Rather than assume a unitary cybernetics, I ask how its disunity mattered to the history of the human sciences in the United States from about 1940 to 1980. I compare the work of four prominent social scientists – Herbert Simon, George Miller, Karl Deutsch, and Talcott Parsons – who created cybernetic models in psychology, economics, political science, and sociology with the work of anthropologist Gregory Bateson, and relate their interpretations of cybernetics to those of such well-known cyberneticians as Norbert Wiener, Warren McCulloch, W. Ross Ashby, and Heinz von Foerster. I argue that viewing cybernetics through the lens of disunity – asking what was at stake in choosing a specific cybernetic model – shows the complexity of the relationship between first-order cybernetics and the postwar human sciences, and helps us rethink the history of second-order cybernetics.
...MoreArticle Stefanos Geroulanos; Leif Weatherby (2020) Cybernetics and the Human Sciences. History of the Human Sciences (pp. 3-11).
Book
Isaac, Joel;
(2012)
Working Knowledge: Making the Human Sciences from Parsons to Kuhn
(/isis/citation/CBB001210035/)
Article
Stefanos Geroulanos;
Leif Weatherby;
(2020)
Cybernetics and the Human Sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB972435658/)
Essay Review
Mirowski, Philip;
(2012)
Minding the Cybernetic Gap
(/isis/citation/CBB001566998/)
Essay Review
Kline, Ronald R.;
(2011)
Cybernetics As a Usable Past
(/isis/citation/CBB001566758/)
Book
Pickering, Andrew;
(2009)
The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future
(/isis/citation/CBB001020048/)
Thesis
Geoghegan, Bernard Dionysius;
(2012)
The Cybernetic Apparatus: Media, Liberalism, and the Reform of the Human Sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB001562795/)
Article
Ivan Boldyrev;
Olessia Kirtchik;
(2016)
On (Im)Permeabilities: Social and Human Sciences on Both Sides of the ‘Iron Curtain’
(/isis/citation/CBB639943521/)
Article
Abraham, Tara H.;
(2012)
Transcending Disciplines: Scientific Styles in Studies of the Brain in Mid-Twentieth Century America
(/isis/citation/CBB001221638/)
Book
Johan Heilbron;
(2015)
French Sociology
(/isis/citation/CBB064499987/)
Article
Bjørn Thomassen;
(2017)
Gregory Bateson and Eric Voegelin: Silent Dialogues Across the Human Sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB394874650/)
Article
Peter Mandler;
(2019)
The Language of Social Science in Everyday Life
(/isis/citation/CBB618184205/)
Thesis
Knoblauch, Joy Ruth;
(2012)
Going Soft: Architecture and the Human Sciences in Search of New Institutional Forms (1963--1974)
(/isis/citation/CBB001567384/)
Article
Collins, Alan F.;
(2012)
An Asymmetric Relationship: The Spirit of Kenneth Craik and the Work of Warren McCulloch
(/isis/citation/CBB001252304/)
Article
Dotzler, Bernhard J.;
(2009)
“...die richtige Art wissenschaftlicher Objekte...”: Ein Epilog mit Warren McCullochs Embodiments of Mind
(/isis/citation/CBB000932094/)
Thesis
Duda, John;
(2012)
The Idea of Self-Organization between Science and Politics
(/isis/citation/CBB001567405/)
Book
Latil, Pierre de;
(1957)
Thinking by machine: A study of cybernetics
(/isis/citation/CBB001180074/)
Book
Dost-Gozkan, Ayfer;
Keith, Doga Sonmez;
(2015)
Norms, Groups, Conflict, and Social Change: Rediscovering Muzafer Sherif's Psychology
(/isis/citation/CBB001422473/)
Article
Halpern, Orit;
(2012)
Cybernetic Sense
(/isis/citation/CBB001252302/)
Chapter
Mindell, David;
Segal, Jérôme;
Gerovitch, Slava;
(2003)
From Communications Engineering to Communications Science: Cybernetics and Information Theory in the United States, France, and the Soviet Union
(/isis/citation/CBB000301261/)
Book
Liu, Lydia He;
(2010)
The Freudian robot: Digital media and the future of the unconscious
(/isis/citation/CBB001180077/)
Be the first to comment!