The Cybernetic Brain

by Pickering, Andrew

• ISBN13: 9780226667898
• ISBN10: 0226667898
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-04-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

Cybernetics is often thought of as a grim military or industrial science of control. But as Andrew Pickering reveals in this beguiling book, a much more lively and experimental strain of cybernetics can be traced from the 1940s to the present. The Cybernetic Brainexplores a largely forgotten group of British thinkers, including Grey Walter, Ross Ashby, Gregory Bateson, R. D. Laing, Stafford Beer, and Gordon Pask, and their singular work in a dazzling array of fields. Psychiatry, engineering, management, politics, music, architecture, education, tantric yoga, the Beats, and the sixties counterculture all come into play as Pickering follows the history of cybernetics' impact on the world, from contemporary robotics and complexity theory to the Chilean economy under Salvador Allende. What underpins this fascinating history, Pickering contends, is a shared but unconventional vision of the world as ultimately unknowable, a place where genuine novelty is always emerging. And thus, Pickering avers, the history of cybernetics provides us with an imaginative model of open-ended experimentation in stark opposition to the modern urge to achieve domination over nature and each other.

Author Biography

Andrew Pickering is professor and chair of sociology at the University of Exeter. He is the author of several books, including Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics and The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
The Adaptive Brain	p. 1
Ontological Theater	p. 17
Psychiatry to Cybernetics
Grey Walter: From Electroshock to the Psychedelic Sixties	p. 37
The Tortoise and the Brain	p. 41
Tortoise Ontology	p. 48
Tortoises as Not-Brains	p. 52
The Social Basis of Cybernetics	p. 54
Rodney Brooks and Robotics	p. 60
Cora and Machina Docilis	p. 64
Cyber-Netics and Madness	p. 67
Strange Performances	p. 73
Flicker	p. 76
Flicker and the Sixties	p. 78
Biofeedback and New Music	p. 83
Ross Ashby: Psychiatry, Synthetic Brains, and Cybernetics	p. 91
The Pathological Brain	p. 94
Ashby's Hobby	p. 97
The Homeostat	p. 101
The Homeostat as Ontological Theater	p. 105
The Social Basis of Ashby's Cybernetics	p. 112
Design for a Brain	p. 115
Dams	p. 122
Madness Revisited	p. 131
Adaptation, War, and Society	p. 139
Cybernetics as a Theory of Everthing	p. 145
Cybernetics and Epistemology	p. 149
A New Kind of Science: Alexander, Kauffman, and Wolfram	p. 156
Gregory Bateson and R. D. Laing: Symmetry, Psychiatry, and the Sixties	p. 171
Gregory Bateson	p. 173
Schizophrenia and Enlightenment	p. 175
Therapy	p. 179
As Nomad	p. 180
R. D. Laing	p. 183
On Therapy	p. 186
Kingsley Hall	p. 191
Archway	p. 195
Coupled Becomings, Inner Voyages, Aftermath	p. 198
Psychiatry and the Sixties	p. 204
Ontology, Power, and Revealing	p. 210
Beyond the Brain
Stafford Beer: From the Cybernetic Factory to Tantric Yoga	p. 215
From Operations Research to Cybernetics	p. 220
Toward the Cybernetic Factory	p. 223
Biological Computing	p. 231
Ontology and Design	p. 234
The Social Basis of Beer's Cybernetics	p. 237
The Afterlife of Biological Computing	p. 240
The Viable System Model	p. 243
The VSM as Ontology and Epistemology	p. 250
The VSM in Practice	p. 253
Chile: Project Cybersyn	p. 256
The Politics of the VSM	p. 261
The Political Critique of Cybernetics	p. 264
On Goals	p. 269
The Politics of Interacting Systems	p. 274
Team Syntegrity	p. 278
Cybernetics and Spirituality	p. 283
Hylozoism	p. 285
Tantrism	p. 290
Brian ENO and New Music	p. 302
Gordon Pask: From Chemical Computers to Adaptive Archictecture	p. 309
Musicolour	p. 313
The History of Musicolour	p. 317
Musicolour and Ontology	p. 319
Ontology and Aesthetics	p. 321
The Social Basis of Pask's Cybernetics	p. 324
Training Machines	p. 325
Teaching Machines	p. 329
Chemical Computers	p. 334
Threads	p. 336
New Senses	p. 341
The Epistemology of Cybernetic Research	p. 343
Cas, Social Science, and F-22s	p. 346
The Arts and the Sixties	p. 347
Cybernetic Theater	p. 348
Cybernetic Serendipity	p. 353
The Social Basis Again	p. 361
The Fun Palace	p. 364
After the Sixties: Adaptive Architecture	p. 371
Sketches of Another Future	p. 379
Themes from the History of Cybernetics	p. 380
Ontology	p. 380
Design	p. 382
Power	p. 382
The Arts	p. 384
Selves	p. 384
Spirituality	p. 385
The Sixties	p. 387
Altered States	p. 387
The Social Basis	p. 388
Sketches of Another Future	p. 390
Notes	p. 403
References	p. 479
Index	p. 503
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