Cybernetics ...
  "the science and art of understanding"... - Humberto Maturana
  "interfaces hard competence with the hard problems of the soft sciences" - Heinz von Foerster
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TABLE OF CONTENTS: Our History of Cybernetics


CHAPTER 1:
Prehistory
  Chapter 1 of our History of Cybernetics provides a survey of themes and events leading up to cybernetics' coalescence in the 1940's. To access Chapter 1, simply click the button to the left.


CHAPTER 2:
Coalescence
  Chapter 2 discusses the coalescence of cybernetics in the 1940's. To access Chapter 2, simply click the button to the left.


CHAPTER 3:
Proliferation
  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.


Additional Resources
on
Cybernetics' History
  Here on this webpage we offer a listing of additional resources you can use if you wish to explore cybernetics' history more deeply. The listing includes both online and print materials.


Other Online Resources on the History of Cybernetics


The History and Development of Cybernetics

(George Washington University)
 

  Presented by The George Washington University in cooperation with The American Society for Cybernetics. The main access webpage is at:

http://www.gwu.edu/~asc/slideshow/cybernetics_web/slideshow.html

You have two options for viewing this slide show on the main themes and history of cybernetics...

1. You can play the slideshow (Java-based presentation of a PowerPoint slide set) online

OR...

2. You can download the PowerPoint source file (circa 4.2 Mbytes)
 



History of
Cybernetics and Systems Science

(Principia Cybernetica)
 

  "Perhaps one of the best ways of seeing the strength and the impact of the systemic approach is to follow its birth and development in the lives of men and institutions."

Thus begins a review of the History of Cybernetics and Systems Science at:

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/CYBSHIST.html
 



An essay on the Origins of Cybernetics

(D. J. Stewart)
 

  This is a Web-accessible version of a 1959(?) article summarizing the history of cybernetics in the 1940's and 1950's.

It has been preserved and made available through the kind efforts of the Cybernetics Society UK.

The article can be accessed at:

http://www.cybsoc.org/stewart/origins.htm
 



Gregory Bateson, Cybernetics, and the Social / Behavioral Sciences

(Lawrence S. Bale)
 

  This is a Web-accessible version of an article published in the journal Cybernetics and Human Knowing. Even though it focuses on Gregory Bateson, it provides a good summary overview of the context and themes surrounding the rise of cybernetics and systems theory.

"Following Bateson, it is my conviction that the patterns of organization and symmetry embodied in living systems are indicative of mental process; and, that the cybernetic paradigm--with its focus on communication and information as the key elements of the self-regulation and self-organization--best exemplifies these hierarchical patterns of epistemic organization."

The article can be accessed at:

http://www.narberthpa.com/Bale/lsbale_dop/cybernet.htm
 



Cybernetics and the Mangle: Ashby, Beer and Pask

(Andrew Pickering)
 

  This is a Web-accessible review of 3 key cybernetics thinkers in the post-Macy era. Pickering's article includes a good summary of these researchers' contributions to cybernetics and some interesting points about cybernetics' standing relative to the conventional sciences.

"Following Bateson, it is my conviction that the patterns of organization and symmetry embodied in living systems are indicative of mental process; and, that the cybernetic paradigm--with its focus on communication and information as the key elements of the self-regulation and self-organization--best exemplifies these hierarchical patterns of epistemic organization."

The article can be accessed as a PDF (Adobe Acrobat Reader) file at:

http://www.soc.uiuc.edu/faculty/pickerin/cybernetics.pdf
 



Cybernetics and Second Order Cybernetics

(Francis Heylighen and Cliff Joslyn)
 

  This is the Web-accessible version of Heylighen and Joslyn's entry on the subject in:

R.A. Meyers (ed.), Encyclopedia of Physical Science & Technology , Vol. 4 (3rd ed.), New York: Academic Press, 2001, p. 155-170.

This article provides a good summary overview of both cybernetics' history and the distinct 'flavors' of cybernetics research since the 1940's.

The article can be accessed as a PDF (Adobe Acrobat Reader) file at:

http://http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/Cybernetics-EPST.pdf
 



Cybernetics in the History of Complexity Studies

(Ralph H. Abraham)
 

  'The Genesis of Complexity' by Ralph H. Abraham is an article about the history of complexity studies, within which he subsumes cybernetics as one of the 'three main roots'. This historical review offers a perspective on cybernetics as progenitor of more recent work on chaos and complexity.

The article can be accessed (as a PDF file) at:

http://www.ralph-abraham.org/articles/MS%23108.Complex/complex.pdf
 



Bibliographic Suggestions on the History of Cybernetics


The Cybernetics Group

Steve Joshua Heims
 

  Constructing a Social Science for Postwar America: The Cybernetics Group, 1946 - 1953

Steve Joshua Heims
MIT Press, paperback edition - 1993
ISBN: 026258123X

From the Preface:

"The subject of this book is the series of multidisciplinary conferences, supported by the Macy Foundation and held between 1946 and 1953, to discuss a wide array of topics that eventually came to be called cybernetics. ... The cybernetics conferences and attendant events form a complex story, and I have tried to include only a portion of it in this book. I have chosen to focus on researchers in psychology, anthropology, sociology, and psychiatry rather than on the engineers, biologists, and mathematicians."

Review available online (as a PDF file) at:

http://web.mit.edu/esd.83/www/notebook/HeimsReview.pdf

Until recently, this book stood alone as a reference resource on the Macy Conferences, their participants, and the story of how the field of cybernetics coalesced. It remains the single best source of historical data on the 1940's / Macy period.

Check on this book at Amazon.com
 



The Mechanization of the Mind

Jean Pierre Dupuy
 
M. B. Debevoise
(Translator)

 

  The Mechanization of the Mind: On the Origins of Cognitive Science

Jean-Pierre Dupuy
(Translated by M. B. Debevoise)
Princeton University Press, 2000
ISBN: 0691025746

Sample chapter (Introduction) available online at:

http://pup.princeton.edu/chapters/i6920.html

From the Introduction:

"From 1946 to 1953 ten conferences ... brought together at regular intervals some of the greatest minds of the twentieth century. ... The mathematicians, logicians, engineers, physiologists, neurophysiologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and economists who took part set themselves the task of constructing a general science of how the human mind works. What brought them together, what they discussed, and what came of a collaboration unique in the history of ideas--these things form the subject of the present volume."

Review available online (as a PDF file) at:

http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/ezequiel/dupuy.pdf

This book offers an alternative perspective to Heims' seminal history. Whereas Heims focuses on the cybernetics group in terms of their generating a new social science, Dupuy focuses on the descent of 'cognitive science' from cybernetics. Dupuy is considerably more critical than Heims, but his contextualization of cybernetics vis a vis the rise of cognitivism and prevailing philosophical trends adds a depth of conceptual analysis one can't get from Heims' book.

Check on this book at Amazon.com
 



Between Human and Machine

David A. Mindell
 

  Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing before Cybernetics

David A. Mindell
Johns Hopkins University Press - 2002
ISBN: 0801868955

From Book News, Inc.:

"Examining the work of several laboratories, including the U.S. Navy, Sperry Gyroscope and Bell Telephone, Mindell shows how the foundations for control engineering and computing were laid well before Norbert Wiener formalized the field of cybernetics in 1948. By way of his analysis, Mindell (history of engineering and manufacturing, MIT) offers a new way to conceptualize the history of computing and explores the ongoing relationship between humans and machines. Written for a technically savvy audience, this book may be of interest to historians of science, technology, and culture, as well as to computer scientists and theorists."

Mindell's book offers a detailed review of 20th century control engineering advances culminating in (e.g.) the work of Wiener, Rosenblueth, and Bigelow. It also blends in the background developments in communications and information research. It complements the Heims book by setting some background for the Macy period and telling the story of the engineers (whom Heims self-admittedly left outside his scope of concern).

Check on this book at Amazon.com
 



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'Cybernetics'
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  AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR CYBERNETICS We stand
  FOUNDATIONS
The Subject of Cybernetics

on the shoulders of giants