Scott Bernard. Cybernetics for the Social Sciences

Leiden: Brill, 2021. — 135 p. — (Brill Research Perspectives in Sociocybernetics and Complexity).Bernard Scotts book explains the relevance of cybernetics for the social sciences. He provides a non\-technical account of the history of cybernetics and its core concepts, with examples of applications of cybernetics in psychology, sociology, and anthropology.Cybernetics for the Social Sciences
Abstract
Keywords
Prolegomena
About This Publication and a First Look at Cybernetics
The Aim
What Is Cybernetics?
How the Publication Is Structured
A Life in Cybernetics
Encountering Cybernetics
Becoming a Cybernetician
Growing Up
Concluding Comments
The Story of Cybernetics
Introduction – Beginnings
Later Years – Decline and Renewal
Cybernetic Explanation
Gordon Pask’s Conversation Theory
Some Key Concepts of Cybernetics
On MessagesCommunication as Coding
Communication as Conversation
Human–Machine Interaction
Some Current Developments
Concluding Comments
Cybernetics and the Integration of the DisciplinesCybernetic Epistemology
The First Order Study of Natural Systems
Approaches to the Study of Social Systems
Cybernetics and the Arts, Humanities, and Vocational Disciplines
Cybernetics and Philosophy
In Defence of Pure Cybernetics
The Problem
Explanatory Schemas in Cybernetics
Obscuring Cybernetics
Enriching Cybernetics
Cybernetics and the Communication Problem
Sociocybernetic Understandings of ConsciousnessUse of the Term ‘Consciousness’
Reflexive Cosmogony and Process Metaphysics
Cybernetic Models of Learning in Conscious Systems
Generalising the Typist Model
Creating and Maintaining Healthy Communities
Reflections on the Sociocybernetics of Social NetworksNetwork Science
What Is ‘Social’ about a Social Network?
The Forms That Social Networks May Take
What Is the Distinction between a ‘Social Network’ and a ‘Social System’?
A Brief Critique of ‘Connectivism’ and ‘Actor-Network Theory’
Concluding Comments: The ‘Global Conversation’
Some Sociocybernetic Understanding of Possible World FuturesBeing Holistic about Global Problems
First Order Problems
Second Order Problems
Looking for Solutions
Concluding Comments
Sociocybernetic Understandings of CultureConceptions and Definitions of ‘Culture’
Culture and Personality
Cultural Transmissions and Transformations
Opening up Inter-Cultural Conversations
Summing up and What Comes NextWhat Next?
Exhortations
Values, Attitudes, Ethics
Acknowledgements