om 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. p> 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. p> 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 concern...
