communication. 18 It is important to note that cybernetics was not alone in developing these concepts. As Mindell pointed out, beginning in the 1950s, several disciplines (cybernetics, operations research, general systems theory, systems analysis and systems dynamics) shared the world view of flows, feedback and interactions. 19 Wiener worked closely with biologists (Arturo Rosenblueth) and physicists (Julian Bigelow). They produced a theory of the workings of the brain as a circular process and coined the concept of purposeful or “teleological behaviour”. Teleological behaviour was defined as feedback-controlled, goal-seeking behaviour. It must be emphasised that causal determinism is largely irrelevant for constructing or understanding such behaviour: it was seen as being less determined by causes and more guided by predictions. 20 Wiener also advanced the development of statistics by introducing calculations to smooth the time series, which made it possible to predict future behaviour on the basis of statistical accounts of its past. Though Wiener himself was quite sceptical about the quality of social statistics, his discovery was instrumental for the forecasting of social and political trends, as well as risk management. 21 In this way the calculations made possible by electronic engineering made feedback applicable to wider governance or policy-making. 22 Even more influential were the conceptual principles of cybernetics, which concerned the notions of order and the transmission of information. Wiener defined information as a “content” of exchanged messages, the goal of which was to increase order. He argued that “the amount of information in a system is the measure of its degree of organisation”. 23 In Wiener’s cybernetics informa-
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Charles R. Dechert, “The Development of Cybernetics,” in The Social Impact of Cybernetics, ed. Ch. R. Dechert (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), 34; Rose, 1974, 78; Armand Mattelart and Michèle Mattelart, Theories of Communication. A Short Introduction (London: Sage, 1998). Lash, however, defined cybernetic information systems as external to humans, or “forms of life at a distance”. Scott Lash, Critique of Information (London: Sage, 2002), 15-16. 19 David A. Mindell, “Bodies, Ideas, and Dynamics: Historical Perspectives on Systems Thinking in Engineering.” In MIT Working Paper Series, ESD-WP-2003-01.23, 23 January 2003, < http://esd.mit.edu/wps/2003.htm> (5 May 2008), 17. 20 Arturo N. Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener and Julian Bigelow, “Behavior, Purpose, and Teleology,” Philosophy of Science 10 (1943), 23, 24. 21 He argued that for a “good statistics of society” long runs were needed “under essentially constant conditions,” which is hard to achieve. On the other hand comparing the statistics of society with that of gas, he insisted on the need to know “the main elements of the dynamics of the situation” in order to define a smaller sample. Wiener, Cybernetics, 25. 22 As Wiener put it, “such a policy-feedback may … appear to be what we know under one aspect as a conditioned reflex, and under another as learning,” Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (New York: Da Capo Press, 1954), 33, 38. This idea was more developed by Ashby who conceptualised a random formation of order and its stabilisation on the ground of learning. This influenced development of the ideas of “learning organisation” and entire societies. 23 Wiener, Cybernetics, 11.
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