Nswsletter June 1996 Vol
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
NSwSLETTeR June 1996 vol. 15, no. 2 1ruo. +r; 2600 copies Editor-in-Chief: Gerhard Chroust c/o Systemtechnik und Automation, Johannes Kepler University Linz, 4040 LinzlAustria, e-mail: CHROUSToSEA.UNI-LlNZ.AC.AT, Tel:+43-732-2468-865, Fax:+43-732-2468-878 www-hom e pa ge : http ://www. sea. u n i -l i nz. ac. aVif s r/ as a liaison to the Committee. The definition of Dear fo:alers! the Committees'tasks comprised the agenda for In tftis AQusbtter we report ofl tfu Eoarf fl[eeting of tfu the Saturday Strategy meeting (April 13). ITSR, an[ tfu L996 ftucfi[ Conztersation. Eacfi of tfitse eaents fias sfioum fiou a[iue yfu IySKis and fiis ncw ideas an[ initiatirtes. We ako fia[ a crtance to present tfu IFSKto tfu participants of tfu Lfr[CS*Congrus in Aienna, giaing w more pu1fbity. Dtu to some probbms concerning *offrry I cou[[ not foep tfu,tiWW-page of tfu lfS\up-to-[ate, 6ut tftis zui[[ soon 6e atnende[. to aooid furtfur pro1fems t zuiff Jrom flozl otl put tfiz lfSK-Akus[ettef on. our flP-seraer ufiicrt a[bws it to 6e doumba[ed. It is a'lilOKD 6.0- document. \eeptttg tfu IfSkfi&ustetar as a"ltL,l4ttril-page cawed too nuch ffirt. I sti[[ fiope tfiat tfris sentke is usefuf to you and remain yours sitrcere[u As we enter into a new phase of our joint work, Qerfiarl Cfiroust we should remind ourselves that we can only Sy s temtecfinifrun[ Automation build on the pioneering work accomplished by Jofiannes Kepfer t]niztersitrl Liru, 4040 Liru, Awtria those who established and guided us through the earlier years of IFSR. At the meeting we paid special tribute to Robert Trappl, George Klir, Tne ApRIU THE MeeIrucS oF Gerrit Brokstra, and Gerhard de Zeeuw, Past IFSR Presidents of IFSR. We welcomed Prof. Dr. Robert Trappl as Chair of the newly established Bela H. Banathy IFSR Advisory Board. Your Executive Committee is most appreciative At the Board meeting we reported on the new and is encouraged by the fine participation at the status of Systems Research, the Newsletter, April Board meeting and, most significantly, the membership development, the IFSR Book willingness ol our member organizations to work Series, the Fuschl Conversations, the on the goals of IFSR. For some member this sponsorship of the Ashby lectures and the meeting was their first. We welcomed the EMCSR meeting, and a sponsored research Presidents of the Korean, Polish and Slovenian project. We now add to these a set of tasks in Systems Societies and the representative of the which the Standing Committees are engaged. Italian Society. The Slovenian Systems Society Our overall aim - shared with all member and the lnstituto Andino de Sistemas of Peru societies - is to empower IFSR to become a were admitted as new members. dynamic living and creative Federation, which Representatives of several potential new will attain its purposes and make contributions to member organizations were also present. this member organization and the global The Board has resolved to engage in joint action systems community. in the carrying out of the purposes of IFSR by The Board unanimously voted for an additional establishing a Standing Committee for each of two years' term for members of the Executive the IFSR purposes. Several member organi- Committee. Members of the Committee zations have already appointed representatives expressed their appreciation of the Board's to the Committees. The Committees will be self- confidence and pledged their continuing services organized and will proceed with their work. A to the Federation. member of the Executive Committee will serve OLD MEMORIES A PosrscRrPT ro Keruruern BouLDTNG Ernst von Glaserfeld Scientific Reasoning Research lnstitute The University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA 01003, USA As participant in the Symposium on the General Margareth Mead Systems Paradigm at the Annual Meeting of the lf we think of the moon as the wife of the sun American Association for the Advancement of A proper astronomy never gets done Science, Denver (Colorado), February 1977, But think of your wife as kind of moon, Kenneth Boulding seemed to be taking copious You can bet Dr.Freud that you'll be divorced soon. notes while the speakers of the symposium A fact that creates a wide difference of views presented their pieces. Then, during the ls that women feed babies and men seldom do. subsequent discussion, he got up and with his Miller inimitable stammer read his comments from two lf-science is seen as a big living system handwritten pages. They were in the form of a It comes from the cells, and unless we have satirical poem. After the session, I fortunately missed'em secured a copy of the manuscript. To me this is We find 19 pieces that come right up through another demonstration of Boulding's remarkable And finally end up in me and in you. quickness of wit and intellectual horizon. The nine information types tie us together And help us explain both the why and the whether And so science fruits into succulent kernels Ernst Glasersfeld That end up as papers in technicaljournals From Plato Boulding philosophers sweat to And from these a sweet emanation arises About how much reality images net. That finally falls out as big Nobel prizes. So we roundabout roundabout roundabout go me (Kenneth Boulding) On how do we know that we know that we know. And in between long philosophicalpauses A scientist caught out in telling of lies We think about causes of causes of causes Will never get back in the club till he dies guilty But you stand in a great intellectual bog And a scientist of mishandling data lf you cannot distinguish a leaf from a frog. Will be found out in time by some dull replicator. And when I look into a mirror at me And so by the shaving of error, in sooth, left percentage I cannot experience the thing that I see What's has a large of truth. So nothing of this makes a great deal of sense Without the new logic of self reference. Joseph Goguen i:r\F Itra l-o iio-:., *i ,f, r,l.: i,.r,nuvr :.rF Ethnomethodology hopef ully f its ;lbl.-= i.,-- ,...r.j. ' The problem of subjective objective splits. rn^ '^lr.l ,*i-*t.iu tr+ , .{ rrrol ,l r C -r rf,# J lf we listen for ever to talk that is taped We finally catch things that might have escaped. !,r L+ 611..i..1..i nr,l*/..[n"g1- *,.a.i^L.rt 3a But if I become what I partially see b,r. (.6*r ,lo ,^t- I worry about what has happened to me. drq^, tl.rf r* 1(,"*,, [1f*,;/*,"+ Francisco Varela /'.v[,.^,oti*,r* i,.rrl The world that is seen in the eye of a frog |r^,tor.j"...i,.i [uuru ls different f.rom that seen by man or by dog LJ+ flr'([ T -!uri a^,r,eJ ,jl fqrrldj o d*dicS But any old image will lead to survival I just I lf each will behave as its rival fioif1r*'Xt',.,^ a ,.,,i,1 .rJ.jj,c3-t1A I b,3 And so we can prove with experiments neat J,f,,rq.-ll r That kittens can see with the soles of their feet. fi,trr,....*if L ,- ,'-#h". -Fl So no matter what glasses we wear, we will train *a,[ *rLr* irgr( ,01!t., Ourselfs to be King of a Knowledge Domain f, r+ry-rry a-1- q-€- And knowledge will mostly turn out to be crap Unless we can learn how to walk on our map. Boulding's original manuscript (on Glasefeld) GORDON PASK fi928 TO 1996 Ranulph Glanville Portsmouth School of Architecture Portsmouth, U.K much have equaled Noel Coward). Drama Gordon Pask, who was born on June 28, 1928, to was a concept central to both Pask's life and his died at the London Clinic on March 29th, after a work. ln this vein, he was the first to assed that long and painful illness. With his death, computing is-like drama-a medium, not a tool. Cybernetics has lost not only one of its earliest and most profound and original masters, but one At a young age, Pask was already accepted as of the characters who continued to give it color in both mascot and master of the emerging a gray world. He is survived by his wife, discipline Cybernetics. He impressed Wiener, Elizabeth who married him in 1956, two McCulloch, Flosenblueth, Bateson and Mead daughters, Amanda (and her husband Jonathan) and became deeply committed to the insights of and Hermione, and a grandson, Nicholas, as Heinz von Foerster (who he called his mentor, well as many students, friends and and for whose others whose lives he deeply Festschrift he wrote touched. his last paper). He began his work in His early life was marked by learning (he detested difference. A sickly child born 20 of years after his nearest sibling to the notion lnstruction, Computer Mary Pask and her fruit importer Aided or not) and in husband Percy, he was not the creation of trans- expected to survive. This early conventional concepts practice in survival ultimately of what computation stood him in good stead, for at the might be about. He end of his life, he continued to developed hydraulic amaze his doctors, friends and Gordon Pask with F. Pichler and chemical family with his ability to remain alive. As a computers. He concerned himself (long before frequently bed-bound child, his education-and current fashion) with questions of his world-were largely self created.