Abstract
This essay is the core of our reflections on cybernetics. It is the only essay in this Part that tries to describe concretely what cybernetics can achieve. Written in the fall of 1967 but unpublished until now, it was inspired by a lecture on “Peacelessness as Mental Illness” delivered in Bethel in 1967 (published in Der ungesicherte Friede; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969). On that occasion the question arose whether it is medically justifiable, or merely metaphoric, to call the inability to maintain peace an illness. As far as I can see, contemporary medicine lacks a sufficiently clear concept of illness to decide this question. Since I had no desire to merely skirt the issue, I was faced with the task of outlining a scientifically justifiable definition of illness. The result is presented in Sect. 6.2 of this essay; its social application is very briefly sketched in Sect. 6.4.
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Notes
- 1.
This text was first published in: The Unity of Nature (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1980) and translated by Francis J. Zucker from: Die Einheit der Natur, (Munich: Hanser, 1971): III.4.
- 2.
Cf footnote 1 in: “Parmenides and the Graylag goose” (Chap. 7 in this volume).
- 3.
Cf. “Parmenides and the Graylag goose” (Chap. 7 in this volume).
- 4.
I owe this interpretation to a remark made years ago by Georg Picht.
- 5.
Cf. Gaiser (1963).
- 6.
An optimum probably exists for a finite number of parameters; but the number of possible parameters in organic life is at least ‘practically’ infinite; i.e. the past history of life has surely been too short to reach such a possible optimum.
- 7.
von Weizsäcker (1949), lecture IX.
- 8.
Allusion is here being made to a work by K. Lorenz whose German title, translated literally, is ‘The So-Called Evil’. The title of the English translation is ‘On Aggression’—translator.
- 9.
See Patzig (1964).
- 10.
The categorical judgement, which assigns or denies a predicate to a subject, serves as the model for ‘speech’.
- 11.
F. Nietzsche: The Will to Power, No. 493.
References
Gaiser, K., 1963: Platons ungeschriebene Lehre (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett).
Patzig, C. G., 1964: in: Argumentationen, Festschrift für Josef König (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht).
von Weizsäcker, C. F., 1949: The History of Nature (Chicago: Chicago University Press).
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von Weizsäcker, C.F. (2014). Models of Health and Illness, Good and Evil, Truth and Falseness. In: Drieschner, M. (eds) Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker: Major Texts in Philosophy. SpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science and Practice(), vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03671-7_6
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