Heylighen, Francis

Research Professor affiliated with the interdisciplinary Center Leo Apostel at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and the present Director of Evolution, Complexity and Cognition research group there. He researches the self-organization and evolution of complex, social and cognitive systems, which he approaches from a cybernetic perspective. Heylighen has authored over 100 scientific publications in a variety of disciplines, including a monograph and four edited books. Since 1990 he is an editor of the Principia Cybernetica Project, an international organization devoted to the computer-supported collaborative development of an interdisciplinary knowledge network. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Memetics, which he co-founded in 1996, and is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Happiness Studies, and the journals Informatica and Entropy. Heylighen is the author of the following works: ‘The science of self-organization and adaptivity’ (Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems, 2002), ‘Cybernetics and second order cybernetics’ (Encyclopedia of Physical Science & Technology, 2001), ‘Collective Intelligence and its Implementation on the Web’ (Computational & Mathematical Organization Theory, 1999), and ‘The World-Wide Web as a Super-Brain’ (Cybernetics and Systems' 96, 1996).