Observing complexity : systems theory and postmodernity / William Rasch and Cary Wolfe, editors.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Rasch, William, 1949-

Wolfe, Cary.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Postmodernism.

System theory.

Physical Description:

vii, 308 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2000]

Summary:

The rubric of systems theory brings together conceptual models and approaches in the sciences and social sciences that study complexity. It attempts to provide a coherent means of describing all systems, whether organic or inorganic, and offers a theory of knowledge that can account for the integration of humans in the social, informational, and ecological systems in which we are enmeshed. An introduction to the major concepts and foremost thinkers of systems theory, this book brings systems theory into interaction with the major figures of postmodern theory. The format is multiplex and open -- a rich montage, including interviews, exemplary essays, and staged dialogues. Throughout, the writers' aim is not to solidity theory but to provide a thorough explication and an open-ended exploration of how systems theory can address, in a fresh and productive way, theoretical questions that too often have led to impasses between different schools of postmodern theory.

Contents:

1. Systems theory and/or postmodernism? : historical, political, and ethical frames. Why does society describe itself as postmodern? / Niklas Luhmann

No exit? (Response to Luhmann) / Peter Uwe Hohendahl

Pre- and post-dialectical materialisms : modeling praxis without subjects and objects / Marjorie Levinson

Immanent systems, transcendental temptations, and the limits of ethics / William Rasch

Rethinking the beyond within the real (response to Rasch) / Drucilla Cornell. 2. Of realism and recursivity : systems theory and the postmodern episteme. Theory of a different order : a conversation with Katherine Hayles and Niklas Luhmann / Niklas Luhmann ... [et al.]

Making the cut : the interplay of narrative and system, or what systems theory can't see / N. Katherine Hayles

In search of posthumanist theory : the second-order cybernetics of Maturana and Varela / Cary Wolfe. 3. Systems theory in resonance with major postmodernists. The limit of modernity : Luhmann and Lyotard on exclusion / William Rasch

Blinded me with science : motifs of observation and temporality in Lacan and Luhmann / Jonathan Elmer

Making contingency safe for liberalism : the pragmatics of epistemology in Rorty and Luhmann / Cary Wolfe

The autonomy of affect / Brian Massumi.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0816632979

0816632987

OCLC:

42812824