[from Gary Cziko 2007.03.23 23:00 MST]
Here is an event taking place next week at my institution that mentions some interesting cybernetics history at the University of Illinois.
Unfortunately, I will still be in Tucson when these events take place, enjoying an extended Spring Break to be culminated by my daughter’s wedding.
I wonder some of you familiar with Heinz von Foerster’s work might have some reactions and comments.
–Gary
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: nancy sarabi sarabi@uiuc.edu
Date: Mar 23, 2007 1:30 PM
Subject: [CAS Community] Reception and book signing–Heinz von Foerster and the BCL
To: community@cas.uiuc.edu
Albert Müller and Karl Müller (no relation), professors at
the University of Vienna, will visit Champaign-Urbana March 28 - April
1 to release the published results of their work: a collection of
essays about former UI professor Heinz von Foerster and his Biological
Computer Laboratory (BCL), where pioneering cybernetics research
thrived from 1958 until 1976.
The collection-entitled An Unfinished Revolution? Heinz von
Foerster and the Biological Computer Laboratory, 1958-1976, and
published by the Viennese house Edition Echoraum-brings together
memories, appreciations, and critical appraisals by former students
and colleagues of von Foerster.
The Illini Union Bookstore, 809 S. Wright Street, Champaign,
will host the editors for a reception and book signing in the
second-floor Authors’ Corner at 4:30 p.m. on March 28. The event
is free and open to the public. From March 29 to April 1, the editors
will participate in the American Society for Cybernetics 2007
Conference at the Independent Media Center in downtown Urbana.
Cybernetics flourished in the decades after World War II,
bringing engineering, natural and social sciences, even the arts and
humanities to bear on comparative investigation of living organisms
and machines. Cybernetics helped spawn new fields including cognitive
science, computer science, complex systems, neural networks, bionics,
robotics, and artificial intelligence-not to mention plenty of great
science fiction.
“During its lifetime, the BCL was certainly the most
important institutional base for cybernetics in the Western world,”
said U of I sociology professor Andrew Pickering, who specializes in
the history and sociology of science. “Much of the work that
fascinates scholars now was done at the BCL and owed much to von
Foerster’s inspiration.”
Von Foerster was born and raised in Vienna in 1911, earned a
doctorate in physics, and moved to Illinois in 1949 to head UI’s
Electron Tube Laboratory in the Department of Electrical Engineering.
He became a core participant in the Macy Conferences, regular
gatherings sponsored by the Josiah Macy Foundation, where the
foundations of cybernetics were laid by the likes of mathematicians
Norbert Wiener and John von Neumann, engineer Claude Shannon,
physiologists Warren McCulloch and Arturo Rosenblueth, anthropologist
Margaret Meade, and others. Von Foerster established the BCL in 1958
and directed the lab until its demise at the end of 1975. He then
retired to Pescadero, California, and remained active as a thinker,
writer, and speaker until his death in 2002. He influenced fields from
technical cybernetics, to philosophy and sociology of science, to
psychology and family therapy.
BCL benefited from von Foerster’s connections and charisma as the
lab hosted an extraordinary array of thinkers and researchers for
extended visits. Among these were neuroscientist Ross Ashby,
biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, and logicians Lars
Löfgren and Gothard Günther. BCL researchers developed futuristic
machines that emulated the eyes, ears, and neurons of living
organisms. These devices-though analog, not digital-count as some of
the earliest parallel computers ever built.
The lab bridged the gap between north and south of Green Street,
attracting students from across campus for lively, interdisciplinary
seminars. In 1969, BCL students published The Whole University
Catalog, an irreverent guide to UI modeled on the popular Whole Earth
Catalog. In 1974, students published the collection Cybernetics of
Cybernetics, which has been reprinted and remains one of the best
overviews of the field. UI composer Herbert Brün, a pioneer of the
avant garde, was a popular presence at the seminars and also
collaborated closely with von Foerster on research projects.
Pickering noted that most of the recent resurgence of interest in
von Foerster and BCL, as well as in cybernetics generally, has taken
place in the humanities and social sciences. “Underlying this
revival lies a conviction that cybernetics offers a different
‘paradigm’ from that of the mainstream sciences, and one which might
be better suited to getting to grips with key issues in the world
today.”
Contact:
Jamie Hutchinson
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
jhutchin@uiuc.edu
244-1854
--
Nancy Sarabi (Staff Secretary)
Center for Advanced Study, 912 W. Illinois, MC-064 (Urbana, IL
61801)
Email: sarabi@uiuc.edu Phone:
(217) 333-6729 Fax: (217) 244-3396
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