Рефлексивные процессы и управление. Сборник материалов XI Международного симпозиума 16-17 октября 2017 г., Москва

Russians feel a need to understand the world as a whole. Therefore, they emphasize different patterns in the world, society and nature than are emphasized in the Western intellectual tradition. For example, academician N. N. Moiseev stressesed that the formation of a global collective consciousness lays the foundation for the development of an information society. He wrote: "The notion of collective consciousness is a fundamental notion of civilization… Civilization itself could not emerge without development of a collective consciousness. This phenomenon emerges as an effect of the necessity and possibility of information exchange among individual consciousnesses, evolution of collective memory and organisation of collective efforts in decision making." [Moiseev, 2000] Western academics are more likely to speak about "shared beliefs and values" rather than a "collective consciousness."

4. Russians prefer a systematic approach and have a tendency to create general theories. Examples are such well-known names as N. I. Lobachevsky, D. I. Mendeleev, A. A. Bogdanov, N. F. Fedorov, V. I. Vernadsky, K. E. Tsiolkovsky and others.

Hence, Russian scientific thinking can be characterized by thesystems approach, a striving to create general theories, including a moral component in them,and acceptance of irrationality.

Comparison of V. E. Lepskiy’s and S. A. Umpleby’s theories of cybernetics

Understanding the differences in intellectual traditions leads us to a deeper understanding of the theories of cybernetics of V. Lepsky and S. Umpleby as representatives of these scientific traditions.Table 1 presents a description of the development of cybernetics, made by S. Umpleby.

Table 1. Three versions of cybernetics

In spite of the fact that the table is called "Three versions of cybernetics," Western scholars only single out cybernetics of the first and second orders. Cybernetics of the second order includes a biological and social version. It arose from "experimental epistemology." The goal was to understand the processes of cognition on the basis of neurophysiological experiments, as a result of which cyberneticians came to the conclusion that the observer can not be excluded from science.

Table 2. Description of V. E. Lepskiy's theory using S. A. Umpleby’s criteria

The Russian interpretation of second-order cybernetics is different from the Western concept of it. Table 2 presents a description of Lepskiy's theory using Umpleby's criteria.

The development of the conception of third-order cybernetics is based on Russian ideas: the activity approach, the typology of scientific rationality, the inclusion of the moral component, etc., are not well known in the West, which leads to some misunderstanding of concepts.

Conclusions

Briefly, the main differences between the theories of V. E. Lepskiy and S. A. Umpleby, from our point of view, arethe following:

– the American vision of second order cybernetics includes the biological and social versions; the development of cybernetics takes place within the framework of the paradigms of classical and non-classical rationality;

– the Russian vision of the second order cybernetics excludes from consideration the biological version, in fact, reducing second order cybernetics to the cybernetics of the individual subject (observer) and, indirectly, its values (through the choice of methods and means of studying the object), in contrast to the third-order cybernetics concept with its focus on the social (meta subject);

– Western scholars do not consider third-order cybernetics to be necessary, since the inclusion of an observer (subject) in the field of science, from their point of view, solves the problem of including social values and goals into consideration [Medvedeva, Umpleby, 2003];

– it seems that V. Lepskiy's theory of the third-order of cybernetics develops in the direction of typically Russian ideas: "noosphere", "collective consciousness", "co-evolution", etc., i.e. it is not just social cybernetics, but cybernetics of environments, and probably one can say cybernetics of nature.

The presented differences demonstrate the great potential forideas from Russian and Western scientists to enrich the further development of cybernetics and science in East and West.

References

1. Platonov O. A. Russian civilization. History and ideology of Russian people. – Moscow: Algorithm, 2010. – 944 p.

2. Lepskiy V. E. Evolution of cybernetics: philosophical and methodological analysis. -Kybernetes, 2017.

3. Umpleby S. A. A History of the Cybernetics Movement in the United States // Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, Vol. 91, No. 2, Summer 2005, pp. 54–66.

4. Moiseev N. N. The fate of civilization. The path of the mind. – M.: Languages of Russian Cultures, 2000. – 224 p.