The cybernetics movements
THE
CYBERNETICS MOVEMENT
(essay)
THE
ORIGIN OF CYBERNETICS
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)
INTERPRETATIONS
OF CYBERNETICS
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.
EARLY
1940S
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.
Arthuro Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener and Julian Bigelow
published, “Behavior, Purpose, Teleology.” (Rosenblueth, et al., 1943) They
observed behavior, which they interpreted as purposeful, and then sought to
explain how this phenomenon could happen without teleology, using only
Aristotle’s efficient cause. Also in the early 1940s Wiener worked on a
radar-guided anti-aircraft gun.
LATE 1940S
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.
EARLY 1950S
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.
LATE
1950S
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)
EARLY 1960S
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.
In Washington, DC, a cybernetics luncheon club was
meeting. The participants included Paul Henshaw, Atomic Energy Commission; Carl
Hammer, Univac; Jack Ford, CIA; Douglas Knight, IBM; Walter Munster; Bill
Moore, lawyer. This group founded the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC).
The founding ceremony was held at the Cosmos Club in Washington, DC. A grant
from the National Science Foundation helped the Society to establish the
Journal of Cybernetics. A conference on the social impact of cybernetics was
held at Georgetown University in 1964. (Dechert, 1966) The first conference
arranged by the ASC was held at the National Bureau of Standards in
Gaithersburg, MD. (von Foerster, et al., 1968)
LATE 1960S
Social movements in the United States - against the
Viet Nam war and for civil rights, women’s rights, and environmental protection
- produced a time of student activism on campuses. In terms of research it was
a productive period for the Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL) at the
University of Illinois.
EARLY 1970S
At a meeting of the American Society for Cybernetics
in 1974 in Philadelphia, Heinz von Foerster introduced the term “second order
cybernetics.” (Von Foerster, 1979) The Mansfield Amendment, which was an
attempt to reduce campus unrest caused by the Viet Nam War, cut off government
funds for research that was not related to a military mission, including
research at BCL. (Umpleby, 2003b) The Biological Computer laboratory closed,
and Heinz von Foerster retired and moved to California.
There was an argument between the officers of ASC and the
publisher of the Journal of Cybernetics. The dispute was submitted to
arbitration and the publisher won. Thereafter the journal continued to be
published, but without ASC involvement. The journal published articles
primarily in engineering. However, the field of cybernetics was increasingly
emphasizing biology and the social sciences.
LATE 1970-S
In the late 1970s no meetings of the American Society for
Cybernetics were held. The people connected with BCL attended meetings of the
Society for General Systems Research, which a few years later changed its name
to the International Society for the Systems Sciences.
Stuart Umpleby, who graduated in 1975 and moved from the
University of Illinois to The George Washington University in Washington, DC,
received a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant for an Electronic
Information Exchange for Small Research Communities (EIES). The BCL group moved
into cyberspace. (Umpleby, 1979; Umpleby and Thomas, 1983) This group,
discussing General Systems Theory, was one of nine academic groups using EIES,
supported by NSF. For three years in the late 1970s cyberneticians and systems scientists
across the United States and a few in Europe communicated with each other using
email and computer conferencing via dumb terminals and, initially, 300 baud
modems. The long distance telephone charges were paid by Umpleby’s EIES grant.
When the grant ran out, there was disappointment that universities would not
pay the communications charges. Indeed, it took almost fifteen years before
costs declined sufficiently to permit regular email communication among
academics.
For a few years, due to a conflict with the ASC officers in
Washington, DC, there was a rival organization, the American Cybernetics
Association (ACA), in Philadelphia. 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
émigré. 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.
The work on second order cybernetics was also changing. The
members of the ASC had worked almost twenty years on developing and promoting
the point of view known as second order cybernetics or constructivism. Some
people wanted to move from a period of revolutionary science to a new period of
normal science. (Umpleby, 1990) One way to understand the change is to say that
the period of engineering cybernetics lasted from the mid 1940s to the mid
1970s. The period of biological cybernetics or second order cybernetics lasted
from the mid 1970s to the mid 1990s. And the period of social cybernetics began
in the mid 1990s.
LATE
1990-S
Symposia on the transitions in the former Soviet Union
continued to be held as part of the European Meetings on Cybernetics and Systems
Research. These meetings are held every two years in Vienna, Austria. The
symposia bring together scientists from East and West.
In Washington, DC, a series of meetings on the Year 2000
Computer Problem were held with the support of The Washington Post. These
meetings were based on the idea that “y2k” could be regarded as an experiment
which would reveal the amount of interconnectedness in our increasingly
cybernetic society. (Umpleby, 2000)
Niklas Luhmann’s writings in sociology introduced ideas such
as constructivism and autopoiesis to social scientists in Europe. (Luhmann,
1995) A Socio-Cybernetics Working Group within the International Sociological
Association was established by Felix Geyer and others.
EARLY
2000-S
In the early years of the 21st century large
conferences on informatics and cybernetics were organized by Nagib Callaos and
his colleagues in Orlando, FL. One result has been organizing efforts in Latin
America stimulated by the conferences in Orlando. Annual conferences on
reflexive control began to be held in Moscow and may lead to the founding of a
Russian Association in the field of cybernetics and systems.
The “global university system” created by the Internet and
the Bologna process is not only greatly facilitating communication among
scientists around the world but is also leading to a new metaphor for the
social implications of cybernetics, an alternative metaphor to the “global
brain.” (Umpleby, 2003a)
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
Cybernetics. 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 21st
century the progress made in developing the field of cybernetics in many
disciplines will be successfully integrated.
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