Margaret Mead

Humberto Maturana Humberto Maturana, 2013. Humberto Maturana (born September 14, 1928, in Santiago, Chile) is a Chilean biologist and philosopher. Many consider him a member of a group of second-wave cyberneticians such as Heinz von Foerster, Gordon Pask, Herbert Brün and Ernst von Glasersfeld. Maturana, along with Francisco Varela, is particularly known for creating the term autopoiesis about the nature of reflexive feedback mechanisms in living systems, and concepts such as structural determinism and structure coupling. Biography[edit] After completing secondary school at the Liceo Manuel de Salas in 1947, Maturana enrolled at the University of Chile, studying first medicine then biology. He works in neuroscience at the University of Chile, in the research center "Biología del Conocer" (Biology of Knowledge). As of the year 2000, Maturana established his own reflection and research center: the Instituto de Formación Matriztica. Work[edit] Maturana, 2012 A drawing in zero time In popular culture[edit]

International Society for the Systems Sciences The International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) is among the first and oldest organizations devoted to interdisciplinary inquiry into the nature of complex systems, and remains perhaps the most broadly inclusive. The Society was initially conceived in 1954 at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Kenneth Boulding, Ralph Gerard, and Anatol Rapoport. In collaboration with James Grier Miller, it was formally established as an affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1956. The initial purpose of the society was "to encourage the development of theoretical systems which are applicable to more than one of the traditional departments of knowledge," with the following principal aims: In the intervening years, the ISSS has expanded its scope beyond purely theoretical and technical considerations to include the practical application of systems methodologies to problem solving.

John von Neumann John von Neumann (/vɒn ˈnɔɪmən/; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian and later American pure and applied mathematician, physicist, inventor, polymath, and polyglot. He made major contributions to a number of fields,[2] including mathematics (foundations of mathematics, functional analysis, ergodic theory, geometry, topology, and numerical analysis), physics (quantum mechanics, hydrodynamics, and fluid dynamics), economics (game theory), computing (Von Neumann architecture, linear programming, self-replicating machines, stochastic computing), and statistics.[3] He was a pioneer of the application of operator theory to quantum mechanics, in the development of functional analysis, a principal member of the Manhattan Project and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (as one of the few originally appointed), and a key figure in the development of game theory[2][4] and the concepts of cellular automata,[2] the universal constructor, and the digital computer. . and

Casual Loop & Systems Diagrams - Problem Solving from MindTools Understanding How Factors Affect One Another © iStockphoto/mevans System diagrams are powerful tools that help you to understand how complex systems work. Systems analyzed may be anything from businesses, through biological population models, to the impact of social policy, etc. System diagrams are particularly helpful in showing you how a change in one factor may impact elsewhere. They are excellent tools for flushing out the long term impacts of a change. Drawing a system diagram is a good way of starting to build a computer model. How to Use the Tool Relationships Between Factors At the heart of the use of system diagrams is the idea of linking factors to show a relationship between them. For example a company may link the factors of product quality and customer satisfaction. The S shows that the factors move in the Same way – as quality improves, so will the happiness of customers. These relationships can also work the other way. Feedback Loops Balancing Loops Reinforcing Loops Gaps Delay

Francisco Varela Francisco Javier Varela García (September 7, 1946 – May 28, 2001) was a Chilean biologist, philosopher, and neuroscientist who, together with his teacher Humberto Maturana, is best known for introducing the concept of autopoiesis to biology, and for co-founding the Mind and Life Institute to promote dialog between science and Buddhism. Life and career[edit] Varela was born in 1946 in Santiago in Chile, the son of Corina María Elena García Tapia and Raúl Andrés Varela Rodríguez.[1] After completing secondary school at the Liceo Aleman del Verbo Divino in Santiago (1951–1963), like his mentor Humberto Maturana, Varela temporarily studied medicine at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and graduated with a degree in biology from the University of Chile. He later obtained a Ph.D. in biology at Harvard University. In 1986, he settled in France, where he first taught cognitive science and epistemology at the École Polytechnique, and later neuroscience at the University of Paris.

Control Systems/Block Diagrams When designing or analyzing a system, often it is useful to model the system graphically. Block Diagrams are a useful and simple method for analyzing a system graphically. A "block" looks on paper exactly how it sounds: Systems in Series[edit] When two or more systems are in series, they can be combined into a single representative system, with a transfer function that is the product of the individual systems. If we have two systems, f(t) and g(t), we can put them in series with one another so that the output of system f(t) is the input to system g(t). If we define the output of the first system as h(t), we can define h(t) as: Now, we can define the system output y(t) in terms of h(t) as: We can expand h(t): But, since convolution is associative, we can re-write this as: Our system can be simplified therefore as such: Series Transfer Functions[edit] In the time domain we know that: But, in the frequency domain we know that convolution becomes multiplication, so we can re-write this as: System 1:

Heinz von Foerster Heinz von Foerster in 1963 at the Biological Computer Laboratory, University of Illinois Heinz von Foerster (German spelling: Heinz von Förster; November 13, 1911, Vienna – October 2, 2002, Pescadero, California) was an Austrian American scientist combining physics and philosophy. Together with Warren McCulloch, Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann, Lawrence J. Fogel, and others, Heinz von Foerster was an architect of cybernetics.[1] Biography[edit] Von Foerster was born in 1911 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, as Heinz von Förster. He moved to the USA in 1949, and worked at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was a professor of electrical engineering from 1951 to 1975. He knew well and was in conversation with John von Neumann, Norbert Wiener, Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela, Gordon Pask, Gregory Bateson, Lawrence J. Work[edit] The electron tube laboratory[edit] Biological Computer Laboratory[edit] Macy conferences[edit] Doomsday Equation[edit] See also[edit] Publications[edit]

Norbert Wiener Erik Verlinde - Wikipedia Erik Peter Verlinde (Dutch: [ˈeːrɪk ˈpeːtər vərˈlɪndə]; born 21 January 1962) is a Dutch theoretical physicist and string theorist. He is the identical twin brother of physicist Herman Verlinde. The Verlinde formula, which is important in conformal field theory and topological field theory, is named after him. At a symposium at the Dutch Spinoza-institute on 8 December 2009 he introduced a theory of entropic gravity. Biography[edit] That fall he began his studies in theoretical physics together with his twin brother at Utrecht University. In 1985, Verlinde started work on his PhD at Utrecht University under the formal supervision of Bernard de Wit. After his PhD, Verlinde joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton as a postdoctoral fellow. Major contributions[edit] Verlinde's main field of research is string theory. Verlinde formula[edit] Verlinde's PhD thesis was titled “Conformal Field Theory Applied to Strings”. Witten–Dijkgraaf–Verlinde–Verlinde equation[edit]

Norbert Wiener American mathematician and philosopher Wiener is considered the originator of cybernetics, the science of communication as it relates to living things and machines,[4] with implications for engineering, systems control, computer science, biology, neuroscience, philosophy, and the organization of society. Norbert Wiener is credited as being one of the first to theorize that all intelligent behavior was the result of feedback mechanisms, that could possibly be simulated by machines and was an important early step towards the development of modern artificial intelligence.[5] Biography[edit] Youth[edit] Wiener was born in Columbia, Missouri, the first child of Leo Wiener and Bertha Kahn, Jewish immigrants from Lithuania and Germany, respectively. A child prodigy, he graduated from Ayer High School in 1906 at 11 years of age, and Wiener then entered Tufts College. Harvard and World War I[edit] In 1914, Wiener traveled to Europe, to be taught by Bertrand Russell and G. After the war[edit] Fiction:

Second-order cybernetics Second-order cybernetics, also known as the cybernetics of cybernetics, investigates the construction of models of cybernetic systems. It investigates cybernetics with awareness that the investigators are part of the system, and of the importance of self-referentiality, self-organizing, the subject–object problem, etc. Investigators of a system can never see how it works by standing outside it because the investigators are always engaged cybernetically with the system being observed; that is, when investigators observe a system, they affect and are affected by it. Overview[edit] The anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead contrasted first and second-order cybernetics with this diagram in an interview in 1973.[1] It emphasizes the requirement for a possibly constructivist participant observer in the second order case: . . . essentially your ecosystem, your organism-plus-environment, is to be considered as a single circuit.[1] See also[edit] Gyroteleostasis References[edit]

Autopoietic.net -- Journal of Autopoietic Theory The Complexity and Artificial Life Research Concept for Self-Organizing Systems