cybernetique

Call for Papers Second-Order Science Special Issue of Constructivist Foundations to be published November 2014 Edited by Karl H. Müller and Alexander Riegler Traditional science excludes the observer in an effort to manufacture objectivity – a strategy that worked well in the age of classical sciences. Many recent research areas such as human cognition and quantum physics, however, call observer-independence into question. Would including the observer in science threaten the firm nature of scientific insight, and is the second-order inclusion of the observer still science? Historically, the inclusion of the observer was anticipated by the transition from (first- order) cybernetics to second-order cybernetics. While cybernetics (similarly to all of science) was understood as “cybernetics of observed systems,” Heinz von Foerster et al. pressed for a second-order cybernetics that is defined as the “cybernetics of observing systems” (which became one of the unifying themes across constructivist approaches). A second motivation for second-order science is domain-specific. Second-order science can be introduced as the science of science or as a science that operates on the products of normal or first-order science. Tests of clinical tests, evaluations of already available evaluations, models of models, cybernetics of cybernetics or sociology of sociology and many other self-reflexive issues can be viewed as the domain of second-order science.