Carl Auer International

Understanding Systems

Translated from the German by Karen Leube
161 p., Hardcover, 2002
€ 25.50
ISBN 978-3-89670-234-0
Original Title: Wahrheit ist die Erfindung eines Luegners

How real is reality? Are our images of the world mere inventions, or does an external reality correspond to them? Is it possible to know truth?
These are the questions that physicist and philosopher Heinz von Foerster and journalist Bernhard Poerksen debate about in their conversations. Together, they explore the borders of our capacity for knowledge. They discuss the seeming objectivity of our sensual perception, the consequences of "truth terrorism" and the connections between knowledge and ethics, sight and insight.

Reviews

Understandig Systems, a delightful, precious little book.
This book provides a concise and understandable overview and summary of the key issues and main lines of Heinz von Foerster´s thinking about cybernetics and constructivism.
The book is a concise and entertaining introduction to Heinz von Foerster´s philosophy and scientific work. His conversations with Bernhard Poerksen, a highly competent counterpart, make it easy and enjoyable to read, without loss of scientific and philosophical depth and rigor. This lively and fascinating dialogue, illustrated by quite a number of anecdotes, is intriguing with the most important concepts of cybernetics, second order cybernetics, and constructivism explained in a non-technical and non-mathematical language. The reader will find the book difficult to put down.
Understanding Systems presents in a nutshell a truly revolutionary view of human beings, their thinking, and the world they live in. It outlines a new way of thinking with the promise of the possibility of providing a new orientation and a new strategy for life in a highly complex, highly dynamic, and highly uncertain world such as ours at the beginning of the 3rd Millennium.
Understanding Systems can be fully recommended to any reader who is interested in understanding the contemporary world or is seeking strategies for coping with it, irrespective of discipline or specialization.
Bernd R. Hornung (Journal of Sociocybernetics, 2002/2003 (Nr. 2))

This book is rich with insights, full of inspiring expression and also filled with wisdom so that you really want to distribute it like a leaflet.
(Book Review German Radio, )

I recommend this book not only to the cybernetics and systems community, but to anyone.
I want to thank the self-effacing Bernhard Poerksen for the immense, and immensely valuable, effort he put into understanding Heinz´s thought so that he could structure both the interviews and then the organising of them into a book.
Ranulph Glanville (Cybernetics and Human Knowing, 10(3/4), 2003)

Heinz von Foerster

Heinz von Foerster, 1911–2002, was known as the "Socrates of cybernetic thought". After studying physics in Vienna, he was employed by various research laboratories in Germany and Austria. At the close of the Second World War, he worked for a short time as a journalist and consultant for a telephone company. During this period he wrote his first book, Das Gedaechtnis: Eine quantenmechanische Untersuchung [Memory: A Quantum Physical Study]. Von Foerster emigrated to the U.S. in 1949. There he was welcomed into a circle of scientists who came together regularly at the invitation of the Macy Foundation during the 1950s (Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann, Gregory Bateson, Margaret Mead, Warren McCulloch). Here cybernetic thought was given its shape.
In 1957 Heinz von Foerster established the Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL) at the University of Illinois, where he had a professorship until his retirement in 1976. The BCL served as a venue for meetings of avant garde thinkers from all over the world.

Bernhard Poerksen

Bernhard Poerksen is junior professor of journalism and communication science at the University of Hamburg/Germany. He was awarded a Ph.D. for a thesis on the language of neo-Nazis.

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