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Felix Geyer, Johannes van der Zouwen.
Sociocybernetic Paradoxes: observation, control and evolution of self-steering systems.
SAGE. 1986

Efforts to solve large-scale problems in our complex modern society, such as inflation or the arms race, have often demonstrated the non-governability of the social processes involved. In this book, thirteen distinguished scholars examine, and try to reconcile, the paradox that social systems tend to steer themselves with the knowledge that they are at the same time subject to steering and control from outside. ‘Sociocybernetics’ is the term they have coined to describe the tools they use to analyse the paradox: tools which have themselves both evolved from and influenced cybernetics and general systems theory.

Part One looks at concrete experiences of the steering of specific social systems. Part Two examines the planning, hierarchy and views of society, and also the role of social science within it; and Part Three presents the wider context—evolution, ‘autopoiesis’ and dialogue—of governing and planning social systems. The book contains contributions from well-known writers in the field such as Niklas Luhmann, Thomas Baumgartner, and Arvid Aulin; and a special glossary of sociocybernetic terms has been added.

Sociocybernetic Paradoxes presents a survey of both the possibilities and limitations of sociocybemetics in the analysis and treatment of social problems. This stimulating work will be of interest to academics and students within the social sciences, cybernetics, general systems theory and those professionally interested in the problems of social control.

Felix Geyer, Johannes van der Zouwen.
Sociocybernetics: complexity, autopoiesis, and observation of social systems.
Greenwood Press. 2001