Science and philosophy are both private and public enterprises. There is a constant oscillation between our personal search for knowledge and understanding and the self-organization of society.

The re-generation lounge presents essays and public letters which concern personal and public matters and were published in the journal “Patterns” issued by the Chaos Theory Network and the American Society for Cybernetics. They address contemporary dynamics in science and nature from a very personal point of view, yet also discuss the possibilities of a conference on the methods and theories developed in Heinz von Foerster’s Biological Computer Lab.

The essays and letters raise fundamental issues of present-day society and invite those who want to create different ways of communicating, free thinking and acting – in Heinz von Foerster’s words: “the non-trivialized” – to make it a public and private affair to join a global dialogue.

Heinz von Foerster was one of many outstanding scientists who influenced and still influence the world. An extraordinary person, scientist, and philosopher, he made a contribution to science and humanity that is of a both theoretical and practical nature. As a physicist, biologist, and philosopher, he combined the “hard” and the “soft” sciences and was one of the founders of first and the inventor of second order cybernetics. He and Gotthard Günther were crucial pioneers of artificial intelligence and parallel processing. Together with Gregory Bateson, he had a major impact on systemic therapy. And when he worked for Stafford Beer, his ideas of self-organization were ground-breaking for the economic sciences. All of Foerster’s endeavors concerned ethic issues and the realm of human communication.

^{© Lucas Pawlik}