adelphia. The two organizations came back together a few years later through the efforts of Barry Clemson, Doreen Steg, Klaus Krippendorff and others. The reorganized society used the ASC name and the ACA by-laws. But the society remained small, usually having fewer than 400 members.
EARLY 1980-S
As a result of being the moderator of the on-line discussion group, Umpleby was elected president of ASC. A planning conference in 1980 charted a new direction for the Society. (Umpleby, 1981) ASC began holding conferences again and reestablished connections with its former journal, now called Cybernetics and Systems.
A series of meetings with Soviet scientists was started as a way to bring leading American scientists together to review fundamentals, in particular to discuss second order cybernetics. (Umpleby, 1987b; Umpleby and Sadovsky, 1991) The meetings were funded by the American Council of Learned Societies and the Soviet Academy of Sciences. These meetings were quite productive for exchanging views; however, a controversy with the Soviet side arose over the participation of Vladimir Lefebvre, a Soviet Г©migrГ©. Prior to glasnost and perestroika Lefebvre's theory (1982) of two systems of ethical cognition was disapproved of by the Soviet government. However, during the unraveling of the USSR Lefebvre's work was used by people in the governments of both the United States and the Soviet Union to prevent miscommunication. (Umpleby, 1991) Lefebvre's work is now being further developed through annual conferences organized by the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Lefebvre's theory of reflexive control is being used by psychologists and educators to help with the psychological and cultural issues involved in the social, political, and economic transition in Russia.
LATE 1980-S
Members of the American Society for Cybernetics began offering tutorials on first and second order cybernetics prior to systems conferences). They were seeking to make a scientific revolution (Umpleby, 1974). The second Soviet-American conference was held in Estonia. Due to glasnost and perestroika the original topics (epistemology, methodology, and management) were expanded to include large-scale social experiments. At a conference in St. Gallen, Switzerland, in 1987 the members of the American Society for Cybernetics decided to focus their attention almost exclusively on advancing second order cybernetics. (Umpleby, 1987a)
EARLY 1990-S
In 1990 two symposia on "Theories to Guide the Reform of Socialist Societies "were held in Washington, DC, and Vienna, Austria (Umpleby, 1991). These meetings were the beginning of a multi-year effort both to understand the changes occurring in the former Soviet Union from the perspective of social theory and to use knowledge of social systems to guide the transitions.
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