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One woman did not single-handedly kill cybernetics.
by Schiphol 5y ago
One 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 :)