How disunity matters to the history of cybernetics in the human sciences in the United States, 1940–80
Abstrak
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.
Penulis (1)
Ronald Kline
Akses Cepat
- Tahun Terbit
- 2020
- Bahasa
- en
- Total Sitasi
- 12×
- Sumber Database
- CrossRef
- DOI
- 10.1177/0952695119872111
- Akses
- Open Access ✓