Emergence, self-organisation, autonomy, chaos, complexity – these are words which were invented by cyberneticians bound to conquer the unknown. The crisis of sciences at the turn of the last century demonstrated that not everything which is mechanistic is predictable. The cybernetic solution to these problems was to find a way to incorporate the unknown, the irreducible qualities of life into scientific models nonetheless – and finally, to deny its existence altogether. At this point the model replaced reality, and life had to be broken down into something easily calculable. As we tend to ground our political tactics and strategies in the above terms we have to understand them and go beyond their compromised origins and at the same time reinvent our own politics.
