Karl H. Müller - Böcker

In this landmark volume, J. Rodgers Hollingsworth, Karl H. MYller, and Ellen Jane Hollingsworth take a first step towards imposing order on the increasingly diverse field of socio-economics by embedding the various disciplines and sub-disciplines in a common core. The distinguished contributors in this volume show how institutions, governance arrangements, societal sectors, organizations, individual actors, and innovativeness are intertwined and, ultimately, how individuals and firms have a high degree of autonomy. By offering original suggestions and guidelines for developing a socio-economics research agenda focused on institutional analysis, Advancing Socio-Economics: An Institutionalist Perspective, will enlighten all interested in the social sciences.

Heinz von Foerster was the inventor of second-order cybernetics, which recognizes the investigator as part of the system he is investigating. The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name provides an accessible, nonmathematical, and comprehensive overview of von Foerster's cybernetic ideas and of the philosophy latent within them. It distills concepts scattered across the lifework of this scientific polymath and influential interdisciplinarian. At the same time, as a book-length interview, it does justice to von Foerster's élan as a speaker and improviser, his skill as a raconteur.Developed from a week-long conversation between the editors and von Foerster near the end of his life, this work playfully engages von Foerster in developing the difference his notion of second-order cybernetics makes for topics ranging from emergence, life, order, and thermodynamics to observation, recursion, cognition, perception, memory, and communication.The book gives an English-speaking audience a new ease of access to the rich thought and generous spirit of this remarkable and protean thinker.

Heinz von Foerster was the inventor of second-order cybernetics, which recognizes the investigator as part of the system he is investigating. The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name provides an accessible, nonmathematical, and comprehensive overview of von Foerster's cybernetic ideas and of the philosophy latent within them. It distills concepts scattered across the lifework of this scientific polymath and influential interdisciplinarian. At the same time, as a book-length interview, it does justice to von Foerster's élan as a speaker and improviser, his skill as a raconteur.Developed from a week-long conversation between the editors and von Foerster near the end of his life, this work playfully engages von Foerster in developing the difference his notion of second-order cybernetics makes for topics ranging from emergence, life, order, and thermodynamics to observation, recursion, cognition, perception, memory, and communication.The book gives an English-speaking audience a new ease of access to the rich thought and generous spirit of this remarkable and protean thinker.

Heinz von Foerster, dem dieses Buch gewidmet ist, gehört als Gründer und jahrzehntelanger Direktor des Biological Computer Laboratory zu den frühen Vordenkern und bedeutendsten Anregern heutiger Leitwissenschaften wie Kybernetik, Informatik, systemische Theorien, Bio-Kybernetik, Bionik, usw.Dieser Band setzt sich mit der Biografie dieses bedeutenden Wissenschaftlers und den Wiener Wurzeln seiner Ideen auseinander. In einer Reihe von Beiträgen wird gezeigt, welchen Einfluss das Denken Heinz von Foersters auf eine Vielfalt von Disziplinen hatte und hat, vor allem auf das gegenwärtige konstruktivistische Denken.Persönliche Erinnerungen und Würdigungen geben ein anschauliches Bild der Persönlichkeit Heinz von Foersters. Eine Bibliografie seiner Schriften erleichtert dem Leser die weitere Auseinandersetzung mit seinem Schaffen.