Macy Conferences

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The Macy Conferences ( Macy Conferences ) are ten interdisciplinary conferences that took place between 1946 and 1953 in the United States. They were organized under the auspices of the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, under the auspices of Warren McCulloch , an American neurophysiologist . They are considered to be an important part of cybernetics research.

purpose

This was preceded by a conference on central inhibition of the nervous system in May 1942, which was also organized under the patronage of the Macy Foundation. Another conference in January 1945 on a unified cybernetic idea for the mathematical description of electronic devices and the nervous system brought the central protagonists of the Macy conferences together. McCulloch then tried to found a research institute with John von Neumann , Norbert Wiener and others to study circular feedback mechanisms in biological and social systems , but this was never realized. The conference cycle was the replacement for this.

The aim of the conferences was to lay the foundations for a universal science of how the human brain works as well as electronic adapters , especially computers: cybernetics. In addition, they mark the development of cognitive science , but were also of great importance for the further development of cybernetics and other scientific disciplines such as psychology and sociology . Topics covered at the conferences included neural networks , communication and language, digital computers , neurophysiology , pattern recognition , childhood trauma , group dynamics and group communication .

The title of the conference Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems (circular-causal and feedback mechanisms in biological and social systems) was on a proposal by Heinz von Foerster with reference to the work of Norbert Wiener in Cybernetics converted.

Participants

Outstanding representatives from a wide variety of disciplines (e.g. mathematics, physics, electrical engineering, psychology, neurophysiology, psychiatry, sociology) took part in the Macy conferences.

There was a group of scientists who attended all (or most) of the Macy conferences called the Core Group . It included, among others:

Numerous guests joined the core group , most of whom only attended a single conference. Representative are:

The organizer on the part of the Macy Foundation was Frank Fremont-Smith (1895–1974).

Objects of the individual conferences

1949 memory and storage

  • The psychological moment of perception
  • The neurotic potential and human adaptation, a quantum mechanical theory of memory
  • Possible mechanisms of memory and recognition
  • Intelligent prostheses.

1950 Language:

  • Some problems related to digital terms in the central nervous system
  • The way and the extent to which speech can be disturbed and still remain understandable
  • The redundancy of English
  • Experience of learning primitive languages ​​through the use of high linguistic abstraction
  • About the development of word meanings
  • Language development in early childhood
  • The relation of symbolic functions in language formation and in neurosis
  • Body symbolization and language development

1951 communication:

  • Communication patterns in problem-solving groups
  • Communication among people and the importance of language
  • Communication between healthy and sick
  • Communication among animals
  • A maze dissolving machine
  • Looking for basic symbols

1952 learning and perception:

  • The role of humor in human communication
  • The place of emotion in the feedback concept
  • Homeostasis
  • Discrimination and learning in the octopus
  • The reduction in the number of possible Boolean functions
  • Central excitation and inhibition
  • the mechanical chess player
  • Turbulence as an accidental stimulation of sensory organs
  • Studies on synaptic transmission
  • Feedback Mechanisms in Cell Biology

1953 Language:

  • Brain activity studies
  • Semantic information and its measures
  • Meaning in language and how to get it

consequences

As a result of the conferences, a research institute, the Biological Computer Laboratory , BCL, was founded at the University of Illinois , Urbana-Champaign, which existed from 1958 to 1976 and was headed by Heinz von Foerster. This is where the idea of parallel computing began to take effect.

literature

Protocols 6-10 ed. Heinz von Foerster, Margaret Mead, Hans Lukas Teuber, Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, New York
  • Cybernetics: Transactions of the Sixth Conference . 1949
  • Cybernetics: Transactions of the Seventh Conference . 1950
  • Cybernetics: Transactions of the Eighth Conference . 1952
  • Cybernetics: Transactions of the Ninth Conference . 1953
  • Cybernetics: Transactions of the Tenth Conference . 1955
Others

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Macy Foundation was founded in the USA in 1930 and promotes research in the field of medicine.
  2. ^ Edwards, Paul N .: The Closed World. Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America. Cambridge / London 1996, pp. 187-196.