Comments on a Review – Ranulph Glanville

Citation

Glanville, R. (2009), "Comments on a Review – Ranulph Glanville", Kybernetes, Vol. 38 No. 1/2, pp. 272-277. https://doi.org/10.1108/03684920910930402

Dr Alex Andrew courteously sent me a copy of his review of the book An Unfinished Revolution? Heinz von Foerster and the Biological Computer Laboratory – BCL 1958‐1976 (Mueller and Mueller, 2007) (Kybernetes, Vol. 37 No. 6, pp. 828‐30) inviting me to respond. There was little time and I could not do so at that moment. It was a thoughtful and reasoned review, to be taken seriously, and yet one with which I profoundly disagree. This is my belated response.

Dr Andrew knew Foerster and worked with him at the BCL in 1964‐1965 (he had earlier worked with McCulloch, von Foerster's mentor, in 1954‐1955). It is perhaps not surprising that, in his review, he shows a marked preference for the BCL's[1] earlier (pre‐1968) work that I suppose was familiar to him from his visits, remarking on the value of the insights from some of the earlier workers there. There is no doubt that this work was of the first importance, and that these insights and records are of great value. I have no argument with Dr Andrew over this.

What I disagree with him about is his remarks on the BCL and second‐order cybernetics. Second order cybernetics, according to Karl Mueller's eponymous paper in the book, is the Unfinished Revolution. It is clear that Dr Andrew is not, and never has been, a second order cybernetician. And since, for some reason I cannot understand, he decided to write in large part about my two chapters in the book which he calls “disquieting” (as opposed to, for instance, Mueller's piece), I shall refer largely to these comments. In doing so, I must say that I find the discussion of the book in terms of my work, a terrible and incomprehensible imbalance, for the book concerns the BCL and my contribution to the BCL and to studies of the BCL is, in my opinion, minor at best.

I shall comment of Dr Andrew's review according the main critical themes I find in it.

Lacking critical appraisal

Dr Andrew has several complaints about second order cybernetics. The first is that it is not open to critical appraisal, and, implicitly, that its proponents do not look to test and refute it.

This is a criticism appropriately made of a science‐like theory, and, as a criticism, it is firmly positioned within that tradition. However, science is based on certain (ontological) assumptions rarely considered by scientists, and which are often forced onto other areas. I would argue that second order cybernetics which may be thought of as arising from this statement of Foerster's:

Objectivity is the delusion that observations could be made without an observer.

Is concerned to clarify a way of seeing, and its consequences. As such, it is interested in assumptions and grounds. It is not a science‐like theory, and it does not try to be: it is pre‐scientific. So it is not open to scientific type refutation and evaluation (which does not mean it is not open to evaluation).

In a generous review, Scott (2005) has remarked about my work (which, I remind the reader, Dr Andrew made the focus of much of his commentary), that it is pre‐ontological:

[…] this structure is pre‐ontological. As yet there are no “Laws of Physics”, there are no forms designated “living” or “non‐living”, there is no “beginning” or “ending”[2].

And again:

The pre‐ontological formal truths […] are, of course, timeless. They stand alongside the other great, formal truths of cybernetics and carry a validity and relevance for all generations.

I agree with Dr Scott's assessment about the pre‐ontological nature of this work, meaning it is not concerned with such (logically consequent) matters as laws of physics but with conditions under which certain types of study might be made. In fact, one might say (as Dr Scott implies) that second order cybernetics is concerned with setting us such conditions: so Foerster's work concerns pre‐physics, Maturana's pre‐biology, Pask's pre‐learning, Luhmann's pre‐sociological and so on. Mine is, according to Scott, more abstract: a sort of pre‐pre!

Little achieved

Attendant on this criticism is the assertion that second‐order cybernetics has not achieved much and that many other approaches achieve what second order cybernetics sets out to achieve. I am not sure this is so, because I am not sure of what second order cybernetics sets out to achieve. I am sure that it is a way of exploring what happens when, for instance, the observer is not minimised or ignored.

There are two points to make here. If Dr Andrew is right, then surely having another demonstration of a position is a good thing, not a bad one. (We can, of course, argue over which has precedence, and in what way: Popper (1963), whose notion of conjectures and refutations can be substituted by the notion of viability later used by Glasersfeld in talking about Radical Constructivism, also follows Vaihinger (1911), whose book Die Philosophie des Als Ob (The Philosophy of the As If) precedes Popper's own work by many years!) Second order cybernetics (or at least my second order cybernetics) does not deny the value of the Popperian mechanism. It is, however, concerned with the basis for taking a position and is thus, to use Scott's term, pre‐ontological. It does not assert matters of existence, nor does it promote ways of considering this, such as physics.

Let me add an afterthought. Second‐order cybernetics is often also called the cybernetics of cybernetics. I will not go into the relative appropriateness of these alternative names, but point out that the cybernetic treatment of cybernetics may be thought of as a way of keeping it “clean” and “pure”. In this way, second order cybernetics provides (as I have asserted, Glanville, 2002) a conscience for cybernetics.

Wonder and magic

Dr Andrew also complains about my use of the term wonder, especially associated with magic, in talking about that which is somehow beyond our ability to investigate. He remarks that I celebrate the wonder of the inexplicable, whereas (in his view) we should rather explore the wonder to be gained in, for instance, examining the explicable in order to find wonder in the consequent understanding (for instance, of evolution). It seems Dr Andrew holds a different view to that of his early cybernetic colleague, Gregory Bateson, who talked of “Explanatory Principles” (instinct, like gravity, is one such, and evolution would be another). I understand Bateson to be telling us of ultimate unknowability, even inscrutability. Bateson's Explanatory Principles (Bateson, 1972) allow us wonder and magic, and the ability to operate, without claiming to know what is going on. In this respect, they reflect how Ashby (1991) talks of the Black Box, and what we learn from it: no facts, just working descriptions. I am truly surprised at this comment of Dr Andrew's: we have spent a lot of time, over the last 100 years, defining what is beyond our ability to comprehend and account (but not necessarily to experience). Examples include escaping language and Goedel's theorem, Heisenberg's Indeterminacy and Bohr's Complementarity, and are classified by Wittgenstein's (1961) ultimate statement in the Tractatus, “That of which we cannot speak, we must pass over in silence.”

Dr Andrew points to Richard Dawkins and his work on evolution, who Dr Andrew believes provides a means by which Dr Andrew can question what he believes I argue as the primacy of distinction drawing. But I write about neat and tidy ways of explaining (Bateson, 1972), not about truths. Dr Andrew seems to take the position (he cites Ashby's description of the brain) that the physical and biological must take precedence over the mental: that intelligence emerges from biological evolution in the physical world. To my mind, it is as easy and as convincing to argue that there would be no evolution without mind to create it (it is, after all, an “explanatory principle”). Matter, insofar as we can appreciate it and therefore have anything to say about it, is a product of mind, not mind of matter. Of course, wise men such as Bateson (1972) argued that there should be no mind/body duality. Pask created his theory of conversations with both psychological and mechanical individuals, which he held to be mutually indispensable. Perhaps, however, the strongest statement comes from none other than Mr Black Box himself, James Clerk Maxwell:

The only laws of matter are those that our minds must fabricate and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter[3].

Intelligence

There is one last critical theme. Dr Andrew writes of how I (and, he claims, Foerster) dismiss conventional AI research. There is a small measure of sophistry here, for Dr Andrew himself comments on the (continuing) failures of the AI programme – a programme which did so much to remove credibility and funding from cybernetics, witness this quote from Minsky:

Cybernetics is […] only practised in Russia and other under‐developed countries[4].

This is the Minsky whose dismissive attitude helped downgrade the credibility of cybernetics on the basis of his own promises that consistently failed. The last time he saw him, Dr Andrew tells us Minsky optimistically made (yet) another claim that he would have the right theory shortly!

My point is that we find intelligence in interaction (rather than in individual participants), and that it is therefore shared between the interacting participants, not a property of one or the other. In light of this finding, the AI program may appear far less interesting at every level than it has been sold as being (see, for instance, Boden's (1977) classic).

Bandwagon

Finally, I must object to Dr Andrew's use of the term “bandwagon”. This is a dismissive term, and indicates, if anything, that Dr Andrew's review is not to be trusted because it is the product of a biassed and dismissive mind. I was involved in second order cybernetics from the beginning, and there are those, Foerster and Pask included, who maintained that my PhD is the missing link. Along with Bernard Scott, I believe that I represent the younger members of first generation second order cyberneticians, who were there from the start, of whom the best known is the late Francisco Varela. Neither Scott nor myself may be said to have jumped on any bandwagon. Nor is it reasonable to talk of second order cybernetics in these terms: it has a tiny following and is almost unknown in any wider context. If there was any cybernetic bandwagon, it was the original cybernetics, jumped on by very many. Just consider Peter Drucker's insistence that we were in the “Cybernetic Age” in management (of course, Stafford Beer had known and practised this for a long time before Drucker perspicaciously picked up the ball and added his clout).

Focus of criticism

The cybernetics of today cannot, and should not, be the cybernetics of 1948, 1958, 1968 or even 1978, etc. – a date by which the basic concepts of second order cybernetics had been initially isolated (Glanville, 2008). Cybernetics, like all fields, changes. If it is to be a serious, living subject, it cannot be a mere repository for nostalgia: its principles must be examined and new insights will be gained. The lessons of history (itself a very large collection of explanatory principles!) tell us that there is movement, which we often call progress. As we learn, we change how we understand and hence how we see. I am not accusing Dr Andrew of historical nostalgia, but I do wonder whether his views of cybernetics are open to the sorts of changes in understanding that the BCL's Unfinished Revolution was concerned to pursue.

I consider it sad and not a little strange that Dr Andrew should have chosen to review this book so much as a critique of my work (to which I have responded in detail). This book's theme is the BCL. Many of Dr Andrew's specific criticisms of later work in and around the BCL are answered firstly, by recognising the intent in the various chapters of the book, and secondly by taking seriously the extensive concluding essay by Karl Mueller, as other reviewers have done. Instead, there seems to be this almost irrelevant criticism of the work of someone (me!) who is not central to the theme of the book which is building the grounds for, and developing courses of action concerning An Unfinished Revolution.

Notes

Dr Albert Mueller sent me the source of this quote, which I had failed to find for years. It is in a paper from February 1856 (Are there real analogies in nature?) and can be found reprinted in Campbell and Garnett (1882).