An Unfinished Revolution?
An Unfinished Revolution? Heinz von Foerster and the Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL), 1958–1976. Albert Müller & Karl Müller, eds. (Vienna: Edition Echoraum, 2007) $39.00
This is a fascinating analysis of the scientific agenda of Heinz von Foerster, clearly one of the major scientists of the twentieth century. No one did more to create a revolutionary transdisciplinary research program involving biology, the cognitive neurosciences, cybernetics, and the social sciences. Von Foerster was one of those scientific minds so far ahead of his time that even today scholars in all fields of scientific inquiry should study his programs so that we might eventually realize his objectives. This is a splendid collection of essays that challenges us to look back on von Foerster if we are to advance our efforts to learn more from others in diverse fields of inquiry.
—J. Rogers Hollingsworth, University of WisconsinThe Biological Computer Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, led by Heinz von Foerster, was the nexus of Cybernetics and the point of origination of Second Order Cybernetics in the 1960s and 1970s. Here in this book, in these articles, drawings and photographs, it all comes back to life with a lucidity that belies the passing years and shows that this theory of feedback process and awareness indeed shares in the living world of the eternal forms.
—Louis H. Kauffman, University of Illinois
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Systems Readings
Selected chapters from An Unfinished Revolution?
- P. Weston, "A Walk through the Forest," Chapter 5
- K. Müller, "A Period of High Trans-Disciplinarity, 1948–1958," Chapter 10
- P. Asaro, "Heinz von Foerster and the Bio-Computing Movements of the 1960s," Chapter 11
- A. Müller, "A Brief History of the BCL: Heinz von Foerster and the Biological Computer Laboratory," Chapter 12
- A. Müller, "The End of the Biological Computer Laboratory," Chapter 1
The following readings, not included in the book, are linked to as worthwhile cybernetics resources
J. Hutchinson
W. Ross Ashby
An Introduction to Cybernetics (complete book)
Stafford Beer
Marianne Brün
Herbert Brün
- The Listener's Interpretation of Music
- Teaching the Function of Time in Art
- Wayfaring Sounds
- ... to hold discourse---at least---with a computer...
- Drawing Distinctions Links Contradictions
- Existentialism and the Arts (two fragments)
- Gustav Mahler and the Virtues of Ambiguity (two fragments)
Heinz von Foerster
- Perception of the Future and The Future of Perception
- On Constructing a Reality
- Interview with Heinz von Foerster, by Christina Waters
- Heinz von Foerster, the scientist, the man: prologue to the interview, by Francisco Varela
- Interview with Heinz von Foerster, by Stefano Franchi, Güven Güzeldere, and Eric Minch
- Thoughts and Notes on Cognition [extract]
- Disorder/Order: Discovery or Invention?
- Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics
- Cybernetics of Cybernetics
Humberto Maturana
Warren Weaver
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