Excerpt: The early history of the cybernetics movement in the United States was marked by widespread difficulties stemming from differences in opinion and disciplinary background, accompanied by a lack of willingness to accept different philosophical points of view. In this article we will explore how, despite these differences, a determined group of transdisciplinary thinkers – with interests ranging from engineering to neurophysiology – came together to establish what is now the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) Although previous articles have addressed the history of this group, newly archived documents and correspondence among the founders of the Society shed light on the difficulties they encountered in their attempt to define a field of inquiry involving researchers from many disciplines. The goal of the present article is to use these newly archived documents to illuminate the difficulties encountered by the field of cybernetics in subsequent years.

Key events in the history of cybernetics and the American Society for Cybernetics are discussed: The origin of cybernetics in the Macy Foundation conferences held in the late 1940s and early 1950s; the pursuit of different interpretations of cybernetics by several professional societies; the reasons why the U. S. government supported or did not support cybernetics in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s; early experiments in cyberspace in the 1970s; conversations with Soviet scientists in the 1980s; the development of second order cybernetics in the 1990s; and increased interest in cybernetics in Europe and the U. S. in the 2000s due at least in part to improved understanding of the assumptions underlying the cybernetics movement. The history of cybernetics in the U. S. is viewed from the perspective of the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC). Several questions are addressed. Why was the ASC founded rather late, in 1964, about 10 years after the Macy Conferences ended? Why has the ASC remained small (300 or 400 members at its peak)? Why are there currently no departments or institutes of cybernetics in the US? How has thinking about cybernetics changed during the sixty year history of cybernetics in the US? Since most professionals in the US now spend a few hours a day in “cyberspace,” why do most of them know nothing about cybernetics?

Key words: Cybernetics, Government, Cyberspace, ASC, Experiments

Current research on complexity can be thought of as the working out of ideas related to self-organizing systems, which were developed about 1960. Much more advanced technical means are now available, and the great accomplishment of the recent research has been the involvement of people from a wide range of disciplines in using modeling methods, such as cellular automata and genetic algorithms, which are a significant departure from previous methods. Research in reflexivity is less well known. Its origins can be traced back at least to 1975. Several reflexive theories have been proposed, for example by Argyris and Schon, von Foerster, Lefebvre, and Soros. The literatures in second order cybernetics and constructivism are very close to reflexivity, but the term “reflexivity” might attract wider interest. This presentation will describe the basic features of the theories of complexity and reflexivity, their early history, their evolution, and reactions to date. Although complexity is a major change from previous modeling methods, it does not violate any informal fallacies or any assumptions underlying the philosophy of science. Reflexivity does. Accepting reflexivity as a legitimate movement in science will require an expansion of the conception of science which still prevails in most fields. A shift from Science One to Science Two is now being discussed. This presentation will explain what is being proposed.