Cybernetics for the Social Sciences

Erscheinungsjahr 2021
ISBN: 978-90-04-46434-6
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, 130 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 239 g

Reihe: Brill Research Perspectives in Humanities and Social Sciences / Brill Research Perspectives in Sociocybernetics and Complexity

Bernard Scott has met a long-felt need by authoring a book that shows the relevance of cybernetics for the social sciences (including psychology, sociology, and anthropology). Scott provides user-friendly descriptions of the core concepts of cybernetics, with examples of how they can be used in the social sciences. He explains how cybernetics functions as a transdiscipline that unifies other disciplines and a metadiscipline that provides insights about how other disciplines function. He provides an account of how cybernetics emerged as a distinct field, following interdisciplinary meetings in the 1940s, convened to explore feedback and circular causality in biological and social systems. He also recounts how encountering cybernetics transformed his thinking and his understanding of life in general.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Scott, Bernard

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychologie / Allgemeines & Theorie Psychologie: Allgemeines
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Soziale Fragen & Probleme
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Forschung und Information Kybernetik, Systemtheorie, Komplexe Systeme
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Philosophische Anthropologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Cybernetics for the Social Sciences

Bernard Scott

Abstract

Keywords

Prolegomena

Part 1 About This Publication and a First Look at Cybernetics
Part 2 A Life in Cybernetics

Part 3 The Story of Cybernetics

Part 4 Some Key Concepts of Cybernetics

Part 5 On Messages

Part 6 Cybernetics and the Integration of the Disciplines

Part 7 In Defence of Pure Cybernetics

Part 8 Socioybernetic Understandings of Consciousness

Part 9 Reflections on the Sociocybernetics of Social Networks

Part 10 Some Sociocybernetic Understanding of Possible World Futures

Part 11 Sociocybernetic Understandings of Culture

Part 12 Summing up and What Comes Next

Acknowledgements

References

Über Autor(innen)

Bernard Scott, Ph.D. (1976), Brunel University, retired from Cranfield University as Reader in Cybernetics in 2010. He now works as an independent scholar. He has many publications to his credit, including Explorations in Second Order Cybernetics (echoraum, 2011).