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The purpose of this paper is to compare qualitatively two methods for coordinating traffic lights: a static optimization “green wave” method and an adaptive self‐organizing method.

Statistical results were obtained from implementing a recently proposed model of city traffic based on elementary cellular automata in a computer simulation.

The self‐organizing method delivers considerable improvements over the green‐wave method. Seven dynamical regimes and six phase transitions are identified and analyzed for the self‐organizing method.

The paper shows that traffic light coordination can be improved in cities by using self‐organizing methods.

This improvement can have a noticeable effect on the quality of life of citizens.

Understanding how self‐organization obtains adaptive solutions for complex problems can contribute to building more efficient systems.

Presents the scientific methodology from the enlarged cybernetical perspective that recognizes the anisotropy of time, the probabilistic character of natural laws, and the entry that the incomplete determinism in Nature opens to the occurrence of innovation, growth, organization, teleology communication, control, contest and freedom. The new tier to the methodological edifice that cybernetics provides stands on the earlier tiers, which go back to the Ionians (c. 500 BC). However, the new insights reveal flaws in the earlier tiers, and their removal strengthens the entire edifice. The new concepts of teleological activity and contest allow the clear demarcation of the military sciences as those whose subject matter is teleological activity involving contest. The paramount question “what ought to be done”, outside the empirical realm, is embraced by the scientific methodology. It also embraces the cognitive sciences that ask how the human mind is able to discover, and how the sequence of discoveries might converge to a true description of reality.

The purpose of this paper is to explore ways in which cybernetics leads to distinctiveways of acting.

Paralleling von Foerster’s argument that it makes more sense to speak of the cybernetics of epistemology than the epistemology of cybernetics, the author argues that cybernetics is not one form of practice amongst others but an account of what it is to practice, understood as where we relate how we act to how we understand so that each informs the other. The author explores the potential difference that adopting this understanding of practice makes in practice and shows its significance by establishing connections between the eponymous cybernetic example of steering and questions regarding teleology in ethics.

While all practice is cybernetic in the sense of involving a relationship between understanding and acting, the relationship between cybernetics and practice is not a neutral one. Understanding practice in cybernetic terms enables us to pursue goods internal to the practice, which, in turn, makes a difference to how we act.

The author argues that how we understand the relation between our understanding and our acting (our theories of theory and practice) leads to significant differences of action in practice.

The author argues that cybernetics has non-neutral, and ethically significant, consequences in practice that are beyond the application of cybernetics to practice or the advantages of adopting explicitly conversational ways of acting.

This chapter explores the ways in which cybernetics influenced the works of F. A. Hayek from the late 1940s onward. It shows that the concept of negative feedback, borrowed from cybernetics, was central to Hayek’s attempt to explain the principle of the emergence of human purposive behavior. Next, the chapter discusses Hayek’s later uses of cybernetic ideas in his works on the spontaneous formation of social orders. Finally, Hayek’s view on the appropriate scope of the use of cybernetics is considered.

Circular causality is one of several unorthodox assumptions underlying cybernetics. This paper identifies “blind spots” which obscure the soundness of this assumption, rendering cybernetics liable to rejection. The purpose of this paper is to aid students of cybernetics in appreciating circular causality.

The presented argument is based on textual and diagrammatic explication of several more or less obvious causal scenarios. Some of these modes are shown to obscure circular causality from observation.

Previously discussed “blind spots” obscuring circular causality are referenced. The notion of probabilistic causality is developed from the notion of collateral effects, which is introduced by extension of the notion of contributory causality. The possible “lossiness” of probabilistic causation is shown to constitute another “blind spot” obscuring circular causality, for example in design.

The presented argument aims to promote acceptance of circular causality. Assuming a radical-constructivist perspective, it discusses the construction of mental models of causal relationships.

Ignorance of circular causality has previously been attributed to preferences for description in terms of energy, and in terms of timeless logic. Additionally, this paper proposes the obscuring effect of probabilistic causality, and the possible co-occurrence of multiple “blind spots.”

The paper serves as an introduction to the special issue on Heinz von Foerster. Major episodes of his life are sketched and related to his scientific convictions regarding transdisciplinary research and radical constructivist. In the second part the contributions to the issue are summarized. Finally, the relevance of Foerster's work is discussed.

The arguments are based on the scientific literature.

Foerster argued against reductionist science and in favor of transdisciplinary research in order to trigger further scientific developments.

By using transdiciplinary and choosing the constructivist perspective, science will increase its productivity. This should be reflected in science policy.

By pointing at the variety of his scientific output and his influence on many colleagues and students, the paper is in support of Foerster's non‐reductionist worldview.

Until the Loma Prieta earthquake of 17 October 1989, also known as the “World Series earthquake” or the “San Francisco earthquake,” many of us may have considered earthquakes a remote danger. But instantaneous television transmission from the interrupted World Series game and frightening images of the collapsed Cypress Viaduct and the burning Marina district transformed this incident from a distant disaster into a phenomenon that touched us all. The Loma Prieta earthquake was followed in December 1990 by the inaccurate but widely publicized New Madrid earthquake prediction. Despite its inaccuracy, this prediction alerted the public to the fact that the largest earthquake ever to have occurred in the United States occurred not in California or Alaska, but in Missouri, and that a large earthquake could occur there again. Americans are discovering that few places are immune to the possibility of an earthquake.

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 cybernetics discipline in new directions.

After the American Society for Cybernetics ALU 2013 conference in Bolton, a small group of conference participants continued the conversations they had begun during the event, focusing on the comparison of the terms “cyberneticist” vs “cybernetician”. The group felt the need for clearer distinctions drawn (or designed) between the terms, in order to sustain the discipline of cybernetics and to support its growth. The aim of providing these distinctions is that theory should feed into practice and practice should feed into theory, forming a cybernetic loop, so that the discipline of cybernetics is sustained while growing. The conference participants had conversations between themselves, and came up with multiple perspectives on the distinction between “cyberneticist” vs “cybernetician”. The distinctions drawn mirror the distinctions between Science and Design: the science of cybernetics contrasted with the design of cybernetics.

The findings of this paper consist of recommendations to understand and act differently in the field of the discipline of cybernetics. In particular, a clear distinction is suggested between the terms “cyberneticist” and “cybernetician”. It is also suggested that in order for cybernetics to grow and be sustained, there should be a constant flow of developments in theory of cybernetics into the practice of cybernetics and vice-versa.

The authors believe that some people (called “cyberneticists”) should work on the science side of cybernetics, making strong contributions to the understanding and development of cybernetics theory. Others, (called “cyberneticians”) should work on the design side of cybernetics, to contribute through their actions and through the development of cybernetics practice. The result of this will be a self-organization that evolves naturally between theory and practice of cybernetics, leading to better learning of cybernetics, and in the process, sustaining it through continued growth. In this direction, the paper proposes several radical suggestions that may not be to the liking of traditionalists, but may be better received by the scientists and designers of cybernetics who can make a difference to the growth of the discipline of cybernetics.