verso il meta-cyberTao

Dal 1946 al 1953 si tennero a New York per iniziativa di Warren McCulloch una serie storica di conferenze il cui tema generale era porre le basi per una "scienza generale del funzionamento della mente umana". Dal suo intento interdisciplinare che andava dalla teoria dei sistemi alla cibernetica alle scienze cognitive nacquero le basi per la fondazione di una meta-cibernetica, o cibernetica del II ordine: una teoria/modello cibernetico sui sistemi cibernetici che comprendesse l'Osservatore.

Nella figura alcuni partecipanti della Tenth Conference  on Cybernetics, April 22-24, 1953, Princeton, N.J., sponsorizzata dalla Fondazione Josiah Macy, Jr.

Prima fila:

T.C. Schneirla, Y. Bar-Hillel, Margaret Mead, Warren S. McCulloch, Jan Droogleever-Fortuyn, Yuen Ren Chao, W. Grey-Walter, Vahe E. Amassian.

Seconda fila:

Leonard J. Savage, Janet Freed Lynch, Gerhardt von Bonin, Lawrence S. Kubie, Lawrence K. Frank, Henry Quastler, Donald G. Marquis, Heinrich Klüver, F.S.C. Northrop.

Terza fila:

Peggy Kubie, Henry Brosin, Gregory Bateson, Frank Fremont-Smith, John R. Bowman, G.E. Hutchinson, Hans Lukas Teuber, Julian H. Bigelow, Claude Shannon, Walter Pitts, Heinz von Foerster.

Il gruppo principale comprendeva:

• William Ross Ashby; psychiatrist and a pioneer in cybernetics

• Gregory Bateson; anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist

• Julian Bigelow; pioneering computer engineer

• Heinz von Foerster; biophysicist, scientist combining physics and philosophy and architect of cybernetics

• Lawrence K. Frank; social scientist

• Ralph W. Gerard; neurophysiologist and behavioral scientist known for his work on the nervous system, nerve metabolism, psychopharmacology, and biological basis of schizophrenia

• Molly Harrower; pioneering clinical psychologist

• Lawrence Kubie; psychatrist

• Paul Lazarsfeld; sociologist and founder of Columbia University's Bureau for Applied Social Research

• Kurt Lewin; psychologist, often regarded as the founder of social psychology

• Warren McCulloch (chair); psychatrist, neurophysiologist and cybernetician

• Margaret Mead; cultural anthropologist

• John von Neumann; one of the foremost mathematicians of the 20th century

• Walter Pitts; logician and co-author of the paper that founded neural networks

• Arturo Rosenblueth; researcher, physician, physiologist and a pioneer of cybernetics

• Leonard J. Savage; mathematician and statistician

• Norbert Wiener; mathematician and founder of cybernetics

In aggiunta diversi ospiti erano stati invitati, tra i quali:

• Max Delbrück; geneticist and biophysicist

• Erik Erikson; developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on social development

• Claude Shannon; electronic engineer and mathematician, "the father of information theory"

• Talcott Parsons; sociologist.