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Ashby, W. Ross

“Dr. Ashby’s central interest was in mechanistic explanations of brain-like activity. Consistent with his conviction that the brain operates on mechanistic principles, he greatly enjoyed debunking various myths about the magical powers of the brain (“For 2000 years psychology was a simple discussion of Man’s highest faculties – most of which he does not possess.”) and devising mechanical models of behavior, the most famous of which was the Homeostat, deliberately constructed of unreliable components to emphasize that intelligence resides not in clever, high-quality components but in the structure of the whole. Although he constantly searched for simple explanations for behavior, he embraced complexity wholeheartedly and was chiefly interested in nonlinear, richly interconnected systems in which the complex relations constitute the chief object of interest.”

Bateson, Gregory

“– anthropologist, philosopher, author, photographer and filmmaker, naturalist, poet, third husband of Margaret Mead, husband of Lois Bateson, father of Mary Catherine Bateson , John Bateson and Nora Bateson — was born on May 9, 1904 and died on July 4, 1980.”

Bateson, Mary Catherine

“…a writer and cultural anthropologist who divides her time between New Hampshire and Massachusetts, where she is currently Visiting Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has written and co-authored numerous books and articles, lectures across the country and around the world, and is president of the Institute for Intercultural Studies in New York City. For the last decade she has been Clarence J. Robinson Professor in Anthropology and English at George Mason University.”

Beer, Stafford

“Professor Stafford Beer, the founder of managerial cybernetics, is one of the pioneers and foremost thinkers of the systems approach in general, and management science in particular.With his books Cybernetics and Management (London: English Universities Press, 1959) and Decision and Control (Chichester: Wiley, 1965) he laid the foundation for Management Cybernetics thereby building on earlier works of Ross Ashby, Warren McCulloch, Norbert Wiener, and Heinz v.Foerster.”

Boulding, Kenneth

“Boulding’s lasting credit for advancing the development of economic theory will probably be his demonstrating of the methodological untenability of the mechanistic paradigm and of the relevance of evolutionary principles for the explanation of the complexity and dynamics of economic systems.”

Brün, Herbert

Herbert Brün, born 1918 in Berlin, Germany, was a pioneer in applying computers and electronics to the composition of music. He was recognized within and beyond the field of music as an eloquent and original thinker, a contributor of ideas relating composition and systems theory, language and thought, performance and everyday life. He composed numerous pieces for theater and lectured on the function of music in society.

Bunnell, Pille

Dr. Bunnell is a systems ecologist and knowledge architect with over twenty years experience in environmental education and consulting. Pille is engaged in the development and application of the biology of cognition particularly as it concerns systemic sustainability.

Checkland, Peter

Peter Checkland is best known as the creator of Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) – a process model for analysis and design drawing on systems theory and cybernetics.

Churchman, C. West

“C. West Churchman (born 1913 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) has probably been the most influential philosopher of the systems movement thus far. A founding father of the systems approach as well as the fields of operations research and management science, he represents the rare case of a pioneer who never allowed himself to become absorbed by the mainstream of his colleagues.”

Fischer, Thomas

Thomas Fischer is the Director of the Design Research Institute at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, China, where he works as an Associate Professor, teaching Architecture as well as Industrial Design. Thomas is a Fellow of the Design Research Society and received the American Society for Cybernetics’ Warren McCulloch Award in 2011. Thomas holds a PhD in Education from the University of Kassel in Germany and one in Architecture and Design from RMIT University in Australia. Thomas previously researched and taught at the School of Design at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University as an Assistant Professor and as the Discipline Leader of Product and Industrial Design. He was a Visiting Associate Professor at the College of Planning and Design at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan from early 2010 to mid-2011. Thomas’ research is focused on computer-aided architectural design, on cybernetics as well as on design education in China and in Sino-foreign contexts. His expertise and contributions in these areas are concerned with the relationships between Chinese and Western philosophical traditions as well as with the relationships between formal and informal approaches to design.

Foerster, Heinz Von

Together with Warren McCulloch, Norbert Wiener, John v.Neumann, and others, Heinz v.Foerster was the architect of cybernetics. In particular he developed a second-order cybernetics which focus on self-referential systems. As long-term director of the Biological Computer Laboratory in Illinois he provided an fruitful platform for studies of complex systems and had essential influence on many scientists.

Fogel, Lawrence J.

Dr. Lawrence J. Fogel’s interest in cybernetics grew from early (1950’s) research in human factors analysis for flight instrumentation in aircraft and helicopters at General Dynamics (Convair Division). His many accomplishments during this period included a solution for a mathematical model of the human operator in aircraft flight control system, a successful program on ‘anticipatory displays’ to allow a pilot to “fly ahead” of the aircraft, and a research program to generate artificial intelligence through top-down simulations of evolution on computers.While a Special Assistant to the Associate Director of Research for the National Science Foundation (1960 – 1961), he reviewed and projected the needs of the nation in light of scientific advancement. From 1965 to 2007 he continued to apply methods of evolutionary programming to real-world problems in industry, medicine, and defense and helped organize conferences and publications in the areas of machine and human intelligence. Dr. Fogel served as President of the American Society of Cybernetics in 1969, following Warren McCulloch. He also served as the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Cybernetics, the transactions of the ASC. He helped organize and co-edit the Proceedings of the Second and Third Annual ASC Symposia (1964, 1965), providing the keynote address at the latter meeting in which he concluded “it was my privilege to be among those who participated in this event in the ‘coming of age’ of cybernetics.”Dr. Fogel passed away in February, 2007.For more details on Dr. Fogel, his life, and his work, see the Lawrence J. Fogel Legacy webpage here at the ASC website. 

François, Charles

Charles François, a Belgian citizen, has worked with the Belgian Foreign Service, been a business owner, and served as an instrumental actor in the development of cybernetics and systems science. His involvement with cybernetics began in 1952 and progressed through participation in various systems and cybernetics societies as well as the editorial boards of multiple systems and cybernetics journals. François currently lives in Argentina and serves as Honorary President of the Argentine National Division of the ISSS.

Geyer, Felix

He held several positions in marketing and labor market research from 1961 till 1968, when he became head of the methodology section of SISWO (Netherlands Universities’ Institute for Coordination of Research in Social Sciences) – a function he kept until his retirement in 1998.He has been instrumental in establishing ‘sociocybernetics’ as a recognized field.

Glanville, Ranulph

Ranulph Glanville has a particular interest in circular systems and the consequences of taking them seriously. As a result, he has developed a particular enjoyment of the Black Box as a model that requires the participation of the observer in building descriptions of the behaviour of systems, leading to an understanding of knowing as based on profound ignorance. He has developed a Theory of Objects‹those things about which we can (as a result of their self-referential qualities) behave as if we see the same thing when each observer observes differently, from which he developed a temporal logic. His work is largely philosophical in intent, but has a deep connection with design and research.
“Virtually all the work I have done since my Ph D has been based in the notion that each of us constructs our own world. This came about from the observation I have made second by second since my birth, that observation is done by observers, and knowing is done by knowers. To disguise this is absurd. My interest in cybernetics is because it is the area of study that welcomes the observer (and allows him to make errors). My interest in design is because it is, par excellence, an area of constructing.”

Ranulph Glanville died on December 20th 2014.

Glasersfeld, Ernst Von

“Philosopher & Cybernetician he spent large parts of his life in Ireland [1940s], in Italy [1950s] and the USA [current]. Elaborating upon Vico, Piaget’s genetic epistemology, Bishop Berkeley’s theory of perception, James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and other important texts, Ernst developed his model of Radical Constructivism – which is an ethos shared by all of these writers to one degree or another, sometimes it is difficult to see where their epistemological agreements begin and end – but that is part of the fun.”

Ernst v.Glasersfeld died on 12 November 2010, at 7am US east coast time.

Grey, Burl

“This, existential certainty, whatever the vocabulary or syntax,is the incontrovertable starting point for each of us. I believe our time is short but the data available … is sufficient to make explicit moves toward ‘that’ organization for coordinating a viable Global consensus at two levels:
1. What it Means to be Human.
2. Planetary Policy for optimal Human living conditions.
Some of my reference points are: Gregory Bateson, Humberto Maturana, Heinz v.Foerster, Ernst v.Glasersfeld, Ross Ashby and Klaus Krippendorff.”

Günther, Gotthard

Gotthard Günther was born in 1900 in Germany. He studied Indology, Chinese, Philosophy and Sanskrit. His PhD dissertation was the first version of his book Grundzüge einer neuen Theorie des Denkens in Hegels Logik which was published in 1933. At the International congress on Philosophy (Brussels, 1953) Günther presented the first version of his concept of a transclassical logic, and in 1957 he published “Das Bewuß:tsein der Maschinen – Eine Metaphysik der Kybernetik” and “Metaphysik , Logik und die Theorie der Reflexion” as well as “Die Aristotelische Logik des Seins und die nicht-Aristotelische Logik”. In 1960 Günther met Warren S. McCulloch and a deep friendship began which was very stimulating for Günther´s further research studies. In 1961 he became a research professor at the Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL) at the University of Illinois, Urbana, where he worked until 1972. During this time Günther developed his fundamental ideas about Polycontextural Logic (PCL) as well as Morpho- and Kenogrammatics.

Jixuan Hu, Jason

ASC Lifetime Member Jason Jixuan Hu, Ph.D. in Management and Organization with a focus on Cybernetics and Systems Theory from The George Washington University, currently Managing Director of WINTOP Consulting Group ( http://www.wintopgroup.com ), works on the applications of cybernetics and systems principles in Organizational Development, Consensus Building and Team Synergy, Cross-Cultural Communication and Problem Solving, Group Dynamics and Chinese Organizational Behavior. Dr. Hu started learning cybernetics in the late 1970s inside China while in college, practiced System Dynamics Modeling for real economic systems in the early 1980s, and studied with Stuart Umpleby, Heinz v.Foerster, Gordon Pask, Humberto Maturana, Stafford Beer, John Warfield and Russ Ackoff among many other cyberneticians and systems thinkers after coming to the U.S. as a visiting scholar in 1986 and later as a doctoral student. Beginning in 1992 he initiated the cybernetics communication listserv CYBCOM on the Internet. He has taught cybernetics courses in several universities and applied various cybernetic principles and methods in his consulting and training work, focusing on the area of Roundtable Leadership Development and Communicatics. Dr. Hu is a founding member of the Stockholm Committee of ASC members working on a collaborative project to develop a comprehensive high-school-college curriculum for promoting cybernetics. Academic vitae

Kauffman, Lou

“I am a topologist working in knot theory and its relationships with statistical mechanics, quantum theory, algebra, combinatorics and foundations.”

Krippendorff, Klaus

Klaus Krippendorff is the Gregory Bateson Term Professor for Cybernetics, Language, and Culture at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for communication. He holds a graduate degree in design and a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Illinois, where he studied with W. Ross Ashby and came in contact with the work of Claude E. Shannon, Heinz v.Foerster, Stafford Beer, Francisco Varela, Humberto Maturana, Ernst v.Glasersfeld, and Gregory Bateson. He has published widely on cybernetics, information theory, communication theory, methodology for the social sciences, content analysis, reliability statistics, and a human-centered science for design, design semantics in particular. His Dictionary of Cybernetics has become part of the Principia Cybernetica Web. He is a fellow of AAAS, ICA, NIAS, the East-West Center (Hawaii), and the Society for Science of Design (Japan); and recipient of the Norbert Wiener Medal for Cybernetics, the Wiener-Schmidt Prize for his contributions to cybernetics and education, and the 2004 ICA Fellows Book award. Besides teaching subjects on language and the social construction of reality, he conducts second-order cybernetic inquiries into a variety of social phenomena and addresses issues of emancipatory epistemology and the ethics of constructing human communication.

Leonard, Allenna

Allenna Leonard, Ph.D., works in Toronto Canada and internationally, specializing in the application of Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model and Syntegration.

Lewin, Philip

Philip Lewin is an independent scholar living in Eugene, Oregon. His primary interest is in epistemology, that is, in the general question of how we make sense of and function within the world while maintaining a self-legitimating sanity. His involvement with ASC grew out of his graduate work in the late 1970s. Among his primary influences at that time were studies on Jean Piaget with Ernst v.Glasersfeld, summer courses with Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela on biological epistemology, and the revelation that was his first reading of Gregory Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind. These influences continue.

Luhmann, Niklas

German sociologist Niklas Luhmann applied systems and cybernetics principles to his analyses of society and social processes. His is best known for his invocation of Maturana and Varela’s concept of ‘autopoiesis’ as an explanatory paradigm for social systems.

Maturana, Humberto

Humberto Maturana is a biologist who specialized in neurobiology at Harvard. In the early 1960s his work on vision at MIT led to the celebrated paper with J. Lettvin, “What the Frog’s Eye Tells the Frog’s Brain.” His distinctive approach to cognitive inquiry first appeared in his 1970 book Biology of Cognition, after his return to the University of Chile at Santiago, Chile. He subsequently entered into a long collaboration with Francisco Varela, another neuroscientist at the University of Chile at Santiago. In 1980 the two authors published Autopoiesis and Cognition, the key reference work on autopoiesis. Their popular introduction to cognitive biology, The Tree of Knowledge, was published in 1987. He currently works with the Matriztica Institute in Santiago.

Mead, Margaret

Though best known as an anthropologist, Margaret Mead and her then-husband Gregory Bateson were important figures in the Macy Conferences out of which the field of cybernetics grew.

Miller, James G.

“Miller’s scientific and professional activities have centered around the single theme of integrating knowledge about biological and social systems. His early approach to science, under the influence of Whitehead, was a mixture of philosophy and experimentation. His current research relates modern information processing technologies to living systems. The basic research consists of quantitative studies of cross-level identities among multiple levels of systems.”

Neumann, John Von

Biographical Summaries at the University of VermontAt St. Andrews University

Pask, Gordon

“Gordon Pask was a rare man. He was an original; an eccentric in the best sense; gifted as a scientist, artist, lyricist. His peers in academic life have regularly acknowledged his genius. He had an exceptionally productive career (several books, over two hundred published papers). His many contributions are still being assimilated in psychology, educational technology, cybernetics and systems science. … Gordon will perhaps be best remembered for his role as one of the “founding fathers” of cybernetics, the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary intellectual movement that sprang up in the post war years.”

Schroeder, Paul

Information seeking as a social process. Mutual orientation in information space. Creation of information alliances. Information means participation.

Scott, B.C.E. (Bernard)

B.C.E. (Bernard) Scott is currently Senior Lecturer in Electronically-Enhanced Learning, Cranfield University, Royal Military College of Science, as well as Director of the On-Line Learning Knowledge Garden website project.
“My research interests include (i) theories of learning and teaching (ii) individual differences important for learning and teaching and learning to learn (iii) principles of course design, including knowledge and task analysis, tutorial strategies and use of media (iv) the design of advisory and adaptive tutoring systems for learning environments (v) whole systems aspects of organisations and ‘culture change’ (vi) institution wide issues concerning the deployment of ICT and learning technologies.”

Simpson, Elizabeth

Elizabeth has done interpersonal and intra-group dynamic work since 1995 and is certified in Victim-Offender Reconciliation, Circle Mediation, and Family Group Processing. She is trained in a variety of decision-making modes, including Formal Consensus, Dynamic Governance (sociocracy) and Restorative Justice Principles. She has assisted groups with retreats, visioning, Board trainings, and uses a variety of creative strategies to draw on the resources of groups to find answers to the issues at hand. Elizabeth is an anti-racism activist who has worked with groups to address how privilege in organizations affects members’ ability to work together. She has also worked with groups around the dynamics of class and gender. In addition to her work with do good, Elizabeth also serves as Peer Mediation Coordinator at Urbana (Illinois) Middle School and is facilitating an Inter-group Dialogue on Race & Ethnicity at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Stewart, Alan

Alan Stewart, PhD, is a professional conversationalist and founder/director of a group called MultiMind Solutions. They facilitate communication processes for corporate, government and community organizations which ensure that people contribute creatively, collectively and wholeheartedly to the solution of complex issues. For over a decade he was a co-convenor of the Cybernetics Group in Adelaide. He has been a Senior Fulbright Scholar at Stanford University in California and has a current appointment as Adjunct Professor at Union Institute in Ohio. Alan is an experienced facilitator of approaches which promote lively and productive conversing such as ‘Open Space Technology‘ and ‘The World Café (TWC)‘.

Umpleby, Stuart

Stuart Umpleby is a professor in the Department of Management Science and Director of the Research Program in Social and Organizational Learning in the School of Business and Public Management at The George Washington University. He teaches courses in the philosophy of science, cross-cultural management, and systems thinking. Other interests include total quality management, interactive planning methods, and the use of computer networks.

Vallée, Robert

Robert Vallée, Professor emeritus of Université Paris-Nord, is currently President of the World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics (WOSC). He founded, the Cercle d’Etudes Cybernétiques (1950). Recipient of the Norbert Wiener Memorial Gold Medal, author of 150 papers and several books, his researches concerns cybernetics, systems, information theory, the influence of cybernetics on the future of mankind (1952) and history of cybernetics and systems. Interested by the problem of perception, he proposed the concepts of observation operators (1951) and inverse transfers of structure (1974) which both lead to a cybernetical epistemology and, completed by pragmatic operators, to an epistemo-praxiology (1987), a constructivist synthesis of perception, decision and action. He worked also on perception and memorization of duration and introduced the idea of internal time of a dynamical system (1996).

Varela, Francisco

As a student and colleague of Humberto Maturana, Varela was involved in formulating the body of work known as ‘the biology of cognition’ or ‘autopoietic theory’ in the early 1970’s. In the early 1990’s he established the area termed ‘enactive cognitive science’. His other contributions include work on extending George Spencer Brown’s calculus of indications, bridging between Buddhist thought and cognitive science, critical analysis of consciousness, and an existential perspective on ethics.At the time of his death in 2001, Francisco J. VARELA Ph.D.was Director of Research at CNRS (National Institute for Scientific Research) at the Laboratory of Cognitive Neurosciences and Brain Imaging (LENA)in Paris, where he was the head of the Neurodynamics Group. He was also Senior Faculty at CREA, Ecole Polytechnique.

Warfield, John

John Warfield developed the process called “Interpretive Structural Modeling” or ISM. This process was founded in mathematics that was largely developed by DeMorgan in England and Peirce in the United States in the 19th century, and summarized very nicely by Frank Harary and his colleagues at the University of Michigan, who made the connections to graph theory. John’s research on complexity and systems began in the 1960s and has continued into the 2000s. Much of his work and those of colleagues is available in the Fenwick Library at George Mason University (GMU), Fairfax, Virginia.

Wiener, Norbert

“Apart from two books devoted to his autobiography, two short stories and a novel, Norbert Wiener’s works concern mainly logic and mathematics, cybernetics, mathematical physics and philosophical issues. … His papers on logic, written mainly at the beginning of his career, show a philosophical interest in mathematical thinking and its possible limitations. The idea of “cybernetics” came to Wiener at the beginning of the forties, prompted by his work on anti-aircraft defence and by contacts with colleagues in Mexico (“Behavior, purpose and teleology” with A. Rosenblueth and J. Bigelow, Philos.Sci 1943). lt was made known to the world by the book Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, published in l948..”

Whitaker, Randall

By day, Randy’s duties include analyzing information warfare issues, cognitive task analyses, collaborative technologies research, and work-centered interface design. His personal scholarship has focused upon cognition, epistemology, semiotics, and their relationships to human interactivity. His primary theoretical bases include the work of Heinz v.Foerster, Ernst v.Glasersfeld, George Spencer Brown, Charles Sanders Peirce, and especially Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. He is the creator and steward of The Observer Web — the largest Internet nexus on autopoiesis and enaction.

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