Kybernetes: Volume 43 Issue 9/10

Acting to understand and understanding to act

To establish the essential centrality of a circular relationship between acting and understanding, and a role learning plays in this circularity, with special reference to…

Overcoming obstacles in learning cybernetic psychology

When reviewing the prospectus of mainstream universities that offer psychology majors, one would be hard-pressed to find any cybernetic approaches included in their course…

Contextual inquiry and socio-technical practice

During discussions at the ASC 2013 Conference, the authors were stimulated to consider acting, learning and understanding in the context of organizational change, and in…

Applying cybernetic thinking to becoming a learning organization

The purpose of this paper is to provide a case study of the application of cybernetic thinking by the learning and development unit in a national branch of a large multinational…

Effects of variety reduction and amplification in circular feedback systems

The purpose of this paper is to present the result of an experiment examining the effects of changing input and output channel variety in an optical feedback system and their…

Understanding and learning to reconcile differences between disciplines through constructing an artificial personality

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the conflicting varieties between cognitive linguistics and animal motivation on one hand and between emotions and motivations on…

Understanding, action, and the use of the cane in Sri Lankan schools

The purpose of this paper is to consider the use of corporal punishment in schools in Sri Lanka, and to offer reflections on how cybernetics could shed light on its persistence…

Second-order error; error that illuminates context

– The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel classification of errors.

The communication of expectations and individual understanding: Redundancy as reduction of uncertainty, and the processing of meaning

The purpose of this paper is to present the case for an analysis of communication at the supra-individual level as a means of rendering the understanding of learning and acting…

Design transformations: teaching design through evaluations

The purpose of this paper is to synchronize two courses to focus on the students working with learning and applying tools in the one course and acting on understandings gained to…

Triple-loop learning and conversing with reality

Three levels of learning developed by Gregory Bateson in the tradition of second-order cybernetics have in-part been translated in terms of double-loop and triple-loop learning…

Education as a subversive activity: a proposal

The purpose of this paper is to present a case for a change of educational system, rather than a change in the current system. A rudimentary framework for an alternative…

Learning about learning: a cybernetic model of skill acquisition

The purpose of this paper is to explain some phenomena observed in the acquisition of motor skills: the loss of conscious access to knowledge of the structure of a skill and the…

A multi-perspective approach to knowledge production

The purpose of this paper is to discuss a Multi-perspective approach to knowledge production in terms of a set of cybernetic concepts relevant to the approach; to describe a…

Multiple perspectives on the terms “cyberneticist” versus “cybernetician”: From a group of ASC Conference participants

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and clarify possible distinctions between the terms “cyberneticist” and “cybernetician” with the intention of helping the growth of the…

Making distinctions: reflections on learning, knowing and evaluating

The purpose of this paper is to offer some reflections on “making distinctions”, which in contrast to “separating”, the author views as unifying rather than dividing. The author…

An approach to hesitant fuzzy multi-stage multi-criterion decision making

The purpose of this paper is to develop some weight determining methods for hesitant fuzzy multi-criterion decision making (MCDM) in which the preference information on attributes…

Model predictive control based on chaos particle swarm optimization for nonlinear processes with constraints

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new type of predictive fuzzy controller. The desired nonlinear system behavior is described by a set of Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) model…

A metaheuristic algorithm for project selection and scheduling with due windows and limited inventory capacity

The purpose of this paper is to provide an effective solution for a complex planning problem encountered in heavy industry. The problem entails selecting a set of projects to…

A genetic programming hyper-heuristic for the multidimensional knapsack problem

Hyper-heuristics are a class of high-level search techniques which operate on a search space of heuristics rather than directly on a search space of solutions. The purpose of this…

Modeling and simulation of passenger mass violence event derived from irregular flights in the airport terminal

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and access the extent that emotion contagion (EC) affects the passenger aggressive behavior, and then reveal key factors triggering the…

Editorial

Introduction to Special Issue

Special issue abstracts