Epistemological unification of the disciplines: the contributions of sociocybernetics

In order to develop transdisciplinary working across the disciplines, clear epistemological foundations are required. Without these, even simplistic approaches to interdisciplinarity are likely to fail. Our proposal is that sociocybernetics promises to provide the required unifying metadisciplinary epistemological foundations and transdisciplinary frameworks. We note that second order cybernetics provides a metadisciplinary framework for discerning the causes and cures for the schisms within the natural and cognitive sciences. The particular contributions of sociocybernetics are to (i) extend the second order understandings to unify the social sciences and (ii) by incorporating extant sociological theory back into the transdisciplinary pursuits of cybernetics and systems theory to enlighten and enrich those pursuits. In order to highlight the power and fruitfulness of these contributions from sociocybernetics, we problematise, deconstruct and reconstruct key concepts concerned with human communication. To do this, we take as central the question, “What is a symbol?”