The cybernetics movements

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 21^st century the progress made in developing the field of cybernetics in many disciplines will be successfully integrated.

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