Negative Cybernetics

摘要

Bateson argued that cybernetic thinking is essentially negative in character. Arguing against successionist causal thinking, he states: Causal explanation is usually positive. We say that billiard ball B moved in such and such a direction because billiard ball A hit it at such and such an angle. In contrast to this, cybernetic explanation is always negative. We consider what alternative possibilities could conceivably have occurred and then ask why many of the alternatives were not followed, so that the particular event was one of those few which could, in fact, occur. (Bateson, 1971, p. 407) The negative process of considering and eliminating alternative possibilities is not just applicable to billiard balls. It is applicable to the emergence and interaction of ideas-including the ideas of cybernetics itself. Negative thinking in this context is a process of critique: a deep exploration of what shapes the ideas that we have. In second-order cybernetics, there were attempts to formalize mechanisms whereby concepts arise and thinking occurs. Yet, whether the formalism is Pask's conversation theory, Maturana's autopoiesis or Von Foerster's eigenforms, the abstraction tends to invite a positive presentation, not a negative one: There is the temptation to say 'This is how it is,' not 'These may be the constraints which bear upon my belief that this is the case.'