Рефлексивные процессы и управление. Сборник материалов XI Международного симпозиума 16-17 октября 2017 г., Москва - стр. 23

Russians feel a need to understand the world as a whole. Therefore, they emphasize different patterns in the world, society and nature than are emphasized in the Western intellectual tradition. For example, academician N. N. Moiseev stressesed that the formation of a global collective consciousness lays the foundation for the development of an information society. He wrote: "The notion of collective consciousness is a fundamental notion of civilization… Civilization itself could not emerge without development of a collective consciousness. This phenomenon emerges as an effect of the necessity and possibility of information exchange among individual consciousnesses, evolution of collective memory and organisation of collective efforts in decision making." [Moiseev, 2000] Western academics are more likely to speak about "shared beliefs and values" rather than a "collective consciousness."

4. Russians prefer a systematic approach and have a tendency to create general theories. Examples are such well-known names as N. I. Lobachevsky, D. I. Mendeleev, A. A. Bogdanov, N. F. Fedorov, V. I. Vernadsky, K. E. Tsiolkovsky and others.

Hence, Russian scientific thinking can be characterized by thesystems approach, a striving to create general theories, including a moral component in them,and acceptance of irrationality.

Understanding the differences in intellectual traditions leads us to a deeper understanding of the theories of cybernetics of V. Lepsky and S. Umpleby as representatives of these scientific traditions.Table 1 presents a description of the development of cybernetics, made by S. Umpleby.

Table 1. Three versions of cybernetics

In spite of the fact that the table is called "Three versions of cybernetics," Western scholars only single out cybernetics of the first and second orders. Cybernetics of the second order includes a biological and social version. It arose from "experimental epistemology." The goal was to understand the processes of cognition on the basis of neurophysiological experiments, as a result of which cyberneticians came to the conclusion that the observer can not be excluded from science.

Table 2. Description of V. E. Lepskiy's theory using S. A. Umpleby’s criteria

The Russian interpretation of second-order cybernetics is different from the Western concept of it. Table 2 presents a description of Lepskiy's theory using Umpleby's criteria.

The development of the conception of third-order cybernetics is based on Russian ideas: the activity approach, the typology of scientific rationality, the inclusion of the moral component, etc., are not well known in the West, which leads to some misunderstanding of concepts.