The History of Cybernetics: Ashby, Beer and Pask

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

ABSTRACT: SES 00-94504 Andrew Pickering The History Of Cybernetics: Ashby, Beer And Pask Cybernetics increasingly commands serious interest amongst historians of science, in part, no doubt, because of a sense that it has sought to grasp the world in an interestingly different way from the more familiar natural and social sciences-holistically rather than reductively, to put it crudely. Most historical interest has focussed on the World War II founders of cybernetics-Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann, Warren McCulloch, Claude Shannon-and the series of Macy conferences (1946-53) in which their views were propagated. And most attention has been paid to the conceptual singularity of cybernetics-cybernetics as a theory of negative feedback and control, or as a world-view or ideology. This project extends our understanding of the substance and history of cybernetics along several axes. First, it examines new characters and a later period. Based on research over the past couple of years, the PI believes that some of the most fascinating and original work in cybernetics was done from the early 1950s onwards by a group of British scientists-foremost amongst them W. Ross Ashby, Stafford Beer and Gordon Pask. Second, while I am, of course, interested in the ideas of these men, I am also interested in what they did-the practice of cybernetics, a largely unexplored topic. This leads, third, into the material stratum of cybernetics. Like Wiener's before them, the cybernetics of the English group referred directly to a constellation of fascinating material systems and artefacts. The singularity of cybernetics, the PI argues, resides at least as much at this level as it does at the level of ideas. The interest in practice also leads, fourth, into the social structure of cybernetics. We are familiar with the usual academic/disciplinary centering of the traditional sciences, but cybernetics was not like that. The cyberneticians have typically been wanderers or vagrants, moving readily between institutional bases that we generally think of as distinct, including the university, but also the arts, business, industry and the military. This social level constitutes another, hitherto not well recognised, aspect of the singularity of cybernetics. This proposal for a sabbatical year supports preparation of a book on the British cyberneticians, especially the research on Beer and Pask. (The PI's a graduate student is already working intensively on Ashby). Key informants have agreed to be interviewed and furnish documents in their possession. The book seeks to emphasise that, in its specific entanglements of the material, social and conceptual, cybernetics was a different kind of historical formation from the reductive sciences-a new and fascinating kind of object for study by the STS community that may increasingly command much wider scholarly and popular interest. Certain theoretical concerns of the PI go along with his interest in cybernetics, which he intends to open up in the last chapter of the book by locating cybernetics within a larger body of cognate work, including current work on 'complexity' and his own work on the 'mangle of practice.' The project contributes significantly to theoretical discussions within and beyond science and technology studies. The PI also explores the relevance of such discussions for contemporary work in artificial intelligence, information technology and cognitive science.