The cybernetic brain : sketches of another future / Andrew Pickering.

  • Pickering, Andrew, 1948-
Date:
[2010], ©2010
  • Books

About this work

Description

"Cybernetics is often thought of as a grim military or industrial science of control. But as Andrew Pickering reveals in this beguiling book, a much more lively and experimental strain of cybernetics can be traced from the 1940s to the present." "The Cybernetic Brain explores a largely forgotten group of British thinkers, including Grey Walter, Ross Ashby, Gregory Bateson, R. D. Laing, Stafford Beer, and Gordon Pask, and their singular work in a dazzling array of fields. Psychiatry, engineering, management, politics, music, architecture, education, tantric yoga, the Beats, and the sixties counterculture all come into play as Pickering follows the history of cybernetics' impact on the world, from contemporary robotics and complexity theory to the Chilean economy under Salvador Allende." "What underpins this history, Pickering contends, is a shared but unconventional vision of the world as ultimately unknowable, a place where genuine novelty is always emerging. And thus, Pickering avers, the history of cybernetics provides us with an imaginative model of open-ended experimentation in stark opposition to the modern urge to achieve domination over nature and each other."--BOOK JACKET.

Publication/Creation

Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, [2010], ©2010.

Physical description

x, 526 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Bibliographic information

Includes bibliographical references (p. [479]-502) and index.

Contents

Psychiatry to cybernetics -- 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 -- 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 -- 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 -- Beyond the brain -- 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 -- Gordon Pask: from chemical computers to adaptive archictecture -- 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 -- 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.

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Where to find it

  • LocationStatus
    History of Medicine
    ADT.U
    Open shelves

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Identifiers

ISBN

  • 9780226667898
  • 0226667898
  • 9780226667904
  • 0226667901