Macy conferences

As a Macy Conferences ( Macy Conferences ) are referred to ten interdisciplinary conferences that took place in the United States 1946-1953. They were responsible, organized under the auspices of the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation ( Macy Foundation) by Warren McCulloch, an American neurophysiologist. This was preceded by a conference on the central inhibition of the nervous system in May 1942, which was organized also under the auspices of the Macy Foundation. The Macy Foundation was founded in 1930 in the U.S. and promotes research in the field of medicine. Another conference in January 1945 to unify cybernetic idea of the mathematical description of electronic devices as well as the nervous system brought the central protagonist of the Macy conferences together. McCulloch had then Vienna and other attempts with John von Neumann, Norbert, to establish a research institute for the study of circular feedback mechanisms in biological and social systems, but this was never realized. The conference cycle was the replacement for it.

The aim of the conferences was to lay the foundations for a universal science of the functioning of the human brain as well as electronic adapters, especially computer: cybernetics.

Mark the emergence of cognitive science, but were also of great importance for the further development of cybernetics as well as other scientific disciplines such as psychology and sociology. Among the topics that were discussed at the conferences include neural networks, communication and language, Digital computers, neurophysiology, pattern recognition, childhood trauma, group dynamics and group communication.

The title of the conference Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems ( circular - causal and feedback mechanisms in biological and social systems ) was converted to the proposal of Heinz von Foerster in Cybernetics with reference to the work of Norbert Wiener.

Participating

At the Macy conferences attended by outstanding representatives in various disciplines (eg, mathematics, physics, electrical engineering, psychology, neurophysiology, psychiatry, sociology).

There was a group of scientists who participated in all ( or most ) of the Macy conferences, called the " Core Group". To her included, among others:

  • Gregory Bateson / anthropologist
  • Julian Bigelow / electrical engineer
  • Lawrence K. Frank / Social Scientists
  • Ralph W. Gerard / neurophysiologist
  • Molly Harrower / psychologist
  • Lawrence Kubie / psychiatrist
  • Paul Lazarsfeld / sociologist
  • Kurt Lewin / psychologist
  • Warren McCulloch ( CEO) / psychiatrist
  • Margaret Mead / anthropologist
  • John von Neumann / Mathematician
  • Walter Pitts / Mathematician
  • Arturo Rosenblueth / physiologist
  • Leonard J. Savage / Mathematician
  • Norbert Wiener / Mathematician

At the " Core Group " numerous guests, most of whom took part in only one conference joined. Representing be mentioned:

  • Claude Shannon / information theorist
  • Max Delbrück / geneticist and biophysicist

Organizer of pages of the Macy Foundation, Frank Fremont - Smith.

Objects in each conferences

1949 memory and memory

  • The psychological moment of perception
  • The neurotic potential and human adaptation, a quantum mechanical theory of memory
  • Possible mechanisms of memory and the recognition
  • Intelligent prostheses.

1950 Language:

  • Some problems concerning digital notions in the central nervous system
  • The nature and extent of such language can be disturbed, yet remains easy to
  • The redundancy of English
  • The development of word meanings
  • Language development in early childhood
  • The relationship of symbolic functions in language education and in neurosis
  • Körpersymbolisierung and language development

1951 Communication:

  • Communication patterns in problem-solving groups
  • Communication among people and the importance of language
  • Communication between the healthy and the sick
  • Communication among animals
  • A labyrinth - resolution machine
  • Looking for basic symbols

1952 Learning and perceiving:

  • The role of humor in human communication
  • The place of emotion in the feedback concept
  • Homeostasis
  • Distinction and learning in the squid
  • The reduction of the number of possible Boolean functions
  • Central excitation and inhibition
  • The mechanical chess player
  • Turbulence as random stimulation of sense organs
  • Studies on synaptic transmission
  • Feedback mechanisms in cell biology

1953 Language:

  • Studies of brain activity
  • Semantic information and its metrics
  • Meaning in the language and how to get them
Warren Sturgis McCulloch
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