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Cybernetics ...
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"the science and art of understanding"...
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- Humberto Maturana
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"interfaces hard competence with the hard problems of the soft sciences"
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- Heinz von Foerster
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AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR CYBERNETICS |
We stand |
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FOUNDATIONS
The Subject of Cybernetics |
on the shoulders of giants
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ASC HOME
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HISTORY OF CYBERNETICS
Main Page + Chapter 1: Prehistory
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MORE INFO ON CYBERNETICS:
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| TABLE OF CONTENTS: Our History of Cybernetics |
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CHAPTER 1:
Prehistory
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Here on this webpage we offer Chapter 1 of our history - the 'prehistory' of cybernetics. It discusses the longstanding themes and streams of work which converged at the time of cybernetics' coalescence in the 1940's. Simply scroll on down this page to read this review of prehistory.
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Chapter 2 discusses the coalescence of cybernetics in the 1940's. To access Chapter 2, simply click the button to the left.
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Chapter 3 discusses how cybernetics disseminated and proliferated during the decades after the 1940's. To access Chapter 3, simply click the button to the left.
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We have compiled a listing of additional resources you can use if you wish to explore cybernetics' history more deeply. These include both online materials and books. To review these additional resources, simply click the button to the left.
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| PROLOGUE: Framing this History of Cybernetics |
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The many threads that led to, and intersected in, cybernetics make for a complicated narrative...
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As if that weren't problem enough, the many threads leading forward from cybernetics' establishment in the 1940's make for a narrative that's perhaps just as complicated. Finally, there are people who proclaim and defend quite particular and relatively specialized notions of what is or is not 'cybernetics proper.' Phrased more succinctly: the history of cybernetics is a tangled story whose contents and significance are subject to multiple interpretations.
These factors make for considerable risk in outlining any purported 'history of cybernetics'. For the purposes of this presentation, the historical review has been structured with respect to crucial themes judged to be representative of three things:
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The issues around which the 'cybernetics group' met and coalesced during the 1940's
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The issues toward which the new field of cybernetics (and its closely allied fields) directed their interests and energies in the 1950's and onward
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The issues carried forward for elaboration and refinement in second-order cybernetics beginning in the late 1960's
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| A REFERENCE AID: A Timeline for the History of Cybernetics |
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OPEN UP:
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To provide a succinct reference aid on this complex history, we have compiled a timeline for cybernetics. Clicking on the button at the left will open up a new window with the timeline. You can then keep it handy on-screen as you read the historical review that follows.
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| CHAPTER 1: The Prehistory of Cybernetics |
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Cybernetics' Rise in the 1940's:
As much a culmination as a creation
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The field of cybernetics is widely described as having been born in the United States during the 1940's. Although this is true, it obscures some important facts about the context for cybernetics' origins.
The rise of cybernetics is best characterized as a culminating fusion of several conceptual themes and threads of work, some of which literally reached back centuries and all of which were energizing theory and research during the early 20th century.
The result was a situation in which the rise of cybernetics or something very much like it was practically guaranteed. As a result, it's important to consider the 'prehistory' which set the stage for the coalescence of this field.
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Seminal Themes in the Prehistory of Cybernetics
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As illustrated in our historical timeline (see above), attentions to 'systems' and 'information' and 'control' were proliferating in fields such as communications engineering, control theory, biology, theoretical mathematics, and psychology, among many others.
It is therefore reasonable to claim that by the 1940's the air was pregnant with themes that would come to define the new transdisciplinary field of cybernetics.
In the following subsections we summarize some of these themes.
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'Control' or 'regulation' in machines
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Introductions to cybernetics typically highlight the role of 'control' or 'regulation' as a central theme. Control and regulation were indeed central research topics for the people who first defined the field. However, interest and work on these topics dates back as far as historical records permit us to see. By the early 1940's, the diverse streams of this work had reached sufficient maturity to yield general principles and sufficient cross-disciplinary attention to motivate exploration as a topic unto itself. This set the stage for productive conversations among engineers and natural scientists.
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'Control' or 'regulation' in human affairs
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It is common to characterize 20th century cybernetics as the innovation which raised hopes and then fears about control in human affairs. This is incorrect in light of historical facts. Rancor over, and scholarly attention to, such social and political control had been going on for centuries. Watt's success at functional regulation of the steam engine set off the Industrial Revolution, but it was the shock of the attendant workplace regimentation (i.e., social regulation) which set off the Luddite insurgencies. There is no better illustration of this social dimension's relevance than the fact the writers first employing the label 'cybernetics' - over a century before Wiener - did so with respect to social rather than mechanical regulation. By the early 1940's this theme set the context for making the new field transdisciplinary through the participation of social scientists.
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A Systemic Perspective on the Subject Matter
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A 'systemic perspective' was beginning to permeate the natural and social sciences. This perspective called attention to 'holism' in two senses. The first sense involved addressing an individual system as a whole and not merely the aggregate of its constituents. The second sense involved appreciating the manner in which multiple systems participated within larger discernible systems, such that everything involved everything else. By the early 1940's a systemic perspective was proliferating within and across multiple disciplines.
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An Affinity for Systematic Models and Explanations
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The original formulators of 'cybernetics' evidenced what can be called a 'mechanistic orientation' in two specific senses. The first sense involved prioritizing rigorous and non-vitalistic models for the system being studied. The second sense involved concentrating on the subject system's dynamics rather than the system as some static object of inspection. This orientation set the context for seeking an intersection among explanatory constructs for living and non-living systems. This search entailed a belief that at some level of abstraction biological and non-biological systems could be addressed equally. It also involved a faith that at such a level of abstraction there were uniform and reliable principles to be discerned and analyzed. By the early 1940's such principles were being recognized as a result of (e.g.) implementing automatic behaviors in complex machines and emulating complex neural activities with machines.
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Treating Relationships in terms of 'Communication'
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A focus on 'communication' in two important senses. The first sense was the invocation of 'communication' as referential context for addressing functional interrelationships within and among dynamic systems. In terms of communicational 'vehicle', this meant framing interrelationships in terms of signals, channels, and routing. In terms of communicational 'content', this meant framing things in terms of signs, signification, and pragmatics. The second sense was the distillation of general principles from analyses of dynamics in (e.g.) interpersonal communications and communication technologies. By the early 1940's this 'communication' motif afforded a basis for conversations among the various people poised to launch a new transdisciplinary field.
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Qualifying 'Knowledge' with Respect to the 'Knower'
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The early 20th century saw a growing sense of skepticism toward simplistic objectivist or naive-realist epistemological stances (i.e., the belief that the world was objectively 'out there', and our knowledge of that world was direct and unambiguous). This philosophical trend was important in the prehistory of cybernetics to the extent it circumscribed analysis of (e.g.) 'knowledge' accretion and 'knowledge exploitation' in a subject system. The relevance to cybernetics lies not in adherence to esoteric philosophical beliefs but rather in an appreciation for the manner in which a system's ascribed or operant 'knowledge' is qualified with respect to that system's particular form, dynamics, and constraints. Combined with the systemic perspective, this meant addressing extra-systemic entities (e.g., elements of the environment) not in terms of their objective 'knowability' but in terms of how the focal system 'knows' or otherwise interacts with them. This theme's importance is well illustrated by the fact that McCulloch characterized his neural modeling research in terms of 'experimental epistemology'.
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The Culminating Theme:
Circularity in Organization and Causality
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The themes discussed above (and perhaps others) set the stage for the coalescence of cybernetics. However, one must ask whether one or another of them served as the key factor in bringing together the 'cybernetics group' and the notion of 'cybernetics' in the 1940's.
There was such a focal factor around which cybernetics coalesced, but it was not one of the ones above. This theme was 'circularity'. The notion of circularity had two discriminable aspects relevant to the other outstanding themes. The first was the way in which systemic entities were organized as discrete sets of components whose functional interrelationships were with each other. Figuratively speaking, these components participated in an 'encircled' domain. The second aspect was the way in which the behavior of a systemic entity was best explained in terms of how the effects of its actions (i.e., 'outputs') circled back (i.e., as 'inputs') to influence that entity's state and its subsequent actions. This was the basis for the concept of feedback on which the earliest cybernetics conferences focused.
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Summary:
The Prehistory of Cybernetics
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The energy and effort directed to the themes outlined above practically guaranteed the rise of cybernetics or something very much like it. The fact that it arose during the 1940's derived from the circumstances peculiar to that decade and to a series of fortuitous interactions that led to a series of conferences in which leading thinkers could come together, address these topics, and have the space in which to devise an entirely new field.
The story of this period of coalescence is the subject of Chapter 2 in our History of Cybernetics.
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MORE INFO ON CYBERNETICS:
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For feedback, suggestions or contributions, please email the ASC Webmaster.
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ASC HOME
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TOP of Page
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AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR CYBERNETICS |
We stand |
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FOUNDATIONS
The Subject of Cybernetics |
on the shoulders of giants
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