The Cybernetic Brain – Sketches of Another Future - Hardcover

Pickering, Andrew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226667898 ISBN 13: 9780226667898

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2010

Synopsis

Cybernetics is often thought of as a grim military or industrial science of control. But as Andrew Pickering reveals in this surprising 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 fascinating history, Pickering argues, is a shared but unconventional vision of the world as ultimately unknowable, a place where genuine novelty is always emerging. And thus, Pickering suggests, 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.

About this title

Product Description:

The Cybernetic Brain Cybernetics is often thought of as a grim military or industrial science of control. This title follows the history of cybernetics' impact on the world, from contemporary robotics and complexity theory to the Chilean economy under Salvador Allende.

Review:

"What a lovely book this is--it tells a great story from the history of cybernetics and at the same time examines in innovative ways the complex ontological work they were doing. Pickering shows how 'ontology' is integrally about machines, materiality and philosophy--developing what I would call a theory of exploratory ontology."

--Geoffrey C. Bowker, University of Pittsburgh

""The Cybernetic Brain" is a rich, ambitious, and highly original work and a gently hopeful one. Pickering has really written two books in one. The first is a history of the work of several key British cyberneticians and its impact on subsequent scientific and cultural debates. The second is a quietly passionate critique of modernist ways of knowing and being and a plea for the reintroduction of the sorts of practice-based, adaptable, techno-social modes common to cybernetic inquiry. Pickering weaves the analysis and the advocacy together across the book, and his vision of what a non-modern world might look like or in fact, "has" looked like is novel and compelling and will substantially extend our understanding of contemporary technoculture."
--Fred Turner, Stanford University"

"What a lovely book this is it tells a great story from the history of cybernetics and at the same time examines in innovative ways the complex ontological work they were doing. Pickering shows how 'ontology' is integrally about machines, materiality and philosophy developing what I would call a theory of exploratory ontology."
--Geoffrey C. Bowker, University of Pittsburgh"

"The Cybernetic Brain is a rich, ambitious, and highly original work--and a gently hopeful one. Pickering has really written two books in one. The first is a history of the work of several key British cyberneticians and its impact on subsequent scientific and cultural debates. The second is a quietly passionate critique of modernist ways of knowing and being and a plea for the reintroduction of the sorts of practice-based, adaptable, techno-social modes common to cybernetic inquiry. Pickering weaves the analysis and the advocacy together across the book, and his vision of what a non-modern world might look like--or in fact, has looked like--is novel and compelling and will substantially extend our understanding of contemporary technoculture."

--Fred Turner, Stanford University

"What a lovely book this is--it tells a great story from the history of cybernetics and at the same time examines in innovative ways the complex ontological work they were doing. Pickering shows how 'ontology' is integrally about machines, materiality and philosophy--developing what I would call a theory of exploratory ontology."

--Geoffrey C. Bowker, University of Pittsburgh

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0226667898
• ISBN 13: 9780226667898
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 560