Self-Org Advisory Board
Ranulph Glanville (Portsmouth) | Alfred Inselberg (Tel Aviv)
Josef Mitterer (Klagenfurt) | S.J. Schmidt (Münster)
Organizer: Albert Müller | Karl H. Müller (Vienna)
Objectives:
Approximately 50 years ago the theme of self-organization became a hot scientific issue. By 1960 the first big volume on self-organization was edited by Yovits and Cameron. This book contained several articles by Heinz von Foerster, Gordon Pask and other members from Heinz’ Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL). In 1961 Heinz von Foerster organized a large conference on self-organizing systems in Urbana and a comprehensive volume was edited by Foerster and Zopf in the year 1962 under the title “Principles of Self-Organization”.
The Conference wants to bring together two groups of experts who are either highly acquainted with the work of Heinz von Foerster or with recent advances in the theory of self-organizing systems.
Scope:
This conference will be focused on two different subjects, namely on the problems and challenges of self-organizing and emergent systems on the one hand and on Heinz von Foerster and his 100th birthday on the other hand.
Self-organization and emergence have become two highly related concepts although one can have self-organization without emergence or emergence without self-organization. In recent decades it became more and more clear that self-organization or emergence are not only concentrated in the domains of the natural sciences like chemistry or evolutionary biology, but many relevant societal processes occur in a mode of emergent self-organization, too. Due to the ubiquity of the dual phenomena of self-organization and emergence the conference wants to explore whether one can find more general principles and rules which are characteristic for self-organizing and emergent systems across different natural or societal arenas.
Due to the celebration of Heinz von Foerster’s 100th birthday the second focus of the presentations lies in the work and in the impact of Heinz von Foerster. On this issue, several new books on Heinz von Foerster will be presented and a series of new books will be made available which highlight contemporary advances in fields like Radical Constructivism or Second-order Cybernetics.
Invited and confirmed speakers (preliminary):
Dirk Baecker (Witten) | Graham Barnes (Stockholm)
Albert-László Barabási (Boston) | Pille Bunnell (Toronto)
Bruce Clarke (Texas Tech) | Yves Couder (Paris)
Heike Egner (Klagenfurt) | Hans R. Fischer (Heidelberg)
Ranulph Glanville (Portsmouth)| Günter Haag (Stuttgart)
John Holland (Santa Fe) |
Theo Hug (Innsbruck)
Alfred Inselberg (Tel Aviv) | Louis Kauffman (Chicago)
Tatiana Medvedeva (Novosibirsk) | Pei Ling Lai (Taiwan)
Jack Lochhead (Amherst) | John Mingers (Kent)
Paul Pangaro (New York) | Claus Pias (Lüneburg)
S.J. Schmidt (Münster) | Paul C. Schroeder (Orono)
Bernard Scott (Swindon) | Didier Sornette (Zürich)
Stuart A. Umpleby (Washington) | Ernst Weichselbaum (Vienna)
V.I. Yukalov (Dubna)
Contributed papers: please send application with abstract to hafner@wisdom.at (Subject: Self-Org11); available time for presentation depending on the number of accepted contributions.
Conference secretariat: hafner@wisdom.at
The Proceedings of Self-Org will be published in the book series “Complexity| Design| Society” (edition echoraum) and in the journal “Constructivist Foundations”.
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