Macy conferences

The Macy Conferences were a set of meetings of scholars from various disciplines held in New York by the initiative of Warren McCulloch and the Macy Foundation from 1946 to 1953. The principal purpose of these series of conferences was to set the foundations for a general science of the workings of the human mind.^[1]

It was one of the first organized studies of interdisciplinarity, spawning breakthroughs in systems theory, cybernetics, and what later became known as cognitive science.

Overview

The Macy Conferences were organised by the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, motivated by Lawrence K. Frank and Frank Fremont-Smith of the Macy Foundation.^[2] The participants were leading scientists from a wide range of fields. Casual recollections of several participants stress the communicative difficulties in the beginning, giving way to the gradual establishment of a common language powerful enough to communicate the intricacies of the various fields of expertise present.

The scientists participating in all or most of the conferences are known as the "core group." They include:^[3]

• William Ross Ashby; psychiatrist
• Gregory Bateson; anthropologist
• Julian Bigelow; electro technician
• Heinz von Foerster; biophysicist
• Lawrence K. Frank; social scientist
• Ralph W. Gerard; neurophysiologist
• Molly Harrower; psychologist
• Lawrence Kubie; psychatrist
• Paul Lazarsfeld; sociologist
• Kurt Lewin; psychologist
• Warren McCulloch (chair); psychatrist
• Margaret Mead; anthropologist
• John von Neumann; mathematician
• Walter Pitts; mathematician
• Arturo Rosenblueth; physiologist
• Leonard J. Savage; mathematician
• Norbert Wiener; mathematician

In addition to the core group several invited guests participated in the conferences. Amongst many others:

• Max Delbrück; geneticist and biophysicist
• Erik Erikson; psychologist
• Claude Shannon; information theorist
• Talcott Parsons; sociologist.

Some of the researchers present at the conferences later went on to do extensive government funded research on the psychological effects of LSD, and its potential as a tool for interrogation and psychological manipulation in such projects as the CIA's MKULTRA program.^[4]

Conference topics

This is a sampling of the topics discussed each year.^[5]

1946, March (NYC)

• Self-regulating and teleological mechanisms
• Simulated neural networks emulating the calculus of propositional logic
• Anthropology and how computers might learn how to learn
• Object perception's feedback mechanisms
• Perceptual differences due to brain damage
• Deriving ethics from science
• Compulsive repetitive behavior

1946, October (NYC)

• Teleological mechanisms in society
• Concepts from Gestalt psychology
• Tactile and chemical communications among ant soldieres

1947, March (NYC)

• Child psychology

1947, October (NYC)

• The field perspective on psychology
• Analog vs. digital approaches to psychological models

1948, Spring (NYC)

• Formation of "I" in language
• Formal modeling applied to chicken pecking order formation

1949, March (NYC)

• Are the number of neurons and their connections sufficient to account for human capacities?
• Memory
• An appeal for collaboration between physics and psychology

1950, March (NYC)

• Analog vs. digital interpretations of the mind
• Language and Shannon's information theory
• Language, symbols and neurosis
• Intelligibility in speech communications
• A formal analysis of semantic redundancy in printed English

1951, March (NYC)

• Information as semantic
• Can automatons engage in deductive logic?
• Decision theory
• Small group dynamics and group communications
• The applicability of game theory to psychic motivations
• The type of language needed to analyze language
• Mere behavior vs. true communication
• Is psychiatry scientific?
• Can a mental event that creates a memory ever be unconscious?

1952, March (NYC)

• The relation of neurophysiological details to broad issues in philosophy and epistemology
• The relation of cybernetics at the microlevel to biochemical and cellular processes
• The complexity of organisms as a function of information
• Humor, communication, and paradox
• Do chess playing automatons need randomness to defeat humans?
• Homeostasis and learning

1953, April (Princeton)

• How neural mechanisms can recognize shapes and musical chords
• What consensus, if any, the Macy Conferences have arrived at

See also

• Cybernetics
• Complex systems
• Integrative learning
• Second-order cybernetics

References

Further reading

• 1949. Cybernetics: Transactions of the Sixth Conference. New York : Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation.
• 1950. Cybernetics: Transactions of the Seventh Conference. Edited by Heinz von Foerster, Margaret Mead and Hans Lukas Teuber. New York : Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation.
• 1952. Cybernetics: Transactions of the Eighth Conference. Edited by Heinz von Foerster, Margaret Mead and Hans Lukas Teuber. New York : Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation.
• 1953. Cybernetics: Transactions of the Ninth Conference. Edited by Heinz von Foerster, Margaret Mead and Hans Lukas Teuber. New York : Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation.
• 1955. Cybernetics: Transactions of the Tenth Conference. Edited by Heinz von Foerster, Margaret Mead and Hans Lukas Teuber. New York : Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation.
• 2003. Cybernetics - Kybernetik. The Macy-Conferences 1946-1953. Edited by Claus Pias. Zürich/Berlin : diaphanes.

External links

• The Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation