The Cybernetic Brain
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THE CYBERNETIC BRAIN
SKETCHES OF ANOTHER FUTURE
Andrew Pickering
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO AND LONDON
ANDREW PICKERINGIS PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF EXETER. HIS BOOKS INCLUDE CONSTRUCTING QUARKS: A SOCIOLOGICAL HISTORY OF PARTICLE PHYSICS, THE MANGLE OF PRACTICE: TIME, AGENCY, AND SCIENCE, AND SCIENCE AS PRACTICE AND CULTURE, ALL PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, AND THE MANGLE IN PRACTICE: SCIENCE, SOCIETY, AND BECOMING (COEDITED WITH KEITH GUZIK).
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THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, CHICAGO 60637 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, LTD., LONDON © 2010 BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PUBLISHED 2010 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-66789-8 (CLOTH)
ISBN-10: 0-226-66789-8 (CLOTH)
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pickering, Andrew.
The cybernetic brain : sketches of another future / Andrew Pickering.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-66789-8 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-66789-8 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Cybernetics.
2. Cybernetics—History. 3. Brain. 4. Self-organizing systems.
I. Title.
Q310.P53 2010
003'.5—dc22
2009023367
a THE PAPER USED IN THIS PUBLICATION MEETS THE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF THE AMERICAN NATIONAL STANDARD FOR INFORMATION SCIENCES—PERMANENCE OF PAPER FOR PRINTED LIBRARY MATERIALS, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
DEDICATION
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For Jane F.
CONTENTS
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Acknowledgments
1. The Adaptive Brain 2. Ontological Theater
PART 1: PSYCHIATRY TO CYBERNETICS
3. Grey Walter: From Electroshock to the Psychedelic Sixties
THE TORTOISE AND THE BRAIN :: TORTOISE ONTOLOGY :: TORTOISES AS NOT-BRAINS :: THE SOCIAL BASIS OF CYBERNETICS :: RODNEY BROOKS AND ROBOTICS :: CORA AND MACHINA DOCILIS :: CYBERNETICS AND MADNESS :: STRANGE PERFORMANCES :: FLICKER :: FLICKER AND THE SIXTIES :: BIOFEEDBACK AND NEW MUSIC
4. Ross Ashby: Psychiatry, Synthetic Brains, and Cybernetics
THE PATHOLOGICAL BRAIN :: ASHBY'S HOBBY :: THE HOMEOSTAT :: THE HOMEOSTAT AS ONTOLOGICAL THEATER :: THE SOCIAL BASIS OF ASHBY'S CYBERNETICS :: DESIGN FOR A BRAIN :: DAMS :: MADNESS REVISITED :: ADAPTATION, WAR, AND SOCIETY :: CYBERNETICS AS A THEORY OF EVERYTHING :: CYBERNETICS AND EPISTEMOLOGY :: A NEW KIND OF SCIENCE: ALEXANDER, KAUFFMAN, AND WOLFRAM
5. Gregory Bateson and R. D. Laing: Symmetry, Psychiatry, and the Sixties
GREGORY BATESON :: SCHIZOPHRENIA AND ENLIGHTENMENT :: THERAPY :: AS NOMAD
R. D. LAING :: ON THERAPY :: KINGSLEY HALL :: ARCHWAY :: COUPLED BECOMINGS, INNER VOYAGES, AFTERMATH :: PSYCHIATRY AND THE SIXTIES :: ONTOLOGY, POWER, AND REVEALING
PART 2: BEYOND THE BRAIN
6. Stafford Beer:From the Cybernetic Factory to Tantric Yoga
FROM OPERATIONS RESEARCH TO CYBERNETICS :: TOWARD THE CYBERNETIC FACTORY :: BIOLOGICAL COMPUTING :: ONTOLOGY AND DESIGN :: THE SOCIAL BASIS OF BEER'S CYBERNETICS :: THE AFTERLIFE OF BIOLOGICAL COMPUTING :: THE VIABLE SYSTEM MODEL :: THE VSM AS ONTOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGY :: THE VSM IN PRACTICE :: CHILE: PROJECT CYBERSYN :: THE POLITICS OF THE VSM :: THE POLITICAL CRITIQUE OF CYBERNETICS :: ON GOALS :: THE POLITICS OF INTERACTING SYSTEMS :: TEAM SYNTEGRITY :: CYBERNETICS AND SPIRITUALITY :: HYLOZOISM :: TANTRISM :: BRIAN ENO AND NEW MUSIC
7. Gordon Pask: From Chemical Computers to Adaptive Archictecture / 309
MUSICOLOUR :: THE HISTORY OF MUSICOLOUR :: MUSICOLOUR AND ONTOLOGY :: ONTOLOGY AND AESTHETICS :: THE SOCIAL BASIS OF PASK'S CYBERNETICS :: TRAINING MACHINES :: TEACHING MACHINES :: CHEMICAL COMPUTERS :: THREADS :: NEW SENSES :: THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF CYBERNETIC RESEARCH :: CAS, SOCIAL SCIENCE, AND F-22S :: THE ARTS AND THE SIXTIES :: CYBERNETIC THEATER :: CYBERNETIC SERENDIPITY :: THE SOCIAL BASIS AGAIN :: THE FUN PALACE :: AFTER THE SIXTIES: ADAPTIVE ARCHITECTURE
8: Sketches of Another Future
THEMES FROM THE HISTORY OF CYBERNETICS :: ONTOLOGY :: DESIGN :: POWER :: THE ARTS :: SELVES :: SPIRITUALITY :: THE SIXTIES :: ALTERED STATES :: THE SOCIAL BASIS
SKETCHES OF ANOTHER FUTURE
Notes References Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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This project began in fall 1998, with the support of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at MIT. A lengthy first draft was written during a sabbatical at the Science Studies Unit of the University of Edinburgh in 2002–3, supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. In 2005–6 I enjoyed a fellowship from the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the final draft of the book was completed while I was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford in 2006–7. Along the way, visits of a month or two to the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin made possible bursts of sustained research and writing. I am immensely grateful to all of these institutions, and to David Bloor as director of the Science Studies Unit and Ursula Klein and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, whose research groups I joined in Berlin.
The book could not have been written without the active assistance of many cyberneticians, colleagues, friends and family members of the book's principal characters, and various others whose work I have referred to and discussed: Jill Ashby, John Ashby, Mick Ashby, Sally Bannister, Ian Beer, Stafford Beer, Vanilla Beer, Rodney Brooks, Peter Cariani, Raul Espejo, John Frazer, Ranulph Glanville, Nick Green, Amanda Heitler, Garnet Hertz, Stewart Kauffman, Allenna Leonard, Paul Pangaro, the late Elizabeth Pask, Simon Penny, Ruth Pettit, Jasia Reichardt, Bernard Scott, Yolanda Sonnabend, Joe Truss, David Whittaker, and Stephen Wolfram. My thanks to all of them, especially perhaps to Paul Pangaro, who introduced me to many of the others at an early stage in my research and was always ready with information, feedback, and encouragement.
Among my colleagues and friends, frequent conversations, critiques, and encouragement from the likes of Peter Asaro, Geof Bowker, Bruce Lambert, and Fernando Elichirigoity were at different times and in different ways very important to me. Gordon Belot, Michael Friedman, Eden Medina, Laura Ruetsche, and Fred Turner read and commented on the entire manuscript; Erica Goode, Peter Harries-Jones, Malcolm Nicolson, Dave Perkins, and Henning Schmidgen on various chapters. Others who have contributed constructively and critically include Ian Carthy, Adrian Cussins, Manuel DeLanda, Otniel Dror, John Geiger, Slava Gerovitch, Rhodri Hayward, David Hopping, Sharon Irish, Evelyn Fox Keller, Vera Ketelboeter, Jeffrey Kripal, Julia Kursell, David Lambert, Mike Lynch, Brian Marick, Clark McPhail, Diana Mincyte, Anya Pantuyeva, Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Judith Pintar, Amit Prasad, Carol Steiner, Steve Sturdy, Lucy Suchman, and Norton Wise. My thanks go to all of them, too.
I thank Jane Flaxington for her help in the endless quest for permission to reproduce figures. At the University of Chicago Press, I thank Douglas Mitchell and Timothy McGovern for their editorial care and assistance. Erik Carlson's copyediting was exemplary, educational, and fun.
Finally, my love to Jane, Lucy, Thomas, and Alex for putting up with my eccentricities, now including this book.
Exeter, April 10, 2008
1
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THE ADAPTIVE BRAIN
THE MAKING OF A SYNTHETIC BRAIN REQUIRES NOW LITTLE MORE THAN TIME AND LABOUR. . . . SUCH A MACHINE
MIGHT BE USED IN THE DISTANT FUTURE . . . TO EXPLORE REGIONS OF INTELLECTUAL SUBTLETY AND COMPLEXITY AT PRESENT BEYOND THE HUMAN POWERS. . . . HOW WILL IT END? I SUGGEST THAT THE SIMPLEST WAY TO FIND OUT IS TO MAKE THE THING AND SEE.
ROSS ASHBY,"DESIGN FOR A BRAIN" (1948, 382–83)
On 13 December 1948, the Daily Herald carried a front-page article entitled "The Clicking Brain Is Cleverer Than Man's," featuring a machine called the homeostat built by W. Ross Ashby. Soon the rest of the press in Britain and around the world followed suit. In the United States, an article in Time magazine, "The Thinking Machine," appeared on 24 January 1949 (p. 66), and by 8 March 1949 Ashby was holding forth on BBC radio on "imitating the brain." At much the same time, W. Grey Walter appeared on BBC television showing off a couple of small robots he had built, Elmer and Elsie, the first examples of his robot "tortoises," or, more pretentiously, of a new inorganic species, Machina speculatrix. One appeared in a family photo in Time (fig. 1.1). In 1952, Gordon Pask began work on his Musicolour machine—an electromechanical device that collaborated in obscure ways with a musician to generate a synesthetic light show. Soon he was also experimenting with quasi-biological electrochemical computers that could evolve new senses, and within a decade he was designing buildings that could reconfigure themselves in "conversation" with their users. In 1959 Stafford Beer published a book imagining an automated factory controlled by a biological computer— perhaps a colony of insects or perhaps a complex ecosystem such as a pond. By the early 1970s, he was redesigning the "nervous system" of the Chilean economy at the invitation of the socialist government of Salvador Allende.
Figure 1.1. The cyborg family. Source: de Latil 1956, facing p. 34.
Examples like these convey some of the flavor of the history explored in the following chapters. In this chapter and the next I want to discuss more generally what cybernetics is, or was, and why it interests me. (The tense is difficult; cybernetics as a field is alive today, but the main characters of this book are all now dead. I will tend therefore to speak of cybernetics in the past tense, as referring to a historical body of work.)
SOME PEOPLE THINK THAT CYBERNETICS IS ANOTHER WORD FOR AUTOMATION; SOME THAT IT CONCERNS EXPERIMENTS WITH RATS; SOME THAT IT IS A BRANCH OF MATHEMATICS; OTHERS THAT IT WANTS TO BUILD A COMPUTER CAPABLE OF RUNNING THE COUNTRY. MY HOPE IS THAT . . . PEOPLE WILL UNDERSTAND BOTH HOW THESE WONDERFULLY DIFFERENT NOTIONS CAN BE SIMULTANEOUSLY CURRENT, AND ALSO WHY NONE OF THEM IS MUCH TO THE POINT.
STAFFORD BEER,CYBERNETICS AND MANAGEMENT (1959, VI)
TO SPEAK OF A HISTORY, ANY HISTORY, AS THOUGH THERE WAS BUT ONE SOMEHOW CANONICAL HISTORY . . . IS MISLEADING. . . . ANY ENTITY, CULTURE OR CIVILISATION . . . CARRIES INNUMERABLE, IN SOME WAYS DIFFERING, HISTORIES.
GORDON PASK,"INTERACTIONS OF ACTORS" (1992, 11)
The word "cybernetics" was coined in 1947 by the eminent American mathematician Norbert Wiener and his friends to name the kind of science they were discussing at the famous Macy conferences held between 1946 and 1953.1 It was derived from the Greek word kybernetes(Latin equivalent, gubernator) meaning "governor" in the sense of "steersman," so one could read "cybernetics" as "the science of steersmanship"—and this is, as it happens, a good definition as far as this book is concerned. The matter was made more interesting and complicated, however, by Wiener's 1948 book which put the word into circulation, Cybernetics; or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. There Wiener tried to tie together all sorts of more or less independent lines of scientific development: digital electronic computing (then still novel), information theory, early work on neural networks, the theory of servomechanisms and feedback systems, and work in psychology, psychiatry, decision theory, and the social sciences. There are many stories to be told of the evolution, the comings together, and the driftings apart of these threads, only a few of which have so far attracted the attention of scholars.2 One can almost say that everyone can have their own history of cybernetics.
In this book I do not attempt a panoptic survey of everything that could be plausibly described as cybernetic. I focus on the strand of cybernetics that interests me most, which turns out to mean the work of a largely forgotten group of British cyberneticians, active from the end of World War II almost to the present. Even to develop an overview of British cybernetics would require several books, so I focus instead on a few leading lights of the field, the ones mentioned already: Grey Walter (1910–77), Ross Ashby (1903–72), Stafford Beer (1926–2002), and Gordon Pask (1928–96), with a substantial detour through the work of Gregory Bateson and R. D. Laing. And even with this editorial principle, I have to recognize that each of my four easily warrants his own biography, which I have not attempted to write. So what follows is very much my own history of cybernetics in Britain—not a comprehensive survey, but the story of a set of scientific, technological, and social developments that speak to me for reasons I will explain and that I hope will interest others.
A further principle of selection is also in play. Most accounts of the history of cybernetics are in the mode of a history of ideas; they concentrate on grasping the key ideas that differentiate cybernetics from other sciences. I am not uninterested in ideas, but I am interested in ideas as engaged in practice, and at the heart of this book is a series of real-world projects encompassing all sorts of strange machines and artifacts, material and social. I want to document what cybernetics looked like when people did it, rather than just thought it. That is why the opening paragraph ran from artificial brains to the Chilean economy, rather than offering an abstract discussion of the notion of "feedback" or whatever.
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The choice of principals for this study makes sense sociologically inasmuch as my four cyberneticians interacted strongly with one another. Walter and Ashby were first-generation cyberneticians, active in the area that became known as cybernetics during and even before World War II, and were leading members of the first protocybernetic organization in Britain, the so-called Ratio Club, which met between 1949 and 1958 (Alan Turing was the best-known recruit). They never collaborated in research, but they knew, took account of, and commented on each other's work, though relations became strained in 1959 when Ashby briefly became Walter's boss. Beer and Pask were second-generation cyberneticians, coming onto the scene in the 1950s after the foundations of the field had been laid. They were lifelong friends, and Beer became almost the social secretary of the British branch of cybernetics, with strong personal ties not only to Walter, Ashby, and Pask and but also to Wiener and to Warren McCulloch, the guiding spirit of cybernetics in the United States. But what about the technical content of British cybernetics? Is there any unity there?
The standard origin story has it that cybernetics evolved out of the intersection of mathematics and engineering in U.S. military research in World War II, and this is certainly a good description of Wiener's trajectory (Galison 1994). But figure 1.2, a photograph taken in the early 1950s, originally appeared with the not unreasonable caption "The Four Pioneers of Cybernetics," and what I find striking is that, with Wiener as the exception, three of the four—Ashby, Walter, and McCulloch—spent much or all of their professional careers in research on the human brain, often in psychiatric milieus.3 We can explore the specifically psychiatric origins of cybernetics in detail in chapters 3 and 4, but for the moment it is enough to note that the distinctive object of British cybernetics was the brain, itself understood in a distinctive way. This requires some explanation now, since it is a way into all that follows.
Figure 1.2. The four pioneers of cybernetics (left to right): Ross Ashby, Warren McCulloch, Grey Walter, and Norbert Wiener. Source: de Latil 1956, facing p. 53.
To put it very crudely, there are two ways to think about the brain and what it does. The way that comes naturally to me is to think of the brain as an organ of knowledge. My brain contains representations, stories, memories, pictures of the world, people and things, myself in it, and so on. If I know something, I have my brain (and not my kidneys, say) t
o thank for it. Of course, I did not get this image of the brain from nowhere. It is certainly congenial to us academics, professional knowers, and it (or an equivalent image of mind) has been stock-in-trade for philosophy for centuries and for philosophy of science throughout the twentieth century. From the mid-1950s onward this image has been instantiated and highly elaborated in the branch of computer science concerned with artificial intelligence (AI). AI—or, at least, the approach to AI that has become known as GOFAI: good, old-fashioned AI—just is traditional philosophy of science implemented as a set of computer algorithms. The key point that needs to be grasped is that the British cyberneticians' image of the brain was not this representational one.
What else could a brain be, other than our organ of representation? This question once baffled me, but the cyberneticians (let me take the qualifier "British" for granted from now on unless needed) had a different answer. As Ashby put it in 1948, "To some, the critical test of whether a machine is or is not a 'brain' would be whether it can or cannot 'think.' But to the biologist the brain is not a thinking machine, it is an actingmachine; it gets information and then it does something about it" (Ashby 1948, 379). The cyberneticians, then, conceived of the brain as an immediately embodied organ, intrinsically tied into bodily performances. And beyond that, they understood the brain's special role to be that of adaptation. The brain is what helps us to get along and come to terms with, and survive in, situations and environments we have never encountered before. Undoubtedly, knowledge helps us get along and adapt to the unknown, and we will have to come back to that, but this simple contrast (still evident in competing approaches to robotics today) is what we need for now: the cybernetic brain was not representational but performative, as I shall say, and its role in performance was adaptation.