Where first-order science studies the observed, second-order science studies the observer-observed system — the apparatus, the framing, the inheritance of presuppositions any given science begins with and rarely returns to.
The Second Order Science Foundation supports research, convening, and publication on science that takes seriously its own conditions of inquiry. We work where first-order accounts run out — at the boundary between an observation and the observer making it, between a model and the modeller staking on it, between an explanation and the UnCritically Examined Presuppositions the explanation has quietly inherited.
The most consequential scientific questions of our moment — about complexity, consciousness, anticipatory systems, AI, organizational coherence — cannot be answered without this second-order move.
The Foundation is small by design. It convenes scholars across cybernetics, complexity science, philosophy of science, design, and organizational studies; it publishes working papers, journal special issues, and books; it sponsors programs — among them ISCE (Inquiry · Second-order · Coherence · Emergence) and the WDCC 2026 Shanghai subconference Designing AI's Boundaries.
Behind the work is a simple commitment: that what science forgets to ask is at least as important as what it has answered, and that the discipline of asking — recursively, reflexively, rigorously — is itself a research program.
The inheritances any first-order science begins with — and rarely surfaces. The work of second-order science is to make these examinable.
A synthesis of QBism, Robert Rosen's anticipatory systems, Vaihinger's as-if philosophy, and the causal-bubbles interpretation. A unifying lens for agency under uncertainty.
Computational and existential capacities as independent dimensions. A diagnostic against the conflation of capability with understanding — central to thinking clearly about AI.
A working tradition with Hugo Letiche and Brenden Meagher: dialogue not as exchange of information but as the joint working-out of what could not be said before it was said.
"Sloppy science" read as symptom rather than failing — the visible trace of UCEPs that have not been worked through. A diagnostic, not an indictment.
A multi-agent AI methodology for scholarly synthesis. A ten-step protocol — distinct from Floridi's distant writing — that puts AI to work as a tutor, critic, and dialogic partner without surrendering authorial judgment.
Cybernetics of cybernetics. The Biological Computer Laboratory. The architect of "second-order."
Second-order cybernetics as practice. The conversational, the playful, the recursive. Past president, ASC.
Anticipatory systems. Life Itself. The argument that biology demands a category larger than mechanism.
The Philosophy of "As If." A defense of useful fictions as the working substance of science.
Fuchs, Schack, Mermin. Quantum mechanics as the science of an agent's expectations. The observer, formalized.
The pattern that connects. Steps toward an ecology of mind. Recursive epistemology before the word existed.
Autopoiesis. The biological roots of cognition. Observers all the way down.
The institutional home of second-order cybernetics in the U.S. The Foundation's executive director served as ASC president, 2014–2020.
The Second Order Science Foundation is directed by Michael Lissack, Executive Director, in collaboration with Hugo Letiche, Brenden Meagher, and an international circle of scholars working at the seams between cybernetics, complexity, philosophy of science, and design.
For correspondence: michael.lissack@gmail.com.
For the WDCC 2026 Shanghai subconference, see alwaysquestion.ai. For the ISCE program, see isce.edu.