Abstract
This volume unites authors who are participating in a fundamental change of their discipline. Some of them even speak of a scientific revolution. Observing a present-day scientific revolution encompassing many fields of the natural and social sciences as well as of the humanities that touches epistemology and the self-understanding of social groups in terms of the »Weltanschauung«, is a rare opportunity indeed. Thus, the main objective of this volume consists in opening the view on this change from different perspectives.
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Notes and References
I. Kant, The Critique of Judgement,Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980, Part II, § 4 (65).
On the contemporaneity and structural similarity of the Smith’s and Watt’s solutions, see O. Mayr, »Adam Smith and the Concept of the Feedback System, Economic Thought and Technology in 18th Century Britain«, in Technology and Culture 12 (1971), 1–22.
See G. Holton, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1973.
H. v. Foerster, »On Self-Organizing Systems and their Environments«, in M.C. Yovits, S. Cameron (eds.), Self-Organizing Systems, Oxford, London, New York: Pergamon Press, 1960, p. 31–50.
Sometime members or guests at the BCL included W.R. Ashby, M.R. Gardner, G. Günther, A. Inselberg, H.R. Maturana, W.S. McCulloch, G. Pask, S. Umpleby, and F.J. Varela. See The Collected Works of the Biological Computer Laboratory, Urbana: University of Illinois, 1976.
I. Prigogine, Introduction to Thermodynamics, 3rd ed., New York: Interscience, 1967, p. X II.
A stationary state is like a static equilibrium not explicitly time dependent but is characterized by processes that are independent of time. A stationary state is therefore dynamic.
E.N. Lorenz, »On the Prevalence of Aperiodicity in Simple Systems«, in M. Grmela, J.E. Marsden (eds.), Global Analysis, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York: Springer, 1979, p. 53–75.
And the list is incomplete. It could be expanded through ecosystem research, the theory of nonlinear oscillations, nonlinear codes in computer simulation (hydrodynamics and plasma physics), and psychiatric research (double bind).
These interviews are part of a program on the history of self-organization that is being carried out by the USP Wissenschaftsforschung at the University of Bielefeld with the aid of a grant from the Volkswagen Foundation.
G. Bateson, Mind and Nature: A Necessarity Unity, New York: Dutton, 1979, p. 217–218.
See M.Eigen, R. Winkler, Das Spiel: Naturgesetze steuern den Zufall,Munich: Piper,1975.
See F. Capra, The Tao of Physics, New York: Random House, 1975.
I. Prigogine, From Being to Becoming: Time and Complexity in the Physical Sciences, New York: Freeman, 1980, p. XVI. I. Prigogine, I. Stengers, Order out of Chaos. Man’s Dialogue with Nature, London: Heinemann, 1984. E. Jantsch, Die Selbstorganisation des Universums, Munich: Hanser, 1979.
See J. and A. Lilly, The Dyadic Cyclone, Malibu: Human Software Ing., 1976. J. Brockman (ed.), About Bateson, London: Wildwood House, 1978.
One of the sources for this information is the Lindisfarne book Earth’s Answer,New York: Harper & Row, 1977. We wish to thank Rainer Paslack for this information.
The many facets of the 1970s are linked together in the person of E. Jantsch: a physicist, an OECD advisor with critical attitudes towards linear planning, and a person living in California exposed to the ideas of the New Age movement. His book covers cosmology, thermodynamic chemistry, biology, evolution, society, and ethics. Although many of its conclusions were rather hasty, the book as a whole is a keystone of this phase of development. See Jantsch, op.cit.,1975, note 14.
H. Haken, Erfolgsgeheimnisse der Natur. Synergetik: die Lehre vom Zusammenwirken, Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1981.
Eigen, Winkler, op.cit.,1975, note 12.
Prigogine, op.cit., 1979, note 14.
See the articles from Prigogine, Nicolis, van den Broeck, et al., in Nouvelles de la Science et des Technologies, Vol. 2, No. 1–2, Brussels, March 1984.
H.R. Maturana, Biologie der Kognition, in H.R. Maturana, Erkennen: Die Organisation und Verkörperung von Wirklichkeit, Braunschweig, Wiesbaden: Vieweg, 1982, p. 22.
In commenting on one of the contributions to this book, the distinguished editor of the Yearbook series, R. Whitley remarked: »I fmd it rather strange that the author asserts that the legal system is a totally closed one reproducing itself with apparent ease and yet in his discussion towards the end of the paper he talks about development and change and the relationship between the law and other institutions. In general I can see no justification for asserting that the law, or any other major social institution, is a totally closed system. It is also not clear to me how you can talk about law as a communication system without including some discussion of the material necessities for reproducing that system. It seems to me that this sort of discourse runs the risk of retreating to conceptual idealism. Anyway, no doubt the bulk of the papers in the book take similar point of view...«
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Krohn, W., Küppers, G., Nowotny, H. (1990). Selforganization — the Convergence of Ideas An Introduction. In: Krohn, W., Küppers, G., Nowotny, H. (eds) Selforganization. Sociology of the Sciences, vol 14. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2975-8_1
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