• Self-Aware Science Creation
• John Bentley (bio)

"Sin is believing the lie that you are self-created, self-dependent and self-sustained."

—Saint Augustine

"Objectivity is the delusion that observations could be made without an observer."

—Heinz von Foerster

New Horizons for Second-Order Cybernetics is a collection of essays from an eclectic set of thinkers. Many of these essays comment directly on other parts of the text as often as they comment more generally on the state of the field of second-order cybernetics (SOC). In part II, Ronald R. Kline points out that proponents of a new science "often write histories of their field in order to do what sociologists call 'boundary work,'" a reference to part I. Kline is correct to suggest that this is a substantial function of the text. However, the editors and framers of the book have architected it in such a way as to go beyond a simple top-down dictation of a history of SOC. The editors employ a recursive approach, beginning with a prompt (or framing notion) and iterating outward, from commentaries on the prompt to commentaries on those commentaries, in an escalating cycle of reconsideration. At the high end of this recursion the work invites the reader to participate in the ongoing communal processing of the meaning of the SOC revolution. Relatedly, this recursive architecture allows the text to demonstrate and perform on itself the meta-leap to endo-mode science that some contributors describe as characteristic of SOC.

The text consists of two prologue chapters, a part I, a part II, and one epilogue chapter. Part I consists of a series of target articles about the theory of SOC, such as Louis H. Kauffman's formalization of eigenforms, and the practice, such as Ben Sweeting's exploration of the mutual interaction between SOC and design. Each target article is followed by several commentaries on the piece from other second-order cybernetic thinkers and a closing response to the commentaries by the target article's author. The second prologue chapter sets the stage for the exercise of part I and offers a categorization of and reflection on the ideas presented by the authors of part I. The second prologue chapter and all of Part I are noted to have been published previously in 2016 in the journal Constructivist Foundations volume 11, number 3. Part II consists of reflections from another set of thinkers on the contents and conclusions from the originally published set. The first prologue chapter and the epilogue integrate the critiques of part II.

A similar process of soliciting and then synthesizing experiences is used to create each level of the text described above. This process is a function that takes a base idea (prompt) and returns a more refined set of ideas. The function is applied to some unknown prompt (probably generated from many recursive applications of the function to an even more primal prompt idea, at least in an informal way) to generate the target articles of part 1. The same function is then applied to each of the target articles, generating the response commentaries. Together these function applications produce part I and the second prologue chapter, which constitute an organized, if rough, overview of the state of the field of SOC. The function is then applied once more, taking this overview as a prompt to produce the more refined and self-aware picture of SOC that is the entire text. The editors have highlighted this generative function by structuring the text around the prompt and response method, so recursion both generates and structures the text.

This structure fits very nicely with Kauffman's focus on eigenforms, thought objects that remain consistent as the domain around them evolves by acting upon itself. Michael R. Lissack elegantly connects eigenform and "distinction" via the idea of stability. Eigenforms provide the stability required to make general distinctions, posit a theory or tell a story in a complex, evolving, self-acting environment. Scientific theories are...

• 自我意识的科学创造
• 约翰·本特利（生物）

“罪恶相信你是自我创造，自我依赖和自我维持的谎言。”

—圣奥古斯丁

“客观性是没有观察者就可以进行观察的幻想。”

—亨氏·冯·佛斯特（Heinz von Foerster）

二阶控制论的新视野是一组折衷主义思想家的论文集。这些文章中有许多直接对文本的其他部分进行评论，就像对第二级控制论（SOC）领域的状态进行更一般的评论一样。在第二部分中，罗纳德·R·克莱恩（Ronald R. Kline）指出，新科学的拥护者“经常写出自己领域的历史以便进行社会学家所谓的“边界工作”。”文本的实质功能。但是，本书的编辑者和策划者以超越SOC历史的简单自上而下的指示的方式对其进行了设计。编辑者采用递归的方法，从提示（或构架概念）开始，然后向外迭代，从对提示的评论到对这些评论的评论，在不断升级的重新审议周期中。在此递归的最高端，这项工作邀请读者参加正在进行的有关SOC革命意义的公共处理。与此相关的是，这种递归体系结构允许文本自己演示和执行对内模科学的元飞跃，一些贡献者将其描述为SOC的特征。

正文由两个序言章节组成，第一部分，第二部分和一个结尾部分。第一部分包括一系列有关SOC理论的目标文章，例如Louis H. Kauffman对特征形式的形式化，以及实践，例如Ben Sweeting对SOC与设计之间相互影响的探讨。每篇目标文章后面都有来自其他二阶控制论思想家的几篇评论，并附有目标文章作者对评论的总结性回应。第二章为实施第一部分奠定了基础，并对第一部分作者提出的思想进行了分类和思考。第二章和第一部分的所有内容均已于2016年出版。建构主义基金会杂志第11卷第3期。第二部分包括另一组思想家对最初出版的内容和结论的反思。第一章的序言和结语整合了第二部分的批评。

征求和综合经验的类似过程用于创建上述文本的每个级别。此过程是一个具有基本提示（提示）并返回更完善的提示集的函数。将该函数应用于某个未知提示（可能是从该函数的许多递归应用程序生成的，甚至至少是一种非正式的提示想法，至少是以非正式的方式生成的），以生成第1部分的目标文章。然后，将相同的函数应用于每个对象。的目标文章，生成响应评论。这些功能应用程序共同构成了第一部分和第二章，它们构成了SOC领域状态的有组织的概述（如果粗略的话）。然后再次应用该功能，以此概述为提示，以产生整个文本的SOC更加细化和自我意识的图片。编辑者通过围绕提示和响应方法构造文本来突出显示此生成功能，因此递归既可以生成也可以构造文本。

这种结构非常适合考夫曼（Kauffman）对本征形式的关注，本征形式的思想对象随着自身周围环境的发展而保持一致。迈克尔·里萨克（Michael R. Lissack）通过稳定性的思想将特征形式与“区别”完美地联系在一起。本征形式提供了在复杂，不断发展的自我行动环境中进行一般区分，提出理论或讲述故事所需的稳定性。科学理论是...