SUO: Lattices, Objects, Signs
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LOS. Note 1
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| The most fundamental concept in cybernetics is that of "difference",
| either that two things are recognisably different or that one thing
| has changed with time.
|
| W. Ross Ashby,
|'An Introduction to Cybernetics',
| Chapman & Hall, London, UK, 1956,
| Methuen & Company, London, UK, 1964.
It seems like we are always at arriving at this same sort of juncture,
where we have to compare different theories of the world, either for
the sake of organizing them in an ordered fashion, for tracking the
evolution of theories as we find them forced to change through time,
or perhaps for the sake of choosing a theory to guide our conduct.
Historically speaking, if you look at the record, people are just as likely
to back away from this task as they are to forge ahead and tackle it squarely.
One of the reasons for this typical loss of nerve is the lack of powerful enough
intellectual techniques for dealing with its actual complexities and difficulties.
And one of the reasons for this present state of technical decrepitude is all the
bad habits that have accumulated from centuries of a priori reductive thinking
that has everybody bamboozled into believing that nothing much worth doing
really has a right to be all that complicated.
It may be that first order theories are the nicest kind, and that
first order inference rules will someday suffice to do something
truly useful within the context of a given first order theory,
but the comparative study of first order theories cannot be
carried out by first order means alone, nor even by purely
deductive means alone. A quantum of critical reflection
is required, and that is something that cannot help but
to kick the order of intention into a higher orbit.
Jon Awbrey
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