Organisms, machines, and thunderstorms: A history of self-organization, part one

Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences

Volumn 38, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 45-75

  Keller, Evelyn Fox ^a  

^a MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

Author keywords

Cybernetics; Homeostasis; Self organization; Self regulation; Stability

Indexed keywords

EID: 51249132891     PISSN: 19391811     EISSN: 1939182X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/hsns.2008.38.1.45     Document Type: Review

References (67)

1. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (http:// enlightenment.supersaturated.com/johnlocke/BOOKIIChapterXXVII.html, 1690), bk. 2, ch. 27, §4
2. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, vol. 39 of Great Books (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1993), 558, §66
3. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, vol. 39 of Great Books Ibid., 558, §66
4. Hannah Ginsborg, "Kant on Understanding Organisms as Natural Purposes," in Kant and the Sciences, ed. Eric Watkins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 243
5. Alix A. Cohen, "A Kantian Stance on Teleology in Biology," South African Journal of Philosophy 26 (2007): 109-21
6. Kant, Critique of Judgement (ref. 2), 550, §61
7. Timothy Lenoir, The Strategy of Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 229-30
8. Hermann Helmholtz, "Über den Stoffverbrauch bei der Muskelaktion," Archiv für Anatomie und Physiologie (1845), 72-83, on 72
9. quoted in Lenoir, The Strategy of Life (ref. 11), 200
10. Emil du Bois-Reymond, Untersuchungen über thierische Elektricität (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1848), xliii-xliv
11. Herbert Spencer, First Principles (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/ modeng/public/SpeFirs.html, 1862), §173
12. Michael Heidelberger, Nature from Within: Gustav Theodor Fechner and His Psychophysical Worldview (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), 250
13. Michael Heidelberger, Nature from Within: Gustav Theodor Fechner and His Psychophysical Worldview Ibid., 251
14. Sigmund Freud, Complete Psychological Works of S. Freud, ed. J. Strachey, vol. 18 (London: Hogarth, 1955), 8-9
15. Claude Bernard, Leçons sur les phénomènes de la vie, communs aux animaux et aux végétaux, publié par A. Dastre, 2 vols. (Paris: Baillière, 1878-1879), 113, 121
16. William Coleman, "The Cognitive Basis of the Discipline: Claude Bernard on Physiology," Isis 76 (1985): 53
17. "[W]hat distinguishes a living machine is not the nature of its physico-chemical properties, complex as they may be, but rather the creation of the machine which develops under our eyes in conditions proper to itself and according to a definite idea which expresses the living being's nature and the very essence of life" (Claude Bernard, An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (New York: Henry Schuman, Inc., 1927), 93
18. Alfred J. Lotka, Elements of Physical Biology (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins Company, 1925)
19. reprinted as Elements of Mathematical Biology (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), 281
20. Elements of Mathematical Biology Ibid., 284
21. F. G. Donnan, "The Mystery of Life," Nature 122 (1928): 512-14, on 512
22. F. G. Donnan, Nature Ibid., 514
23. "Life and death," Nature 122 (1928): 501-03, on 501
24. The contrast is especially sharp in L. J. Henderson's reading of Bernard's principle. As J. S. Haldane wrote, "Henderson treats the constancy of reaction in the living body as if it depended on the physico-chemical properties of blood. In actual fact this constancy depends during health on the coordinated activity of the kidneys and respiratory organs. . . . Not all the buffering in the world would keep the reaction constant otherwise, though the buffering greatly smooths the regulation." J. S. Haldane, "Claude Bernard's Conception of the Internal Environment," Science 69 (1929): 453-54
25. A. V. Hill, Adventures in Biophysics (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1931), 55
26. A. V. Hill, Adventures in Biophysics Ibid., 68, 69, 79
27. Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "Der Organismus als physikalisches System betrachtet," Naturwissenschaften 28 (1940): 521-31
28. In his later years, von Bertalanffy would probably have preferred being introduced in the next section, for, with the rise of cybernetics, he often attempted to claim priority for many of the arguments for the possibility of "self-organizing" machines. He appears here because it is clear that, in his early work, he vigorously resisted any such assimilation between organisms and machines. For example, in Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Modern Theories of Development, trans. J. H. Woodger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934), he argued that it is evident that "every machine is where and what it is for a definite purpose, and that it presupposes the engineer who has conceived and constructed it" (pp. 37-38). Here, self-regulation and self-organization are, as they were for Kant, defining features of living systems
29. See A. C. Burton, "The Properties of the Steady State Compared to Those of Equilibrium as Shown in Characteristic Biological Behavior," Journal of Cellular and Comparative Physiology 14 (1939): 327-49
30. Rudolf Schoenheimer, The Dynamic State of Body Constituents (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942)
31. J. M. Reiner and S. Spiegelman, "The Energetics of Transient and Steady States, With Special Reference to Biological Systems," Journal of Physical Chemistry 49 (1945): 81-92
32. W. B. Cannon, "Organization for Physiological Homeostasis," Physiology Review 9 (1929), 2
33. Cannon paid somewhat fuller tribute to Bernard in the French translation of The Wisdom of the Body. There he wrote, "The central idea of this book, 'the stability of the inner medium of the organism in higher vertebrates,' is directly inspired by the precise views and deep understanding of the eminent French physiologist Claude Bernard. This book can even be considered a tribute to his memory." L. L. Langley, Homeostasis (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1973), 2
34. Cannon, "Homeostasis" (ref. 36), 400
35. Lavoisier, Oeuvres, vol. II, 700, http://historyofscience.free.fr/ Lavoisier-Friends/a-chap4-lavoisier.html
36. Hermann von Hemholtz, Popular Scientific Lectures (New York: D. Appleton, 1854), 183
37. Spencer, First Principles (ref. 16), §173
38. Alfred Wallace, "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type (S43: 1858)," http://www.wku.edu/smithch/wallace/ S043.htm: 62
39. "It seems not impossible that the means employed by the more highly evolved animals for preserving uniform and stable their internal economy (i.e., for preserving homeostasis) may present some general principles for the establishment, regulation and control of steady states, that would be suggestive for other kinds of organization - even social and industrial - which suffer from distressing perturbations." (W. B. Cannon, The Wisdom of the Body (London: Kegan Paul, 1932)
40. David Mindell, Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing before Cybernetics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 13
41. Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1948), 113
42. Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine Ibid., 251
43. Erwin Schrödinger, What is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell & Mind and Matter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 75-76
44. W. R. Ashby, "Principles of the Self-organizing Dynamic System," Journal of General Psychology 37 (1947): 125-28
45. W. R. Ashby, Journal of General Psychology Ibid., 125
46. W. R. Ashby, "The Homeostat," Electron 20 (1948): 380
47. Ivan Pavlov, "Conditioned Reflexes: An Investigation of the Physiological Activity of the Cerebral Cortex, Lecture One" (1927), http://www.ivanpavlov.com/lectures/ivan-pavlov-lecture-001.htm
48. Grey Walter, The Living Brain (New York: W. W. Norton, 1953), 123
49. W. R. Ashby, "Principles of the Self-organizing System," in Principles of Self-Organization, ed. H. von Foerster and G. W. Zopf (New York: Pergamon Press, 1962), 255-278
50. See Andrew Pickering, "Cybernetics and the Mangle: Ashby, Beer and Pask," Social Studies of Science 32 (2002): 413-37 for further discussion of Ashby
51. Ashby, "Principles" (ref. 54), 267
52. D. O. Hebb, The Organization of Behavior (New York: Wiley, 1949)
53. Frank Rosenblatt, "Electronic 'Brain' Teaches Itself," New York Times, 13 Jul 1958
54. The organizer of one of the early conferences on "self-organizing systems" suggested a slightly different aim, one he described as "man's dominating aim," namely "the replication of himself by himself by technological means" (C. A. Muses, ed., Aspects of the Theory of Artificial Intelligence [New York: Plenum, 1962], 114). He introduced the published volume with the suggestion that "Man Build Thyself?" might be a better title (v)
55. The U.S. military's interest in bionics had a similar basis. In 1960, Harvey Saley of the Air Force addressed a Bionics Symposium as follows: "The Air Force, along with other military services, has recently shown an increasing interest in biology as a source of principles applicable to engineering. The reason clearly is that our technology is faced with problems of increasing complexity. In living things, problems of organized complexity have been solved with a success that invites our wonder and admiration." Quoted in Geoffrey C. Bowker, "How to be Universal: Some Cybernetic Strategies, 1943-1970," Social Studies of Science 2 (1993): 107-27, on 118
56. Marshall Yovits and Scott Cameron, ed., Self-Organizing Systems (New York: Pergamon Press, 1960), v-vi
57. Self-Organizing Systems Ibid., 31
58. Robert Rosen, " On a Logical Paradox Implicit in the Notion of a Self-Reproducing Automata," Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics 21 (1959): 387-94
59. Gordon Pask, "Introduction: Different Kinds of Cybernetics," in New Perspectives on Cybernetics: Self-Organization, Autonomy, and Connectionism, ed. Gertrudis van de Vijver (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992), 24-25
60. See Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (Boston: D. Reidel, 1979)
61. The main arguments for autopoiesis were developed in Chile in the late 1960s, but Maturana was a frequent visitor at von Foerster's "Biological Computing Laboratory" in Urbana during that period, and after 1968, so was Varela; indeed, Varela thanks von Foerster for his "role in the gestation and early days of the notion of autopoiesis." Francisco Varela, "The Early Days of Autopoiesis: Heinz and Chile," Systems Research 13 (1996): 407-416, on 407. Both Maturana and Varela remained close personal friends of von Foerster until his death in 2002, but in my reading of their work, there is a considerable distance between the theory of autopoisesis and the work of von Foerster and Pask, especially as originally represented under the banner of "self-organization."
62. D. C. Dennet, "The Logical Geography of Computational Approaches: A View from the East Pole," in The Representation of Knowledge and Belief, ed. M. Brand and R. M. Harnish (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1986), 59-79
63. Personal communication, 1997
64. Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert, Perceptrons (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969), 19
65. See Hubert Dreyfus and Stuart Dreyfus, "Making a Mind Versus Modeling the Brain: Artificial Intelligence Back at a Branchpoint," Daedalus 117 (1988): 15-44, on 24. Von Foerster, however, was able to keep his center, the Biological Computing Laboratory, going for another five years, largely by forging new alliances with the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Education
66. Dreyfus and Dreyfus, "Making a Mind" (ref. 71), 24
67. Heinz von Foerster, interview with Stefano Franchi, Güven Güzeldere, and Eric Minch, SEHR 4:2: Constructions of the Mind, Updated 26 June 1995, http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/interviewvonf.html