Art by Dall-E
This is available as part of a book offering that is free for community members of Cyb3rSynLabs. Please check here (https://www.cyb3rsynlabs.com/c/books/) for Second Order Cybernetics Essays for Silicon Valley. The ebook version is available here (https://www.cyb3rsyn.com/products/soc-book)
Stay safe and always keep on learning…
In case you missed it, my last post was A Saint and a Leader:
Discover more from Harish's Notebook - My notes... Lean, Cybernetics, Quality & Data Science.
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Harish's Notebook - My notes... Lean, Cybernetics, Quality & Data Science. 
Thank you. It makes me think about thinking again.
Like a map is not a territory, so words are no objects. A map doesn’t refer to a territory, a map is used by a user to refer to a terrain. A map maker “makes” terrain into a “territory”, by mapping. This is why we have different maps for the same terrain: tourist map, public transport map, road map, military … I’ve always wondered why Korzybski used the word “territory” and not “terrain”, what I was inclined to use. I guess, this is why.
A map is not the territory it represents; but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.
— Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity, p. 58.
In the same way, words don’t represent a thing; people use words to refer to things, making these into objects.
The structure of the sentences accounts for the usefulness of language. This is why we talk in sentences like: “subject- verb – (in)direct object(s)”. A subject – observer – subjects things into objects. Like Weick wrote in his joke about baseball referees: “they’re noting, until I’ve called them”.
Again, like different maps, we’ve got different “languages” to refer to different uses of objectifying: scientifical, legally, economical, political, financial, … languages. Every group of people develops their own speak. And using the correct language invokes your belonging to that group (I’ve used this trick several times in job interviews).
Using the same word, take “chair”, induces different meanings. One cannot sit on the word chair, but use the word to refer to an object, to preside a court, to sit on a “back bench”, to “chair” a meeting, … . There’s even a Holy Seat. To paraphrase Paul Watzlawick : the relationship defines the content of the chair ;-).
The purpose of a thing – as an object – then becomes it’s uses by the user. So I don’t have to use “purpose” in cybernetics, except for the purpose of language: to distinguish (or discriminate) between groups of people. The (use of) language determines the territory.
—
You’re using the word “situation” and not “system” in second order cybernetics. I nowadays use the word “situation” in lieu of system almost always. The system is not the situation it represents; but its structure accounts for its usefulness. (I usually use the so-called “system archetypes”).
One “maps” a situation on a “system of thoughts*)”. Taking “input” apart in elements and reconfiguring it into a whole as “output”, an image or “map”. I’ve studied Biophysics and this is how our brains work: all kind of differences in “light or dark”, “on or off”, on two retinas are “woven” into a pattern of neural activity, being compared with an expected pattern, like a map. Big deviations from the expected – or “remembered” – trigger “attention”. The brain, as you will know, acts as a kind of future predicting machine, reducing variety.
*) I think we think in metaphors, images, representations of bodily experiences, which one translates into language. One doesn’t actually “store” maps and retrieves them. This metaphor could only be used after inventing map making. One recognizes, reconfiguring “a map”, using the situation as a map. This explains our use of the word “referring” or “making again”. And – funny note – the word ex-plain comes from out of (ex) flat surface (plane).
A situation is used as-if a map and this map “becomes” the situation. In this case I want the word “become” also to use as “becoming aware” and “appropriate” or “fitting”. If it wasn’t, one would change the map to fit the situation, being good enough. These processes of mapping one perceives as “awareness”.
The present situation presents the map and the map re-presents the situation present. It’s a double interact.
—
One finds oneself always “in a situation”. First order cybernetics can be called the study of observed situations – a map -, and second order cybernetics the study of observing situations – mapping. One cannot have the one (the first), without the other (the second).
Mapping conditions the maps. What you get is what you see, if you get what I mean.
The use of the word “order” seems to indicate to me, that using language induces order. Language relies on order, ordering words to convey meaning. Any natural situation will be experienced as “complex”, – only nature begets nature – so we call it a “system” until we made sense of it.
— additional thoughts
deleted
LikeLiked by 1 person