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The cybernetics movements

The interpretations of cybernetics. The term "cybernetics" has been associated with many stimulating conferences, yet cybernetics has not thrived as an organized scientific field within American universities. Questions about the history of cybernetics.


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TH E C Y B E RN E T I CS M O V E M E NT
TH E O R I G I N O F C Y B E RN E T I CS
Cybernetics as a field of scientific activity in the United States began in the years after World War II. Between 1946 and 1953 the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation sponsored a series of conferences in New York City on the subject of “Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems.” The chair of the conferences was Warren McCulloch of MIT. Only the last five conferences were recorded in written proceedings. These have now been republished (Pias, 2004). After Norbert Wiener published his book Cybernetics in 1948, Heinz von Foerster suggested that the name of the conferences be changed to “Cybernetics: Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems.” In this way the meetings became known as the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics.
In subsequent years cybernetics influenced many academic fields - computer science, electrical engineering, artificial intelligence, robotics, management, family therapy, political science, sociology, biology, psychology, epistemology, music, etc. Cybernetics has been defined in many ways: as control and communication in animals, machines, and social systems; as a general theory of regulation; as the art of effective organization; as the art of constructing defensible metaphors; etc. The term “cybernetics” has been associated with many stimulating conferences, yet cybernetics has not thrived as an organized scientific field within American universities. Although a few cybernetics programs were established on U. S. campuses, these programs usually did not survive the retirement or death of their founder.
Relative to other academic societies the meetings on cybernetics tended to have more than the usual controversy, probably due to the wide variety of disciplines represented by those in attendance. Indeed Margaret Mead wrote an article, “Cybernetics of Cybernetics,” in the proceedings of the first conference of the American Society for Cybernetics, in which she suggested that cyberneticians should apply their knowledge of communication to how they communicate with each other. (Mead, 1968)
I NT E RPR E T A T IO NS O F C Y B E RN E T I CS
Not everyone originally connected with cybernetics continued to use the term:
1. The cybernetics of Allen Turing and John von Neumann became computer science, AI, and robotics. Turing formulated the concept of a Universal Turing Machine - a mathematical description of a computational device. He also devised the Turing test - a way of determining whether a computer program displays “artificial intelligence.” The related professional societies are the Association for Computing Machinery and the American Association for Artificial Intelligence.
2. Norbert Wiener's cybernetics became part of electrical engineering. This branch of cybernetics includes control mechanisms from thermostats to automated assembly lines. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, including the Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society, is the main professional society. The principal concern is systems engineering.
3. Warren McCulloch's cybernetics became “second order cybernetics.” McCulloch chaired the Macy Foundation conferences. He sought to understand the functioning of the nervous system and thereby the operation of the brain and the mind. The American Society for Cybernetics has continued this tradition. It is the only one of the three groups that seeks to promote cybernetics as a transdisciplinary field.
Other, smaller groups can also be identified. For example, a control systems group within psychology was generated by the work of William Powers (1973). Biofeedback or neurofeedback is a subject of investigation by researchers in medicine and psychology. The Santa Fe Institute has developed simulation methods based on the idea of cellular automata.
This paper recounts about sixty years of the history of the cybernetics movement in the United States, divided into five year intervals. The focus will be on the third group, McCulloch's cybernetics.
In 1943 two landmark papers were published. Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts wrote, “A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity.” (McCulloch and Pitts, 1943) This article sought to understand how a network of neurons functions so that we experience what we call “an idea.” They presented their explanation in mathematical form.
In the late 1940s the early Macy Conferences were held in New York City. They were attended by scientists including Norbert Wiener, Julian Bigelow, John von Neumann, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson., Ross Ashby, Grey Walter, and Heinz von Foerster. By 1949 three key books were published: Wiener's Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, Von Neumann's and Morgenstern's Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, and Shannon's and Weaver's, The Mathematical Theory of Communication. These three books defined a new science of information and regulation.
In the early 1950s more Macy conferences were held. This time proceedings were published with Heinz von Foerster as editor. Meanwhile the first commercial computers were manufactured.
In the 1950s the CIA was concerned about the possibility of brain-washing and mind control. Under the code name MKUltra experiments with LSD and other drugs were conducted at Harvard University and elsewhere. (Marks, 1978) Some of the money for this research was channeled through the Macy Foundation. In one incident, a CIA employee was given LSD without his knowledge. Apparently he thought he was going mad and dove out a window of a hotel in New York City. Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, when he was a student at Harvard, was an experimental subject of these mind control experiments. (Chase, 2003)
F ollowing a sabbatical year working with Arthuro Rosenblueth and Warren McCulloch, Heinz von Foerster founded the Biological Computer Laboratory at the University of Illinois.
In the early 1960s several conferences on self-organizing systems were held, one of them at the University of Illinois's Allerton Park. (von Foerster and Zopf, 1962) As a result of an invitation made at this conference, Ross Ashby moved from England to Illinois. The work on self-organizing systems was a forerunner to the field of study now called “complexity.”
Although the Macy Foundation Conferences ended in 1953, the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) was not founded until 1964. This seems rather late. Actually the founding of the ASC was in part the result of the Cold War. During the Presidential campaign in 1960, when John F. Kennedy was elected, there was talk about a “missile gap” between the United States and the Soviet Union. Not long thereafter there began to be talk of a “cybernetics gap.” Some people in the Soviet Union thought cybernetics would provide the theory they needed to operate their centrally planned economy. Consequently the Soviet government generously funded cybernetics research. Some people in the U.S. government then feared that the U.S. might fall behind in a critical area of research, if this country did not also fund cybernetics research.
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE HISTORY OF CYBERNETICS
Given the promising and exciting beginnings of cybernetics, the outstanding scientists involved, and the subsequent impact of cybernetics on many disciplines, it is curious that the term “cybernetics” is not widely known or used today, even though most professional people spend several hours a day in “cyberspace.” Margaret Mead commented on the development of cybernetics at the first ASC conference in 1968:
We were impressed by the potential usefulness of a language sufficiently sophisticated to be used to solve complex human problems, and sufficiently abstract to make it possible to cross disciplinary boundaries. We thought we would go on to real interdisciplinary research, using this language as a medium. Instead, the whole thing fragmented. Norbert Wiener wrote his book Cybernetic s . It fascinated intellectuals and it looked for a while as if the ideas that he expressed would become a way of thought. But they didn't. (Mead, 1968)
Why did the cybernetics movement break up following the Macy Conferences? Actually it never came together. People stayed in their home disciplines. Many very thought-provoking meetings were held under the label of cybernetics, but the educational programs that were established did not survive in discipline-oriented universities. When their founders retired, the programs were closed. One consequence of the lack of educational programs at universities is that key ideas tend to be reinvented. One example is the work on complex adaptive systems centered at the Santa Fe Institute. These writers rarely refer to the early work in cybernetics and systems theory.
What prevented unity? There was never agreement on fundamentals. Eric Dent in his doctoral dissertation at The George Washington University provides an explanation of the continuing heterogeneity of the field of cybernetics and systems science. (Dent, 1996) Dent claims that after World War II the systems sciences dramatically expanded the scientific enterprise. Specifically, they expanded science along eight dimensions -- causality, determinism, relationships, holism, environment, self-organization, reflexivity, and observation. (Dent, 2001) However, not all of the various systems fields chose to emphasize the same dimensions. Indeed, each field chose a unique combination. This meant that the various systems fields did not agree on what the key issues were. As a result each subfield developed its own language, theories, methods, traditions, and results.
These eight dimensions have both united and divided the systems sciences. The dimensions unite the systems sciences because each of the subfields of systems science uses at least one of the new assumptions, whereas classical science uses none. The dimensions divide the systems sciences because each subfield emphasizes a different dimension or set of dimensions. Hence, issues that are very important in one subfield are less important or do not arise in other subfields. Given different questions, the answers in theories and methods have been different. (Umpleby and Dent, 1999) Perhaps in the 21 st century the progress made in developing the field of cybernetics in many disciplines will be successfully integrated.
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