From 1997 to 2001, Karl H. Müller was head of the Departments of Political Science and Sociology at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS) in Vienna. Currently. Until 2014 he was head of WISDOM, Austria’s infra-structural centre for the social sciences and President of the Heinz von Foerster Society. Now he is Director of The Steinbeis Transfer Center New Cybernetics , Vienna, Austria and Professor at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
His main research interests range from issues in complex modeling within the social sciences and from interdisciplinary analyses of innovation processes in science, technology and economy to the history and the current potential of inter- and transdisciplinary research, to the frontiers of second order cybernetics and radical constructivism or to the newly emerging risk-potentials for contemporary societies in general.
His recent publications reflect these various interests, namely Market Expansion and Knowledge Integration. Double Movements within Modernity (Frankfurt:Campus-Verlag 1999), Socio-Economic Models and Societal Complexity. Intermediation & Design (Marburg:Metropolis-Verlag 1998), Advancing Socio-Economics (together with J. Rogers Hollingsworth and Ellen Jane Hollingsworth) (Lanham: Rowman&Littlefield 2002), An Unfinished Revolution? Heinz von Foerster and the Biological Computer Laboratory 1958 – 1976 (Wien:edition echoraum 2007) (together with Albert Müller), Gordon Pask, Philosopher Mechanic. An Introduction to the Cybernetician’s Cyberrnetician (Wien:edition echoraum 2007)(together with Ranulph Glanville), The New Science of Cybernetics. The Evolution of Living Research Designs. Vol. I. Methodology (Wien:edition echoraum 2008), Modern RISC-Societies. Towards a New Paradigm for Societal Evolution (Wien:edition echoraum)(together with Ivan Svetlik et al.) and The New Science of Cybernetics. The Evolution of Living Research Designs. Vol. II. Theory (Wien:edition echoraum 2011).
Under the heading of new cybernetics the lecture will present a new approach to cybernetics which differs wildly from old cybernetics as it was developed between the 1940s and the 1960s or even second-order cybernetics as an observer-dependent form of doing science differently. The lecture will focus on three inter-related Copernican revolutions or inversions which become the differentia specifica of new cybernetics.
The first inversion for new cybernetics lies in the domain or in the level of analysis which is introduced as second-order domain or level. This second-order domain is reached whenever re-entry operations on normal or first-order science building blocks are undertaken: These re-entry operations can be performed with outputs from first-order science like in tests of tests, causal relations of causal relations, explanations of explanations, etc. or with inputs of first-order science like in theories of theories, models of models, generative mechanisms of generative mechanisms, etc.
For the second inversion a separation between exo-science – science from without – and endo-science – science from within - can be developed. It can be shown that Science I was predominantly organized as exo-science whereas a drift is currently underway towards various forms of endo-science. Endo-science places the observer as participant player within the domain under investigation and creates, thus, an endo-sphere or an endo-field which differs significantly from the traditional exo-spheres.
Finally, the lecture will briefly discuss the new target values associated with the two previous Copernican inversions. It will be shown that objectivity and inter-subjectivity – the two target values for Science I – can and must be substituted by intersubjective reproducibility as new target value. Intersubjective reproducibility becomes the consequence of doing science from within and from the active role of observers as explicit of research processes.
