Sociocybernetics

The Origins of Sociocybernetics

There are close associations between sociocybernetics and older forms of social systems theory such as those of Herbert Spencer and Edward Alsworth Ross. Norbert Wiener, often attributed the title of “the father of cybernetics,” was one of the first to point out the possibility for a theory transfer of cybernetics to the study of society. It is for this reason that the origins of sociocybernetics are often located in engineering. At the outset of the theory transfer, the cybernetics of society very quickly became entangled with moreestablished notions of the social system.

Cybernetic models of control are often mistakenly believed to have been established in sociology through the work of Talcott Parsons. Although Parsons alluded to cybernetics, his structural functionalism has been deemed largely unsuitable for the task of integrating the principles of cybernetics into [Page 898]sociology. The most significant figure to effectuate the transfer was Walter Buckley, who is now widely regarded as the father of sociocybernetics.

Given the roots of sociocybernetics in mathematical and computational science, it is not surprising to discover an underlying attitude of scientific unity in its application. As a result, some of the tone of explanation that the theory transfer involves was initially met with a degree of suspicion in mainstream sociology. Yet sociocybernetics is not a simple theory transfer from the physical sciences to the social sciences. Social systems require different treatment than physical systems, and the approach that is sociocybernetics would eventually reflect that difference. Social systems are not mechanistic systems but are related to complex adaptive and thinking people, they cannot therefore be likened to the steering mechanism of an antiaircraft battery or an equilibrium-seeking thermostat. With this in mind, one of the most significant theoretical developments in the emergence of sociocybernetics was the development of the second-order cybernetics.

Second-order cybernetics involved a shift in thinking from observed to observing systems. Knowledge became based on the difference between the observer and the observed and both were intricately linked. The researcher would become observed as part of the system, which was in turn continually and actively constructed. The central implication of this was that all observations in society were essentially self-observations. What made it more complicated was that systems themselves often change through the process of observation. The dual problems of self-reference and self-organization therefore became one of the defining problems of sociocybernetics. These issues also have significant implications for the problem of governance, for example, how is it possible to govern or steer a society full of complex, self-referring, and adaptive systems?

Sociocybernetic Variants

Sociocybernetics also reflects the well-established division between actor and communication-centered theory in social science. For some, the unit of analysis is the actor, where this refers to the actor or organization, and society as a whole is formed on the basis of interacting actors. For others, the unit of analysis is communications and how these are organized: The work of Niklas Luhmann stands in direct contrast to an action-centered frame of reference, for example, because it focuses on communications and their organization.

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