Understanding Understanding

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

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2. On Self-Organizing Systems and Their Environments

   • H. von Foerster

   Pages 1-19

3. Computation in Neural Nets

   • Heinz von Foerster

   Pages 21-100

4. What Is Memory that It May Have Hindsight and Foresight as well?

   • Heinz von Foerster

   Pages 101-131

5. Molecular Ethology, An Immodest Proposal for Semantic Clarification

   • Heinz von Foerster

   Pages 133-167

6. Thoughts and Notes on Cognition

   • Heinz von Foerster

   Pages 169-189

7. Responsibilities of Competence

   • Heinz von Foerster

   Pages 191-197

8. Perception of the Future and the Future of Perception

   • Heinz von Foerster

   Pages 199-210

9. On Constructing a Reality

   • Heinz von Foerster

   Pages 211-227

10. Cybernetics of Epistemology

    • Heinz von Foerster

    Pages 229-246

11. Notes on an Epistemology for Living Things

    Pages 247-259

12. Objects: Tokens for (Eigen-)Behaviors

    Pages 261-271

13. Disorder/Order: Discovery or Invention?

    • Heinz von Foerster

    Pages 273-282

14. Cybernetics of Cybernetics

    • Heinz von Foerster

    Pages 283-286

15. Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics

    • Heinz von Foerster

    Pages 287-304

16. For Niklas Luhmann: “How Recursive is Communication?”

    • Heinz von Foerster

    Pages 305-323

17. Introduction to Natural Magic

    • Heinz von Foerster, Paul Schroeder

    Pages 325-338

18. Publications

    • Heinz von Foerster

    Pages 339-349

19. Back Matter

    Pages 351-362

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In these essays Heinz von Foerster discusses some of the fundamental principles that govern how we know the world and how we process the information from which we derive that knowledge. Included are path- breaking articles concerning the principles of computation in neural nets (1967), the definition of self-organizing systems (1960), the nature of cognition (1970), as well as recent expansions on these themes (e.g. "How recursive is communication," 1993). Working with Norbert Wiener, Warren McCullough, and others in the 1960s and 1970s, von Foerster was one of the founders of the science of cybernetics, which has had profound effects both on modern systems theory and on the philosophy of cognition. At the Biological Computer Laboratory at the University of Illinois he produced the first parallel computers and contributed to many other developments in the theory of computation and cognition.

• Memory
• Niklas Luhmann
• Perception
• cognition
• communication
• cybernetics
• epistemology
• ethics
• knowledge
• self-organizing system
• systems theory

• Biological Computer Laboratory, Emeritus, University of Illinois, Urbana

  Heinz Foerster

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