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Oh wow. I read early Wiener account of McCulloch&Pitts work and even have one of their papers in my copy of 1956 Dartmouth workshop proceedings. It always puzzl
by varjag 5y ago
Oh wow. I read early Wiener account of McCulloch&Pitts work and even have one of their papers in my copy of 1956 Dartmouth workshop proceedings. It always puzzled me how Wiener and the whole cybernetics thing sort of just faded away. Had no idea that one woman single-handedly killed it.
- Schiphol 5y agoOne woman did not single-handedly kill cybernetics.
- varjag 5y agoApparently I'm not alone in this interpretation: Jerry Lettwin, one of Conway and Siegelman’s informants, suggests that Margaret’s accusation was a lie. Nevertheless, Wiener reacted strongly and immediately, cutting all ties with McCulloch and his group. His actions were, as the authors argue, the death knell for cybernetics as a unified field of study. McCulloch and his team were devastated by Wiener’s rejection, and they turned away from further exploration and elaboration of his ideas. https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/1.2216967 https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/1.221696...
- Schiphol 5y agoWiener's wife did influence the fallout between him and McCulloch but this hardly killed cybernetics, and is perhaps best interpreted as an MIT turf war. In [Ronald Kline's 'The Cybernetic Moment'](https://archive.org/details/cyberneticsmomen0000klin https://archive.org/details/cyberneticsmomen0000klin) this episode happens in p. 66, and the thing goes on for another 250 pages :)