scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1107590

In the early 1940s G. Bateson and M. Mead voiced great hopes for a cybernetical approach to social problems. These were met with Wiener's scepticism and the author tries to explain ``that while the very nature of social fields limits their cybernetical analysis, another more transient obstacle is presented by the limitations of most social scientists today. The author starts with a survey of the scientific tradition, then traces the ups and downs of the cybernetical movement since the mid-1940s (with a particular emphasis on the lost chance of involving John von Neumann), and finally lists some tasks ``in which cybernetical efforts would prove promising. In the most interesting pages, he blames Wiener for ``not bestowing on the von Neumann letter the respect it merited [ibid., 505-512 (1997; Zbl 0890.01016), see below] and asserts that ``the cybernetic movement began diverging from the scientific path, pointing out as ``retrograde trends the bogy of wholism, general systems theory, the consort with existentialism, denial of the objectivity axiom, both-this-and-that and neither-this-nor-that. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0864.00070].

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