IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2015 - 55

which was outside but should be inside, and placing it
within the confines of the universe. Thus, the universe
is in a state of constant expansion" [21, p. 122]. Noting that "the new is beyond prediction" [21], Glanville
describes designing [22], [23] as starting from ignorance (which he exemplifies in the image of the black
box [16, p. 14]), and he values ignorance as a source of
knowing (which he exemplifies in the image of the white
box [16, p. 15]). The whitening of a black box, Glanville
explains, i.e., the construction of a workable explanation of its behavior through circular interaction with it, is
observer-dependent.
Design researchers including Rittel [9, pp. 228ff.]
and Krippendorff [24, pp. 70-75] also frame designing in terms of ethics. Rittel [25, p. 325], describes the
design process as characterized by a "symmetry of
ignorance," and Schön, as a constructivist close to the
cybernetic perspective, explains that practice in many
fields is largely based on tacit rather than explicit knowing: "Often, we cannot say what it is that we know. When
we try to describe it, we find ourselves at a loss, or we
produce descriptions that are obviously inappropriate.
Our knowing is ordinarily tacit, implicit in our patterns
of action and in our feel for the stuff with which we
are dealing" [26, p. 21]. Hence, art and design have
developed an interest in practice-based and practiceled research, in which "professional and/or creative
practices [..] play an instrumental part in an inquiry"
[33, p. 11]. Glanville frames the activity of researching
similarly as an observer-dependent expansion of what
is known by way of building descriptions (models) of the
as-yet unknown through circular interaction. Glanville
concludes that therefore, contrary to the general view,
(scientific) research is a restricted subcategory of the
general human activity of designing, rather than design
being a disciplinary subset of the general activity of
(scientific) research [27] (see also Jonas [28]). Rittel [9,
pp. 111ff.] and Glanville [29] distinguish two kinds of
models: "Models of" (which illustrate), and "models for"
(which facilitate action).
Second-order cybernetics is often described as
having superseded the more deterministic and objectivist first-order cybernetics, and as having rendered
first-order cybernetics obsolete. Glanville challenges
this notion and argues that "first order cybernetics is
a special, simplified, restricted (and linear) version of
second order Cybernetics" [30, p. 60]. He recognizes an
embryo of second-order cybernetics already in Ashby's
[8, pp. 86-218] early discussion of the black box. Wiener's
early work in cybernetics [31, pp. x-xii], [32, pp. 42-44]
likewise features the black box.
In the following, it will be shown that several key
concepts of second-order cybernetic design theory can
be discerned in Wiener's writings. The act of invention

september 2015

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Instead of an absolute external ideal,
Wiener sees ethics as based on a
process of internal guidance.

in particular can be recognized not only in Wiener's
contributions to the forging of the cybernetics discipline
and in his seminal mathematics - it is in itself a subject
he examined historically and philosophically. Looking
across a selection of Wiener's writings, self-referential
analogies appear between the causal modes present in
his hands-on research on the one hand and in his theory
of innovation on the other hand, and concepts of today's
second-order cybernetic design theory can be identified.

From Because-Of to In-Order-To,
and on to Design
The intentional manipulation of future affairs by present
action is a central concern in both design and cybernetics. Wiener defines feedback as "the property of being
able to adjust future conduct by past performance" [34,
p. 33]. Simon defines designing as "devis[ing] courses
of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones" [6, p. 111]. These similar agendas represent departures from the formal hypothetical-deductive
method of natural science and its focus on description,
explanation, and sometimes, prediction. Design theorist
Buchanan contrasts design and science thus: "...the
designer must discover or invent a particular subject out
of the problems and issues of specific circumstances.
This sharply contrasts with the disciplines of science,
which are concerned with understanding the principles,
laws, rules, or structures that are necessarily embodied
in existing subject matters" [35, p. 15].
Cybernetics is known for transcending scientific
disciplines by developing (in the first instance through
the Macy Conferences) meta-theory and meta-language
that allow scientists from varied disciplines to talk to
one another about matters they can now recognize
as shared interests. Moreover, cybernetics recognizes
notions that natural science does not recognize. Comparing six traditions in systems research, Dent and
Umpleby [36] find all six traditions diverging from or
transcending the domain of natural science. They identify cybernetics as the most radical departure from
natural science for recognizing, among other notions:
circular causality; indeterminism, and observer dependency (and, along with observer dependency, ethics
[12, pp. 287-304]). Each of these notions is at the same
time central to design - at least when viewed from

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