Cybernetics for the Social Sciences

This publication meets a long-felt need to show the relevance of cybernetics for the social sciences (including psychology, sociology, and anthropology). User-friendly descriptions of the core concepts of cybernetics are provided, with examples of how they can be used in the social sciences. It is explained how cybernetics functions as a transdiscipline that unifies other disciplines and a metadiscipline that provides insights about how other disciplines function. An account of how cybernetics emerged as a distinct field is provided, following interdisciplinary meetings in the 1940s, convened to explore feedback and circular causality in biological and social systems. How encountering cybernetics transformed the author’s thinking and his understanding of life in general, is also recounted.

Sociocybernetics and Political Theory in a Complex World

Many of the basic concepts of political science and law were conceived during the Middle Ages, but were not adapted to the current times. The purpose of this study is to address this incongruity by incorporating ideas of cybernetics and complexity theory with political and constitutional theory in order to reconstitute it. In this process, the author offers a basic model of human sociability and alternative frameworks to the idea of the state, the constitution and the way it is applied in the separation of powers, the public/private distinction and constitutionalism.