The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name: Seven Days with Second-Order Cybernetics eBook

Heinz von Foerster was the inventor of second-order cybernetics, which recognizes the investigator as part of the system he is investigating. The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name provides an accessible, nonmathematical, and comprehensive overview of von Foerster’s cybernetic ideas and of the philosophy latent within them. It distills concepts scattered across the lifework of this scientific polymath and influential interdisciplinarian. At the same time, as a book-length interview, it does justice to von Foerster’s élan as a speaker and improviser, his skill as a raconteur.Developed from a week-long conversation between the editors and von Foerster near the end of his life, this work playfully engages von Foerster in developing the difference his notion of second-order cybernetics makes for topics ranging from emergence, life, order, and thermodynamics to observation, recursion, cognition, perception, memory, and communication.The book gives an English-speaking audience a new ease of access to the rich thought and generous spirit of this remarkable and protean thinker.

Additional ISBNs

0823255611, 0823255603, 9780823255610, 9780823255603

The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name: Seven Days with Second-Order Cybernetics is written by Heinz von Foerster and published by Fordham University Press. The Digital and eTextbook ISBNs for The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name are 9780823255634, 0823255638 and the print ISBNs are 9780823255610, 0823255611. Save up to 80% versus print by going digital with VitalSource. Additional ISBNs for this eTextbook include 0823255611, 0823255603, 9780823255610, 9780823255603.