2003-06-21

Transformation in Cybernetic Explanation


[The full text of Gregory Bateson's essay is here
http://www.burlgrey.com/constructivism/cyberneticsgb.htm
It appears as the first essay in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Part V:
Epistemology and Ecology, and is there reprinted from American Behavioral
Scientist (1967).

It's one of those essays where the minimum text needed to describe the ideas
communicated by it is the essay itself. Awesome.]


Causal explanation is usually positive. We say that billiard ball B moved in
such and such a direction because billiard ball A hit it at such and such an
angle. In contrast to this, cybernetic explanation is always negative. We
consider what alternative possibilities could conceivably have occurred and
then ask why many of the alternatives were not followed, so that the particular
event was one of those few which could, in fact, occur. The classical example
of this type of explanation is the theory of evolution under natural selection. 

[It's interesting to see how much is tied together here. Counterfactual history
as what-events-would-have-to-lead-to-X as opposed to what-what-follow-X. And
evolution as not a goal-based system, but cutting edges of possibilities.]


In cybernetic language, the course of events is said to be subject to
restraints, and it is assumed that, apart from such restraints, the pathways of
change would be governed only by equality of probability. In fact, the
"restraints" upon which cybernetic explanation depends can in all cases be
regarded as factors which determine inequality of probability.

[The idea of constraints involves some kind of persistence of the thing
constrained. Whereas a positive system allows some kind of domino effect, an
event that can tumble through a system, a negative system means that there is
*something* trying to push through, and the system steers it by its
construction.]


Another tactic of mathematical proof which has its counterpart in the
construction of cybernetic explanations is the use of "mapping" or rigorous
metaphor. An algebraic proposition may, for example, be mapped onto a system of
geometric coordinates and there proven by geometric methods. In cybernetics,
mapping appears as a technique of explanation whenever a conceptual "model" is
invoked or, more concretely, when a computer is used to simulate a complex
communicational process. But this is not the only appearance of mapping in this
science. Formal processes of mapping, translation, or transformation are, in
principle, imputed to every step of any sequence of phenomena which the
cyberneticist is attempting to explain. These mappings or transformations may
be very complex, e.g., where the output of some machine is regarded as a
transform of the input; or they may be very simple, e.g., where the rotation of
a shaft at a given point along its length is regarded as a transform (albeit
identical) of its rotation at some previous point.

The relations which remain constant under such transformation may be of any
conceivable kind.

[If the universe, by which I mean the haeccity with all its potentials rather
than the current instance, can be conceived of as a cybernetic system, then
Bateson's saying it can be thought of an a series of transformations, as
complex as you like. These are the things constrained.]