foerster, Understanding Understanding (2003)
- Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind (1991)
- Phillip Guddemi, Søren Brier, Louis Kauffman (eds.), Ranulph Glanville and How to Live the Cybernetics of Unknowing (2016)