ABSTRACT

The foregoing has emphasised the complex, doubled relations of eco-autoorganisation and exo-auto-reference, set against the more radically constructivist, closed and self-referential models advanced by Maturana, Varela and Luhmann, amongst others. It is instructive to reconsider how our position arises from the dynamics of systems theory. Before we begin to expand what we mean by ‘topology’ it is instructive to look to the lucidity displayed in Von Bertalanffy’s early formulations of systems as opposed to the received notion of systems in sociology.