My first meeting with Silvio Ceccato - A remembrance of 1981

Milan, February 7, 1981

“The mind constituted itself in a magical way, without awareness”: I find this phrase by Silvio Ceccato transcribed in my notes from one of his conferences in 1981. In 1980 in Zurich, where I had been living for 10 years, a friend (Luciano Persico) had told me about Ceccato and I was fascinated by him.
Shortly after, during the summer holidays, while I was browsing in the bookstore, I found "La Terza Cibernetica" (“The Third Cybernetics”, Ceccato, 1974). Reading this book was like a revelation for me, I found in it what I had unconsciously been looking for for years.

At the end of 1980, after reading other books by Ceccato, my enthusiasm was such that I decided to contact Ceccato himself. On January 3, 1981, I wrote him a long letter, declaring among other things that I even thought I had found my calling and that I dreamed of being able to collaborate with him. Ceccato replied to me on January 9, we exchanged some letters and at the end of the month he proposed to meet in Milan on the occasion of a conference he was going to hold at the Hotel Palace (7.2.1981) entitled “Magic seen by a cybernetician”. He wrote: “it will finish at 5 pm and we will be able to chat.”

During the conference, as usual, I took a lot of notes. I was so focused on writing that in the end I felt like I had understood little or nothing. I was so ashamed of it that when the conference was about to end, I even thought about leaving the room (!) and going home without speaking to Ceccato. I was saved by my sense of duty: I had confirmed to Ceccato that I would be happy to meet him after the conference and I had to fulfill this commitment!

That meeting changed my life! It was the beginning of a collaboration that lasted for 17 years (until Ceccato's death, 12/1997) during which I gradually managed to lift the "veil of ignorance" that initially prevented me from fully understanding Ceccato's thought and set up the basis of my future studies dedicated up to today to the cybernetics of the mind.

How Objects Conform to Knowing

 A short paper to commemorate Kant’s 300th birthday

 "How Objects Conform to Knowing: Kant’s Example of a Line"

Marco Bettoni

1. Introduction

How do we know something in space, for instance a line? In 1787, at the core of his theory of knowledge, Kant mentions an example which answers this question in the following way (B 138) [1]:

“To know anything in space, for instance, a line, I must draw it”
(original: «Um aber irgend etwas im Raume zu erkennen, z.B. eine Linie, muss ich sie ziehen“).

In other words, in order to know (see, feel) a line in space I must do something (for example look in a certain way) or, more precisely, I must perform certain mental operations, call them “line operations”. We will see later that by "I must draw it" Kant does not refer to a physical line in space affecting our sense organs but only to a mental act.This means that even if there is no physical line involved, whenever I perform those line operations, then as a result, I will know a line. By performing “line operations” in space we obtain as a result lines, we know lines. This means that the relation between objects and knowing is of the kind result-to-operation (Fig. 1).  

Fig. 1 The relationship between objects and knowing

Look now at Figure 2: the white circles on a black background represent schematically stars in the night sky. There are no drawn (physical) lines, but according to Kant’s example, you could nonetheless be able to know (see) some line: how?

 

 

Fig. 2 The night sky (Ceccato 1980; Parini 1996)

If what we know in space depends on what we do, on the mental operations we perform, then, in the case of vision, what happens is that what we see depends on how we look. We can of course see Figure 2 as “chaos” but also see in it an ordered set of straight (Figure 3) or circular lines (Figure 4). And many other different ordered ways of looking at Figure 2 are possible (spiral lines, combined spiral and linear lines, etc.).

                      

Fig. 3 Straight lines that                                             Fig. 4 Circular lines that
can be seen in Fig. 2                                                  can be seen in Fig. 2

2. Fundamental question and answer

    In a famous letter to his friend Markus Herz (21.2.1772) Kant wrote that he was planning to publish a work in which he wanted to answer the question:

«on which ground is founded the relation between what we call 'Vorstellung' [knowledge unit, knowing] in us and the object» («auf welchem Grunde beruhet die Beziehung desjenigen, was man in uns Vorstellung nennt, auf den Gegenstand»).

Fifteen years later, in the second edition of his main work, the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant presents the answer to that question as the central hypothesis of his theory by saying that objects must conform to our knowing [2]. He also emphasizes that this "revolution" (so-called Copernican Revoltuion) constitutes the main purpose of the Critique (BXXII).

Fig. 5 Kant’s Copernican Revolution

In order to understand Kant's "Copernican Revolution" (objects must conform to our knowing) and its consequences for epistemology in 2024, the real challenge lies in a critical reflection upon the specific components of Kant's hypothesis, which amounts at asking 3 crucial questions:

1. What is Kant's conception of "object"?
2.  What is Kant's conception of "must conform to"?
3.  What is Kant's conception of "(faculty of) knowing"?

3. How a line conforms to our knowing

The basis for answering these 3 questions can be found in the Analytic of Concepts (Kant, B90 to B 169). As an example, consider, in the Deduction, Kant's summarized explanation of his hypothesis in the crucial § 17 in the B edition of the Critique [3] (B137, my translation based on Kemp-Smith):

“Understanding is, to use general terms, the faculty of knowledge.  This knowledge consists in the determinate relation of given knowledge units to an object; and an object is that in the concept of which the manifold of a given intuition is united. Now all unification of knowledge units demands in fact unity of consciousness in the synthesis of them.”

The mechanism described in this passage is that of "Vereinigung" (unification) of what we call "Vorstellungen" (knowledge units). Kant specifies further that this unification mechanism should act when "Vorstellungen" are synthesized ("in der Synthesis") and that the result of its operation is an (experiential) object. From this I conclude that this description could be clearly interpreted as an operational explanation (a proposition of a generative mechanism, Maturana 1988) of the totally new conception of "object" that Kant needs in order to articulate his Copernican Revolution.

Tightly related to that explanation, a few lines further Kant gives the previously mentioned example of a line, one of his most famous (and rare) examples [4] (B138, translation Kemp Smith):

„To know anything in space (for instance, a line), I must draw it, and thus synthetically bring into being a determinate combination of the given manifold, so that the unity of this act is at the same time the unity of consciousness (as in the concept of a line); and it is through this unity of consciousness that an object (a determinate space) is first known. “

Here Kant wants to explain how we know a "line" and if we look at the functional side of what he writes we see that he presents an operational explanation. In fact, Kant describes here a "line mechanism" that, if you let it operate in your mind, gives you as result of your mental operations that "line" that he wants to explain.

What is exemplified here for the case of a line is also paradigmatically valid for any acquired experience-independent knowledge unit (a priori concepts like begin, end, singular, plural, unit, element, part, whole, space, time, number, here, there, now, etc.): we should try to develop also for them generative mechanisms which, if we let them operate in our mind, would deliver the acquired a priori concept that we want to explain.

4 Kant’s A Priori is not innate

Finally, I would like to conclude this short paper to commemorate Kant’s 300th birthday with a remark on Kant’s conception of the apriori.

As Michael Oberhausen (1997) remarks: "To simply consider Kant's apriori as innate still is a widespread cliché". This cliché is being disseminated not only by contemporary philosophers - with whom Kant is known to be in contradiction - but also by scientists when they approach Kant's work.

Indeed, this is not astonishing if we consider that Kant's doctrine of the acquisition of experience-independent elements 'up to now has been quite ignored by research' (Oberhausen 1997, p. 6).

Fortunately, we have now Oberhausen's comprehensive study which supplies the proof that Kant's doctrine of the acquisition of a priori constructs ('Vorstellungen') is not of no or only of secondary relevance but "lies at the center of critical philosophy". In his summary Oberhausen emphasises that Kant "in many different places of his work again and again explicitly explained that both space and time as well as pure concepts are acquired ..." (Oberhausen 1997, p.6).

5 Conclusion

What are now the implications of such considerations for us in 2024?  I think that they can help to answer the crucial question of experience (learning): What do we contribute of our own to our knowledge?

In the light of Kant's explanations, the answer is that what we contribute of our own are the mechanisms and operations of acquisition, generalisation and application of acquired experience-independent elements ('reine Verstandesbegriffe a priori') that implement the unity of experience (categories) and are the conditions of possibility of experience.

Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to Kant for his life and for his work! His life is an example to me and his work gives me hope. Hope that we can find support in mastering the difficult task of making human beings out of ourselves, i.e. coming closer to the ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity than has been the case up to now.

That's why I'm so very grateful to Kant and why it has been my pleasure and duty to remind ourselves with a short text that we still urgently need Kant's philosophy in 2024.

Notes

Active and passive thought

In my previous post I mentioned "background thinking" as a process that brings to our mind thoughts that we did not search for or even did not want to deal with.

A friend then said: "I am a very instinctive person. What about instinct? Where is it in your model? Is it part of the background thinking?"

Good question! 

HOW WE KNOW: ACTIVE & PASSIVE PROCESSES

In fact, beside instinctive, there are also other thought processes of this kind, like "intuitive", "creative" thinking. They all produce thoughts in a spontaneous way, without an active construction and control by the individual, who behaves rather passively in relation to them.

Based on this I would distinguish two main areas of thinking: ACTIVE & PASSIVE processes.

Then the flow of thought can be conceived as a continuous alternation of active and passive thought.

Active and passive thought processes form a unity in their duality,  they complement each other and they also influence each other.

For example in the mantra meditation technique, actively repeating the same sentence (and related meaning) has an influece on passive thinking.

A similar example are people suffering from obsessive thoughts: in this case the mantra comes from passive thinking processes and influences the active thought processes and so on.

Last but not least advertising: even if the message is actively perceived and interpreted, the goal is to influence the passive thinking of the person so that he or she will buy the product or service "instinctively".

My "Two-Worlds" model is intended as a model of the ACTIVE processes of thinking, those that we can control directly.

A model of PASSIVE thinking will follow later, becaue it requires the ACTIVE model as a prerequisite.

 

Two-worlds model v2

Two friends are having a conversation:

• One says: "I am afraid that something happened that damaged my body".
• The other asks: "How do you know?"
  

---------------------------------------------
Here is a sketch for a model of HOW WE KNOW that I wish to further develop for contributing to that conversation in a supporting, creative and responsible way.

HOW WE KNOW: A TWO-WORLDS MODEL 

1. The world in which we live is the INTEGRATION of TWO WORLDS:
   WORLD 1 is the SHARED PHYSICAL world or world of physis;
   WORLD 2 is the INDIVIDUAL LOGICAL world or world of logos
2. Because of this INTEGRATION we do not notice the two worlds separatedly, we experience them as ONE REAL WORLD.
3. The integration of physis and logos in one individual is the product of a functional system of our brain: ATTENTION (Ceccato's model)
4. ATTENTION, conceived as a system that we can control (cybernetic system), is the system that we use to construct our individual LOGICAL world
5. The attentional system enables us to construct our logical world by means of ATTENTIONAL OPERATIONS. 
6. In this way ATTENTION provides the basis for the AWARENESS, REGULATION and EQUILIBRATION (control) of our logical world.
7. But this awareness, regulation and equilibration are NOT UNDER DIRECT CONTROL by the individual. We notice this through "background thinking", a process that brings to our mind thoughts that we did not search for or even did not want to deal with.
8. Thus, although we construct the LOGICAL world, after constructing it we do not have direct CONTROL on it
9. What about EMOTIONS? Emotions are ENERGIES that are triggered by our logical world and after that they fuel its activities
10. EMOTIONS provide the energy used by the brain for constructing, regulating, equilibrating and being aware of our logical world.
    

MB / 14.7.2022

The Operational Constructivism Manifesto 2018

1.   OWN WORLD. Although we share the same environment, each of us lives in his own world (thank you A. Schopenhauer).

2.   COPERNICAN REVOLUTION. In this own world, that every human being constructs for her/himself, the objects conform to her/his knowing (thank you I. Kant).

3.   OPERATIONS. For constructing you need operands, operations and schemata (thank you S. Ceccato): together they form a faculty of mental constructs, not a faculty of representations.

4.   AUTOPOIESIS. This faculty of mental constructs works in an autopoietic way (thank you H. Maturana): the outcomes of constructing extend that same faculty, which constructed them (outcome-function dualism).

5.   SELF-ORGANIZATION. In this way, in the course of doing, a self-organizing, intelligent system comes into being (thank you J. Piaget), a whole of compared and connected mental constructs (thank you I. Kant).

6.   VIABILITY. In this system priority belongs to viable mental constructs, i.e. those which stand the test of doing (thank you E. von Glasersfeld).

7.   INNER WORLD. Hence, this own world, is an inner world, made of mentally constructed objects, events, human beings, relationships, social interactions, etc.: all things that each of us constructs by her/himself.

8.   OUTER WORLD. The outer world (physical world) provides material for the construction of mental constructs and is used as environment for testing their viability.

9.   EXPERIENCE. From the coupled control of the outer and inner world (controlled processes) by means of thinking (control unit) arises experience.

10.    KNOWLEDGE. The own world in which each of us lives, is hence primarily an experiential world (thank you E. von Glasersfeld) and knowledge is the logic of this experience.

11.    RESPONSIBILITY. Consequently, the responsibility for knowledge, belongs to the bearer of experience (thank you H. von Förster).

Marco Bettoni

Basel, 26. Oktober 2018

Operationaler Konstruktivismus: Manifest 2018

1. Bei gleicher Umgebung lebt doch jede/r in der eigenen Welt (danke A. Schopenhauer). 
2. In dieser eigenen Welt, die jeder Mensch für sich konstruiert, richten sich die Gegenstände nach seinem Denken («kopernikanische Wende», danke I. Kant). 
3. Zum Konstruieren braucht es Operanden, Operationen und Schemata (danke S. Ceccato): zusammen bilden sie ein Vermögen der Vorstellungen (mentale Konstrukte), nicht der Darstellungen (Repräsentationen). 
4. Dieses Vermögen der Konstruktion von Vorstellungen funktioniert autopoietisch (danke H. Maturana): die Ergebnisse des Konstruierens erweitern jenes Vermögen, das sie konstruiert hat (Ergebnis-Funktion Dualismus)
5. So entsteht im Laufe des Tuns ein selbstorganisierendes, intelligentes System (danke J. Piaget), ein Ganzes verglichener und verknüpfter Vorstellungen (danke I. Kant).
6. In diesem System haben viable Vorstellungen Priorität, d.h. jene, die sich im Tun bewähren (danke E. von Glasersfeld). 
7. Diese eigene Welt ist somit eine innere Welt bestehend aus vorgestellten Gegenständen, Ereignissen, Mitmenschen, Relationen, sozialen Interaktionen, usw.: alles Dinge, die jede/r für sich konstruiert. 
8. Die äussere Welt (physische Welt) stellt Material für die Konstruktion der Vorstellungen zur Verfügung und wird als Umgebung für ihre Bewährung benutzt. 
9. Aus der gekoppelten Regelung der äusseren und inneren Welt (Regelstrecken) durch das Denken (Regler) entsteht Erfahrung. 
10. Die eigene Welt, in der jeder von uns lebt, ist somit primär eine Erfahrungswelt (danke E. von Glasersfeld) und Wissen ist die Logik dieser Erfahrung. 
11. Demzufolge liegt die Verantwortung für das Wissen beim Erfahrungsträger (danke H. von Förster).
    

Marco Bettoni
Basel, 26. Oktober 2018

Circular thought patterns: An autopoietic process model

This post has been inspired by reading what Zack wrote on November 17, 2012 as a comment to Myrko Thum's blog post here: http://www.myrkothum.com/finding-balance/ I think that my model of how we generate knowledge and experience can shed some light on the conception of "circular thought patterns" mentioned by Zack.

Here is my model, in a version recently published (Bettoni & Eggs, 2010, section "The Logic of Experience", note: in the article the Figure 5 reproduced here has an error, corrected here below).

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Circular organization of knowing in a feedback loop.

 First of all, in line with Piaget (1967) we suggest seeing a formative, organic principle at work in the generation of knowledge, too; secondly, as proposed by Freeman (2000: 9), we try to conceive of knowledge operands as “a kind of living structure” with constructive procedures or operational sequences organized according to an underlying organic principle. Finally, since the essence of a living system (organism) is autopoiesis, or in other words “self generation,” we suggest understanding knowing as an autopoietic process with its peculiar form of circular organization. Maturana, who developed the concept of autopoiesis, says: “The product of the functioning of the components is the same functioning organisation that produced them.” (Maturana 1980: 9).  In the domain of knowing, this requires that the interactions of the elements (= knowing) “bring forth elements of the same kind; that is crucial” (Maturana & Poerksen 2004: 107).

Accordingly, we conceive of knowledge as a result of cognitive processes in the dynamic form of a functional organization that extends or modifies the functional organization that produced it. In this conception, knowledge displays a “product/function duality” similar to the wave/particle duality in physics; as a product, the results of knowing can be used as building bricks of a knowledge edifice (a theory, an inquiry, a claim, a judgement, etc.); as a function, they become part of the same “knowing system” that produced them.

In Figure 5 the autopoietic process of knowing is represented as circular organization with two blocks (thinking and experience) connected by a feedback loop.

Thinking here has been distinguished into two sub-processes – perception and elaboration – with A (alteration) as input, P (percept) as an intermediate result and K (knowledge) as the final product.

For example, if we consider the knowing needed to knot a necktie in the morning, then A comes from the necktie, Perception and Conceptualization are relevant when learning to knot the tie and Elaboration is relevant when the knot is made without looking at, automatically.

The second block, Experience, where the final result K is fed back from Thinking, has been distinguished into three sub-systems: a system of attention (Ceccato 1964, Ceccato 1964/1966; Bettoni 2007), which on one side controls the constitutive part of Thinking (perception and conceptualization) through a Water Logic System, and on the other side also controls the regulative part of Thinking (elaboration) through a Rock Logic System. These three systems are the place where the knowledge, K, produced in thinking and fed back behaves as function and becomes part of the same “knowing system” that controlled its production.

Surprisingly, perception is far more important for knowledge than elaboration. But traditional thinking – according to Edward de Bono – is focused exclusively on elaboration and dislikes the vagueness, subjectivity and variability of perception. In our tradition, elaboration consists basically of the use of argument and reason with the goal of “falsification”: i.e., demonstrating the contradictions of a position or showing that something is false. Reality is proposed as the Universal Absolute that has to be used as the reference. “I am right – you are wrong” (de Bono 1992) condenses the essence of the “logic of elaboration” (rock logic, because, like a rock, it is permanent, hard, and has a definite shape).

Luckily perception has a different logic, the logic of pattern-building systems, but we ignore it. Why? Because we have never understood perception! Just as water fits in a bowl or bottle, the patterns that perception constructs are not right or wrong; they simply “fit” in the situations and circumstances that the person lives and experiences (water logic). Conceptualization (categorization) also works within the same “water logic”: this is the main reason why perception is more important for knowledge than elaboration. For example, this page can be conceived as a “part” (of the blog) or as a “whole” (in relation to the lines, words, etc. of this webpage), depending on what fits what the person lives, not depending on “Reality.” We, with our conceptual operations, can flexibly adapt our perception and conceptualization to “fit in the bowl.” This “operational” perspective is the pioneering contribution of Silvio Ceccato and his Italian Operational School (Glasersfeld 1995; Sowa 1983; Bettoni 2007).


REFERENCES:
Bettoni M. (2007) The Yerkish language – From operatio al methodology to chimpanzee
communication. In: Glanville R. & Riegler A. (eds.) The importance of being Ernst. edition echoraum, Vienna: 107–121.
Bettoni, M. & Eggs, C. (2010). "User-centred Knowledge Management: A Constructivist  and Socialized View". Constructivist Foundations, Vol. 5, number 3, 130-143. http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal
Ceccato S. (1964) A model of the mind. Methodos 16: 3–78.
Ceccato S. (1964/1966) Un tecnico fra i filosofi. Vol. 1 & 2. Marsilio, Padova.
de Bono E. (1992) I am right – you are wrong: From this to the new renaissance – From rock logic to water logic. Penguin, London.
Freeman W. J. (2000) How brains make up their minds. Columbia University Press, New York.
Glasersfeld E. von (1995) Radical constructivism. A way of knowing and learning. Falmer Press, London.
Maturana H. R. (1980) Biology of cognition. In:Maturana H. R. & Varela F. J., Autopoiesis and cognition. Reidel, Dordrecht.
Maturana H. R. & Poerksen B. (2004) From being to doing. The origins of the biology of cognition. Carl-Auer Verlag, Heidelberg.
Sowa J. F. (1983) Conceptual structures : Information processing in mind and machine. Addison-Wesley, Reading MA

Ceccato 1970: Analisi operativa di "Responsabilità" e "Rischio"

"... Si provi ad aprire la mano sentendo prima la "responsabilità" e poi il "rischio" di quell'aprire. Pur senza condurre l'analisi sino alle complesse combinazioni di stati attenzionali, credo non possa sfuggire una fondamentale antitesi fra due gruppi di operazioni che costituiscono i due atteggiamenti.
    L'assunzione della responsabilità introduce un soggetto di due attività di cui l'aprire la mano diviene oggetto, e precisamente una attività di controllo e di eventuale intervento, cioè attività modificatrice; ed il soggetto dell'aprire la mano e questo del controllo e dell'intervento possono essere lo stesso soggetto o due soggetti diversi.
   Nell'assunzione del rischio, oggetto diviene la mano che si apre, l'aprir-si della mano, mentre all'assuntore dell'atteggiamento non rimane che l'attività d'osservazione, attività di natura costitutiva e quindi del tutto immodificatrice."

------------------------------
Ceccato, S. (1970) Cibernetica per tutti. Vol. 2. Milano: Feltrinelli, pp.84-85.

Resposibility: a cybernetic model

What could be a definition (explanation) of "Responsibility"?
Starting with an operational definition by Silvio Ceccato (1970) and inspired by what Humberto Maturana called a "generative mechanism" I have tried to draft it here: as "a proposition which consists in a process or a mechanism that if it were to be allowed to operate" (Maturana 1992) would give as a consequence, as a result the concept of resposibility.

Generative mechanism of "Responsibility":

Responsibility for any process (or activity), for example "my life", is constituted by the following steps (operations):

1. to make the process (i.e. "my life") become the OBJECT of a feedback loop (control loop) constituted by a sequence of three activities: A, R and C (ARC loop).
2. the loop begins with activity A: the AWARENESS of the OBJECT
3. it continues with activity R: a REFLECTION on the OBJECT of AWARENESS
4. finally it ends with activity C: an intervention of reflected CHANGE of the OBJECT.

References:
Ceccato, S. (1970) Cibernetica per tutti. Milano: Feltrinelli, Vol. 2.
Maturana, H. (1992) Explanations and reality. Talk in Heidelberg. See: http://www.weknow.ch/marco/A1992/Heid/Maturana921018.htm

What means "Cybernetics"?

I searched Wikipedia for a definition of the term "Cybernetics" and found a sentence, that in my view is rather wrong and misleading for various reasons (Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics, 11.12.2011).

Then I searched on the website of the American Society for Cybernetics (http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/foundations/definitions.htm), but could not find a convincing solution.

Finally, looking in my archive I found a folder with notes of 1988 in which I had tried to define the term "Cybernetics"; I have completed them now, and here is the summary of what came out (an article will follow later):

• We call Cybernetics the science that considers dynamic systems in terms of OPERATIONS and CONTROL and aims at enabling artificial systems to perform like organisms at 3 levels: physical, biological and mental.

 This definition is based on my experience as engineer in the fileds of System Dynamics and Process Control as well as on my cooperation with Silvio Ceccato and Ernst von Glasersfeld. I have tried to integrate in one sentence the definitions given by three cybernetic pioneers: Norbert Wiener, Heinz von Förster and Silvio Ceccato.

What Marcuse missed in Bridgman

 Marcuse saw in Bridgman's Operationalism a "total empiricism in the treatment of concepts" because it required an "adequate account of them in terms of operations"; he estimated that this approach was predominant "in philosophy, psychology, sociology, and other fields" and lamented that as a consequence "Many of the most seriously troublesome concepts are being "eliminated”." (Marcuse, 1964 "The One-Dimensional Man", ch. 1, pp. 14-16, http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/one-dimensional-man/ch01.htm)

What a pity, that Marcuse limited his assessment of Bridgman's approach to the weaknesses and missed the opportunity to build on its strenghts!

He could have connected Bridgman's operational view of concepts  with Kant's treatment of concepts in his Critique of Pure Reason; in that same period Ceccato, who did such a connection, was able to do pioneering work in developing a completely new approach to language: Operational Linguistics (http://www.vonglasersfeld.com/242)

Ceccato 1946 - the birth of a paradigm shift

Today, 27. May 2011, I would like to tell a story of 1946 about the birth of a new research paradigm, that one day will be recognized as a crucial paradigm shift in science. My narration is based on what Silvio Ceccato himself told me and also wrote in his books, for example: Ceccato, S. (1968) Cibernetica per tutti, Vol. 1, Milano: Feltrinelli, 1968, p. 176.

Under the title "Order and Life", Yale University published in September 1936 the Silliman Memorial lecture given in 1935 by Joseph Needham, the famous British scientist. The italian translation had just appeared in 1946 when Ceccato (aged 32) and a group of friends met in Milan to discuss about it.

Needham used arguments from biology to justify his left-wing political ideas. The eye, he wrote, depends in various ways from the entire organism (the animal's body), a dependency of the part from the whole. Thus, he claimed, also the individual - as a part of society - should depend from society - the whole. As a consequence, a collectivist orientation must be considered as "natural" and its opposite, individualism, as "non-natural".

After the discussion, Ceccato spent a few days on the hills of his birthplace, Montecchio Maggiore, reflecting about Needham's argumentation in view of a public presentation of the book that he had to prepare ....

... eye-part, organism-whole, eye-part ....

Suddenly Ceccato saw the eye articulated in the few elements that he reminded from his high school education, like retina, pupil, lens, etc.

Ergo, Ceccato continued with excitement, the eye is not merely a part, but also its contrary, a whole!

Consequently, this being part or whole does not belong at all to the eye as such and we do not find them (part, whole) just by perceiving the eye (or a horse, a car, etc.); being part or whole is something that we do, mental operations done by ourselves ... and hence, he will explain later, our own responsibility.