International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

In the epistemological critique of science, an attempt to explore the psychological and sociological roots of the ways scientific theories and models are established ("constructed ").

One of the first steps in this investigation has been Th. KUHN's work on the "Structure of Scientific Revolutions".

From a cybernetic-systemic viewpoint, H.von FOERSTER's comments about "objectivity" as "… a subject's delusion that observing can be done without him" (1983), led him to his Cybernetics of "Observing systems", no doubt, a voluntary ambiguity in terms.

von FOERSTER has been moreover an inspirator of H. MATURANA's autopoiesis and organizational closure, applied to the ways our brains construct their own structural frames and become somehow limited by their organizational closure as to what they are able to observe and the ways they observe it.

It should be however noted that cross-examination by various of von Foerster's "subjects" - if not resulting in collective delusion as it occurs sometimes - offers a base for what is generally called "objectivity" through compared observations.

Anyhow, in C. EMMECHE's words: "Theories are never pure copies but always help to constitute the "objects" that they connect into a rational whole. Theories utilize models of every kind as tools, and these models are projected onto the object's domain in order to compare the model's behavior with that of "reality". This applies regardless of whether we are speaking of purely verbal, informal models, physical models, or formal models that can eventually be simulated" (1994, p.162).

It is noteworthy to see EMMECHE put "reality" within quotation marks.

This way to question the "reality of reality" is in fact only a way to question our effective capacity to know reality - without quotation marks - "as it is", with quotation marks!.

This led however to a very strong reaction from physicists, as A. SOKAL and J. BRICMONT, who cannot admit that any description of reality is as valuable as any other, and can be left to the whims of self-appointed philosophers of science (1997). They seem to be at least partly right on both points: it is obvious - even pragmatically - that NEWTON's physics operativity speaks well for its value as a representation of reality, whatever this intrinsically means.

…However, EINSTEIN - two centuries later - proposed a wider representation, which did not disprove Newtonian mechanics, but proved still more operative in embracing a wider section of reality. In both case, these representations had to be finally admitted by consensus (i.e. in some cases a very deep paradigmatic change at the psycho-social level of the scientific establishment - KUHN!).

Of course, it would be unreasonable to doubt that science obtains in its progress more and more efficient (better and better?!) representations of reality. But we can never be sure that its most recent word is the last and uncontrastable word (as noted by POPPER).

All this boils down to the constant necessity to maintain a critical view, not so much about reality as of ourselves as "observing systems". After all, SOKAl and BRICMONT too are observers, construct theories, or adhere to theories constructed by their colleagues.

Very recently, a quite sharp turn can be observed in the ways scientific models and theories could be constructed.

Just as during the recent centuries the progress of scientific instruments became a motor of our changing view of reality, it seems that we are again on the edge of a wholly new way to create models and theories: by computer simulation.

EMMECHE, for instance, observes that we are entering the era of bio-Iogics through the construction of computer models of biological behavior (Ibid, p.163). A program is constructed with rules that are hypothized to govern some specific biological behavior and the results of simulation induces us to confirm or discard our preconceived views: a fine way for observing "observing systems", as observers.

This could be considered a kind of incipient scientific constructivism.

→ Derealization; Model building; Model making; Model validation;Ontological skepticism or agnosticism; Realism; Reality