Cybernetics and the machinery of rationality

The British Journal for the History of Science

Volumn 41, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 109-114

  Cohen Cole, Jamie ^a  

^a WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85008522452     PISSN: 00070874     EISSN: 1474001X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007087407000015     Document Type: Review

References (6)

1. P. Medawar, Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought, London, 1969, 54-5, quoted in the Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (ed. W. F. Bynum and R. Porter), Oxford, 2005, 430.
2. For instances of disciplinary development of biology in the context of cybernetics and computer technology see L. E. Kay, ‘Who wrote the book of life? Information and the transformation of molecular biology, 1945-55’, Science in Context (1995), 8, 609-34; E. F. Keller, ‘Synthetic biology redux-computer simulation and artificial life ‘, in idem, Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Developments with Models, Metaphors, and Machines, Cambridge and London, 2002, 265-94;D. Haraway, ‘The high cost of information in post-World War II evolutionary biology: ergonomics, semiotics, and the sociobiology of communication systems’, Philosophical Forum (1981-2), 13, 244-78.
3. For details see P. R. Masani, Norbert Wiener, 1894-1964, Basel and Boston, 1990.
4. A. Rosenbluth, N. Wiener and J. Bigelow, ‘Behavior, purpose and teleology’, Philosophy of Science (1943), 10, 18-24.
5. For examples of this perspective in psychology see O. K. Moore and D. J. Lewis, ‘Purpose and learning theory’, Psychological Review (1953), 60, 149-56; G. A.Miller, E. Galanter and K. H. Pribram, Plans and the Structure of Behavior, New York, 1960.
6. See S. J. Heims, The Cybernetics Group, Cambridge, MA, 1991. Essay review 113