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The Science of the Unknowable: Stafford Beer's Cybernetic Informatics
The Science of the Unknowable: Stafford Beer’s Cybernetic Informatics Andrew Pickering University of Illinois Department of Sociology Urbana, IL 61801 [email protected] Cybernetics and New Ontologies: An interview session with Andrew Pickering Kristian Hvidtfelt Nielsen [email protected] The Steno Institute University of Aarhus Working Papers from Centre for STS Studies Department of Information & Media Studies University of Aarhus Published by The Centre for STS Studies, Aarhus 2006. Editorial board: Peter Lauritsen, Simon Kiilerich Madsen, Finn Olesen. Andrew Pickering: The Science of the Unknowable: Stafford Beer’s Cybernetic Informatics Kristian Hvidtfelt Nielsen: Cybernetics and New Ontologies: An interview session with Andrew Pickering © The authors, 2006. Printed at Fællestrykkeriet for Sundhedsvidenskab, University of Aarhus. Cover design: Annette Bjerre Design. ISBN 9788791386121 (print) ISBN 9788791386138 (web) The Centre for STS Studies Department of Information & Media Studies Helsingforsgade 14 DK-8200 Aarhus N Tel: +45 8942 9200 Fax: +45 8942 5950 [email protected] http://imv.au.dk/sts The Science of the Unknowable: Stafford Beer’s Cybernetic Informatics Andrew Pickering University of Illinois Department of Sociology [email protected] This essay derives from a larger project exploring the history of cybernetics in Britain in and after World War II.1 The project focusses on the work of four British cyberneticians—Grey Walter, Ross Ashby, Stafford Beer and Gordon Pask; here I focus on Stafford Beer, the founder of the field he called management cybernetics, and his work in informatics.2 Anthony Stafford Beer was born in London in 1926. He joined the British Army in 1944 after just one year as an undergraduate in London, and served in India and Britain. -
The Practical Turn' David G
8 The Practical Turn' David G. Stern What is Practice Theory? What is a Practice? What is "practice theory"? The best short answer is that it is any theory that treats practice as a fundamental category, or takes practices as its point of departure . Naturally, this answer leads to further questions . What is meant by "practices" here? What is involved in taking practices as a point of departure or a fundamental category, and what does that commitment amount to? And what is the point of the contrast between a practice-based theory and one that starts elsewhere? Perhaps the most significant point of agreement among those who have taken the practical turn is that it offers a way out of Procustean yet seemingly inescap- able categories, such as subject and object, representation and represented, con- ceptual scheme and content, belief and desire, structure and action, rules and their application, micro and macro, individual and totality . Instead, practice the- orists propose that we start with practices and rethink our theories from the ground up. Bourdieu, for instance, insists that only a theory of practice can open up a way forward : Objective analysis of practical apprehension of the familiar world . teaches us that we shall escape from the ritual either/or choice between objectivism and subjectiv- ism in which the social sciences have so far allowed themselves to be trapped only if we are prepared to inquire into the mode of production and functioning of the practical mastery which makes possible both an objectively intelligible practice and also an objectively enchanted experience of that practice . -
The Cybernetic Brain
THE CYBERNETIC BRAIN THE CYBERNETIC BRAIN SKETCHES OF ANOTHER FUTURE Andrew Pickering THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO AND LONDON ANDREW PICKERING IS PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF EXETER. HIS BOOKS INCLUDE CONSTRUCTING QUARKS: A SO- CIOLOGICAL HISTORY OF PARTICLE PHYSICS, THE MANGLE OF PRACTICE: TIME, AGENCY, AND SCIENCE, AND SCIENCE AS PRACTICE AND CULTURE, A L L PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, AND THE MANGLE IN PRAC- TICE: SCIENCE, SOCIETY, AND BECOMING (COEDITED WITH KEITH GUZIK). THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, CHICAGO 60637 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, LTD., LONDON © 2010 BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PUBLISHED 2010 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN-13: 978-0-226-66789-8 (CLOTH) ISBN-10: 0-226-66789-8 (CLOTH) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pickering, Andrew. The cybernetic brain : sketches of another future / Andrew Pickering. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-226-66789-8 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-226-66789-8 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Cybernetics. 2. Cybernetics—History. 3. Brain. 4. Self-organizing systems. I. Title. Q310.P53 2010 003’.5—dc22 2009023367 a THE PAPER USED IN THIS PUBLICATION MEETS THE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF THE AMERICAN NATIONAL STANDARD FOR INFORMATION SCIENCES—PERMA- NENCE OF PAPER FOR PRINTED LIBRARY MATERIALS, ANSI Z39.48-1992. DEDICATION For Jane F. CONTENTS Acknowledgments / ix 1. The Adaptive Brain / 1 2. Ontological Theater / 17 PART 1: PSYCHIATRY TO CYBERNETICS 3. -
Ontography As the Study of Locally Organized Ontologies
Ontography as the Study of Locally Organized Ontologies Michael Lynch I first used the term »ontography« in the postscript of a special issue of the journal Social Studies of Science on »the turn to ontology« in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS).1 In their introduction to the special issue, the guest editors, Steve Woolgar and Javier Lezaun, noted that there had been an upsurge in the use of the term »ontology« in STS, anthropology, and other social science fields.2 Woolgar, Lezaun, and other contributors to the special issue expressed both heightened interest in and skepticism about this »turn to ontology.« The »turn« in question was not a turn back to an ancient branch of metaphysics concerned with the constitution of reality, though some of the authors who embraced it did indulge in metaphysical discourse. To the extent that it was a metaphysical movement, the turn to ontology was a turn from one metaphysical orientation to another; from a humanist treatment of representation and meaning-making, to a post-humanist (re)distribution of agency among humans, non-human beings, and material things. This turn was an empirical turn that aimed to investigate particu- lar domains of social action (including but not limited to scientific, technical, and medical actions) in which things (though not necessarily things-as-such; self-suf- ficient, non-relational entities) were highly salient, not only as objects but also as agents, agencies, and intermediaries. The turn to ontology is sometimes presented as a reaction to an over-emphasis on epistemology in earlier work in STS and related fields, particularly work asso- ciated with social constructionism in the sociology of scientific knowledge, which seemed to reduce obdurate material realities to historically, socially, and cultur- ally situated practices and knowledges. -
Rethinking Social Constructivist Theories of Science
RESTORING THE REAL: RETHINKING SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVIST THEORIES OF SCIENCE Meera Nanda As we come to recognize the conventional and artifactual status of our forms of knowing, [we realize] that it is ourselves and not reality that is responsible for what we know. (Stevan Shapin and Simon Schaffer, 1985) It always seems to me extreme rashness on the part of some when they want to make human abilities the measure of what nature can do. (Gaiileo Galilei, Dialogues Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, 1632) Introduction One of the oldest urges in Western intellectual tradition is to think that reality and truth should coincide, that our knowledge be certified in the end by the structure of reality itself. Modern science, which best embodies this urge, aims at justified knowledge which can faithfully track the contours of the natural world. The logic of science, however, has been severely challenged by a set of doctrines which deny that what we take as scientific facts bear any necessary relation to the causal processes and theoretical entities they claim to describe. Often referred to as 'social construction of science' or 'sociology of scientific knowledge,' these doctrines claim that because science's methods, like any other way of knowing, are wholly relative to a theoretical framework and a world-view, science amounts to a construction, and not a discovery, of reality: we know what we ourselves construct and there can be no warrant that our constructs can progressively come to map the world as it really is. Understood sociologically, -
Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
Annu. Rev. Sociol. 1995. 21:289-321 Copyright 0 1995 by Annual Reviews Inc. AN rights reserved HERE AND EVERYWHERE: Sociology of Scientific Knowledge Steven Shapin Department of Sociology and Science Studies Program, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093-0102 KEY WORDS: philosophy of science, relativism, realism, localism, natural attitude The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) is one of the profession's most marginal specialties, yet its objects of inquiry, its modes of inquiry, and certain of its findings have very substantial bearing upon the nature and scope of tihe sociological enterprise in general. While traditional sociology of knowledge asked how, and to what extent, "social factors" might influence the products of the mind, SSK sought to show that knowledge was constitutively social, and in so doing, it raised fundamental questions about taken-for-granted divi- sions between "social versus cognitive, or natural, factors." This piece traces the historical development of the sociology of scientific knowledge and its relations with sociology and cultural inquiry as a whole. It identifies dominant "localist" sensibilities in SSK and the consequent problem it now confronts of how scientific knowledge travels. Finally, it describes several strands of crit- icism of SSK that have emerged from among its own practitioners, noting the ways in which some criticisms can be seen as a revival of old aspirations toward privileged meta-languages. There is no shortage of reviews and assessments of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK). Most have been written by critics or by participants meaning to put their special stamp on a contentious and splintered field.' I too am a participant: My views about what the field is, and ought to be, are strongly held; they have been canvassed elsewhere, and they will be unavoidably evident in this survey. -
The Ontological Turn: Taking Different Worlds Seriously
tokyo-rev-060815.doc p. 1 To appear in Social Analysis (2016) The Ontological Turn: Taking Different Worlds Seriously Andrew Pickering Dept of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology University of Exeter Amory Building Rennes Drive Exeter EX4 4RJ UK [email protected] Andrew Pickering is an emeritus professor of sociology and philosophy at the University of Exeter in England. His field is science and technology studies, and his current research focusses on art, agency, the environment and traditional Chinese philosophy. His books include Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics, Science as Practice and Culture, The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency and Science, The Mangle in Practice: Science, Society and Becoming and, most recently, The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I am grateful to an anonymous reader for critical remarks on the first draft of this essay, and to Casper Bruun Jensen for telling me about Kopenawa’s book. This work was supported in part by a National Research Foundation of Korea Grant, funded by the Korean Government (NRF- 2013S1A3A2053087). 6,621 words. No tables or figures. ABSTRACT I discuss different scientific and nonmodern worlds as they appear in a performative (rather than representational) idiom, situating my analysis in relation to the recent ontological turns in STS and anthropology. I propose an ontology of decentred becoming that can help us take seriously the multiplicity of ‘found’ ontologies. A key concept is that of ‘islands of stability,’ which enables a comparative transition between the worlds of science and shamanism. This offers an opportunity to reflect back critically and politically on modernity, while highlighting the problems of anthropological translation that surface in a performative apprehension of nonmodern worlds. -
"The Studies Are Probably the Best Thing That Garfinkel Ever Wrote"
Volume 20, No. 2, Art. 13 May 2019 "The Studies are Probably the Best Thing That Garfinkel Ever Wrote" Michael Lynch in Conversation With Dominik Gerst, Hannes Krämer & René Salomon Key words: Abstract: Michael LYNCH is widely known as one of the key figures of ethnomethodology. In this ethnomethodology; interview, he takes the discussion of GARFINKEL's "Studies in Ethnomethodology" (1967) as an conversation opportunity to take the reader back to California in the 1970s as he shares his personal story of analysis; history of how he became acquainted with Harold GARFINKEL and ethnomethodology as a radical approach American on the rise. LYNCH provides an account of ethnomethodology as a distinctive way of researching, sociology; science writing, talking; which stands in high contrast to conventional social sciences and, which not only and technology has been marginalized by the sociological mainstream at the time it came up, but may be seen as studies; endangered nowadays. As he says in the interview, the tense relationship between epistemics; ethnomethodology and conversation analysis as a robust field of inquiry can be traced back to this practice theory question as well. He reflects upon GARFINKELs central intellectual resources—namely phenomenology and the philosophy of WITTGENSTEIN—and shows how his own work embraces the relationships of ethnomethodology with science and technology studies and actor-network theory. Giving insights into how his work is driven by a confrontation of social theory and philosophy with empirical concreteness, LYNCH discusses concepts such as practice and knowledge which may be seen as in-between-phenomena within this confrontation. Finally, he suggests to continuously reread GARFINKEL's "Studies in Ethnomethodology" as the book provides a rich resource of ideas which especially become productive in light of own research. -
A Reply to Collins and Yearley
T2 Don't Throw the Baby Out with the Bath School! A Reply to Collins and Yearley Michel Callon and Bruno Latour Mademoiselled e l'Espinasse:" Voilà ma toile; et le point originaire de tous cesf ils c'est mon araignée" Bordeu:" A merveille" Mademoiselled e l'Espinasse:" Où sont les fils? Où est placée I'araignée?" Diderot,L e Rêved e d'Alembert Harry Collins and Steve Yearley {from now on C&Y) âre sâtisfied with the stateo f socials tudieso f scienceM. ost o{ the problemsh ave been solved, important discoveriesh ave been made, sociology is firm enough on its feet to study the natural sciences.T hus, accord- ing to them, there is no fundamental reason to switch to other frameso f reference-and there is still lessr eâsont o let "bloody for- eigners"d abblei n a field where the British have beenf irmly in com- mand for so mâny yeârs.W herever we go, C&Y have already been there, have given satisfactory explanations,h ave developeda n ade- quate methodology,a nd have solvedt he empirical problems.E ven if they recognize that there might be some residual difficulties-the problems of reflexivity, thât of symmetry the potential conflict be- tween relativism and social realism-their solution is to shun these intellectual traps by a process of alternation, another name for blithe ignorance,a nd an appealt o common sensea nd professional Harry Collins and SteveY earleyh ad the generosityt o host a one-dayi nformal semi- nar to play chicken "live." SteveW oolgara nd Bruno Latour were the contestantsa nd Gerard de Vries and Wiebe Biiker the refereesM. -
Are a Way of Understanding and Handling Empirical Materials and Thoughts
Volume 20, No. 2, Art. 2 May 2019 The "Studies in Ethnomethodology" Are a Way of Understanding and Handling Empirical Materials and Thoughts Eric Laurier in Conversation With Hannes Krämer, Dominik Gerst & René Salomon Key words: Abstract: In the following conversation Eric LAURIER talks about the role of ethnomethodology's ethnomethodology; foundational account—the "Studies in Ethnomethodology" (GARFINKEL, 1967)—within the UK and methodology; the influence of the book on his own research as well as on human geography, mobility studies, mobility; actor- actor-network-theory, and a general social science methodology. He therefore underlines the network-theory; peculiar focus of GARFINKEL on the everyday, his non-ironic position towards member's practices, materiality; and the plurivocality of the book. Giving an elaborated account on the methodological challenges everyday life with an ethnomethodological approach including video recordings he differentiates between the video as a research tool and video usage as a member's practice. LAURIER demonstrates the inspiring and initiating content of the studies as well as its limits. By doing so he can show the prolific quality for current research fields like the study of mobility and movement, the question of space and place, and the role of the "Studies in Ethnomethodology" as a political text. Table of Contents 1. Conversations on Ethnomethodology Often Start With "How Did You Get Into This?" 2. This Stylistics of Writing has a Positive Quality 3. GARFINKEL's Peculiar Take on the Everyday 4. Reading the Book 5. Theory and Methodology Are Interwoven 6. It Is a Book You Always Return to 7.