Draft talk:Adaptive System

Dear Mr Lischke,

I hope you are doing well.

I wanted to share a short theoretical note that emerged while reading your text, offered purely as an optional perspective.

Reading the article from the viewpoint of second-order cybernetics and systems theory, I noticed that several concepts (such as openness, learning, feedback, information, or viability) are used in a way that is common and entirely functional within first-order cybernetic and engineering traditions, yet would be framed somewhat differently in the work associated with Heinz von Foerster or Niklas Luhmann.

From this perspective, properties like “openness,” “learning,” or “adaptation” are typically treated not as intrinsic system attributes, but as observer-dependent descriptions. Systems are considered operationally closed, while environmental effects appear only as irritations that trigger internally determined operations. Similarly, notions such as feedback, information input, or learning are understood as retrospective observer constructions that describe stabilized patterns of recursive operations, rather than causal mechanisms acting directly within the system.

This does not contradict the functional or engineering validity of the adaptive systems framework presented in the article. Rather, it highlights a difference in observational stance: first-order approaches describe how systems can be regulated or designed, while second-order cybernetics reflects on how such descriptions themselves are constructed and which distinctions they rely on.

I mention this only as a possible conceptual lens that might help clarify the theoretical scope and positioning of the article, especially for readers familiar with constructivist or autopoietic traditions. Please feel free to ignore this note entirely if it is not useful for your purposes.

If you like to read about that in primary literature, here is a link to "understanding understanding" from Heinz von Foerster. I would recommend "Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics" and maybe, for a more epistemological point of view "on constructing a reality"

https://www.alice.id.tue.nl/references/foerster-2003.pdf

With kind regards,

Freddy.