IS291B Week 8 Paper
Introduction
The manner in which scientists accept or reject hypotheses is dependent upon the notion that the world is knowable. Typically, a researcher begins with what he knows, identifies what is unknown, and then proposes a theoretical framework to ascertain whether his hypothesis about the unknown variable is true or false. Andrew Pickering challenges this notion in The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future. The very idea that there are unknowable elements in our world is counter to scientific practice.
Pickering recounts the contributions of a small group of British cyberneticians as an explanation of not only the evolution of cybernetics, but also the theoretical premise that underpinned it. His definition of cybernetics, “TKTKTK” (TK), distinguishes between the performative and cognitive states/functionsTK of the brain—what we do versus what we know.
Summary
The history of the evolution of cybernetics often excludes the contributions of British researchers, claims Pickering. “TKTKTK.” (p. TK) The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future aims to rectify this omission, as well as to explain the theoretical basis for the difference between the British perspective and that of American and other Western cybernetics researchers.
Pickering begins his historiography with the introduction of the adaptive brain and the ontological theater. Briefly, the adaptive brain seeks equilibrium as conditions change. It is self-TKTKing. Further, the inability of the brain to adapt to an ever-changing environment was thought to be the cause of psychiatric illness.
the work of W. Ross Ashby and W. Grey Walter. He discusses Ashby and Walter’s simultaneous development of “inorganic species,” Ashby’s homeostat and Walter’s Machina speculatrix, or “tortoises”.
Differences in basic foundational perceptions
Pickering notes that there a two distinct paradigms in the understanding of the brain and its cognitive relationships. The most widely accepted paradigm is that the modern one, which focuses on “an intrinsically cognitive relation to matter.” TKTK
In relating the works of Ashby, Pickering adeptly characterizes the difference between serial adaptation and the idea of “many instances of openended, trialanderror extensions of scientific culture.” (153-4) He explains that Ashby’s conclusion about pre-existing choices from which the brain chooses in a serial fashion does not substantiate the observed nature of continual tweaking that is not constrained to a serial order. “Rather than selecting between existing possibilities, scientists (and artists, and everyone else, I think) continually construct new ones and see how they play out. This is also a cybernetic image of epistemology—but one that emphasizes creativity and the appearance of genuine novelty in the world (both human and nonhuman) that the homeostat cannot model.” (154)
It is important to note, however, that Pickering’s difference of opinion about the oder in which adaptions occur does not contradict the stance that the cybernetic paradigm emphasizes performative phenomena and their interrelations, rather than the modern paradigm and its focus on “intrinsically cognitive relation to matter.” (TKTK)
Two paradigms in the history of science and technology
Local connection
Garnet Hertz biological computing of Beer and Pask
241-2, 362
Allende
Performative versus cognitive
Ontology
Design
Power
Art
Self
Spirituality
60s
Altered statesSocial basis
Sketches of another future
Adaptation
Cybernetics and Art
Conclusion
Pickering’s historiography exposes the tendency of the scientific community (and, indeed, of humanity in general) to exert dominion over the natural world. It is a quest for power, which requires natural phenomena to be knowable. To possess power over the natural world, man must be able to understand that world. What the British cybernetiticists TKT did differently—and perhaps this is the reason their contributions have been marginalized in cybernetics literature—is they accepted the premise that some phenomena are unknowable.
