CYBERNETICS

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CYBERNETICS & HUMAN KNOWING

A Journal of Second Order Cybernetics & Cyber-Semiotics
Vol. 4 no. 4 1997

Contents:

Eric Schwarz:

Eric Schwarz: About the Possible Convergence

between Science and Spirituality (abstract)

Sren Brier: Foreword (full text)

About the Possible Convergence

between Science and Spirituality

Subject-headings:
Spirituality ; Systems science ; Circularity ;
Autonomy

Axel Randrup: Thematic Foreword (full text)

Abstract
Elaine Smith: Transubstantiation (full text)
Tetsunori Koizumi: Nature, Spirituality, and
Environmental Ethics: East Meets West
(abstract)
Axel Randrup: An Alternative to Materialism:
Converging Evidence from Nature Spirituality
and Natural Science (abstract)

Discussion:
Pierre Marchais: On the concept of spirituality
(full text)

Praxis:
Ervin Laszlo: Planetary Consciousness: Our
next Evolutionary Step (full text)
Axel Randrup: Spirituality sig (full text)

Columns:
Louis H. Kauffman: Virtual Logic - The Gremlin
and the Self (full text)
Ranulph Glanville: A Cybernetic Musing: In the
Animal and the Machine (full text)

The central point made in this contribution is

that a convergence may be emerging between
the discovery by science, specifically by
systems science, of the notion of wholeness
and its existential nature, and the dimension
of the spiritual experience. The starting point
of the paper is the need for a new vision and
for new mental tools to apprehend the
numerous and unexpected ecological, social
and economical problems of modern
societies; these problems are essentially due
to the almost exclusive use of the
reductionist empirico-rationalist paradigm.
The diagnostic made here is that when
complex situations are analyzed as aggregates
of simpler situations, unexpected outcomes
are due to happen. Systems science, with the
holistic notion of system and with the
cybernetical notion of circular causality, is a
promising tool to interpret complex selforganizing systems.
The expansion of systems science, especially
of the holistic aspect of systems may be
slowed down by the difficulty for mainstream
scientists to naturalize the notion and the
existential nature of wholeness. The remark
that, in history, the theoretical notions have
often followed the practice, as was the case
for the notions of energy and of information,

http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/vol4/v4-4Schwarz.htm

09-Mar-15

CYBERNETICS

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Reviews:
Gertrudis Van de Vijver: Signs and Systems
(full text)

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gives the hope that the increasing

confrontation between contemporary human
beings and complex, strongly interdependent,
therefore holistic situations, will trigger the
emergence of holistic concepts.
After giving some indications about the
nature of spirituality, of the spiritual
experience, and of the Philosophia Perennis,
we summarize the main features of a holistic
metamodel to interpret the dynamics of selforganizing systems and their evolution
toward complexity and autonomy. An
important consequence of this metamodel is
that the reality of the world is not reduced to
its material aspect, but has two equally
important aspects: material-objectal and
immaterial-relational, the conjunction of
which forms the existential whole. In the last
part, we suggest some correspondences with
the spiritual tradition.

This Web edition of Cybernetics and Human Knowing is edited by M&T Thellefsen
Rev. - 12-06-98

http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/vol4/v4-4Schwarz.htm

09-Mar-15