Reintroducing communication into cybernetics

Abstract

The paper recalls some sceptical comments Norbert Wiener made regard- ing the potential use of cybernetics in social sciences. A few social scientists were se- duced by cybernetics from the beginning, but cybernetics never really caught on in so- ciology. The paper argues that one reason for this may lie in the mathematical theory of communication entertained by early cybernetics. This theory which maintaines that there are probability distributions of possible communication is at odds with the socio- logical theory's idea of a communication driven by improbable understanding. Yet the move from first-order cybernetics to second-order cybernetics, by re-entering the ob- server into the very systems she observes, provides for a bridge between cybernetics and sociology.