The Cybernetic Brain - by Andrew Pickering (Paperback)
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About this item
Highlights
- Cybernetics is often thought of as a grim military or industrial science of control.
- About the Author: Andrew Pickering is professor and chair of sociology at the University of Exeter.
- 536 Pages
- Computers + Internet, Cybernetics
Description
Book Synopsis
Cybernetics is often thought of as a grim military or industrial science of control. But as Andrew Pickering reveals in this beguiling book, a much more lively and experimental strain of cybernetics can be traced from the 1940s to the present. The Cybernetic Brain explores a largely forgotten group of British thinkers, including Grey Walter, Ross Ashby, Gregory Bateson, R. D. Laing, Stafford Beer, and Gordon Pask, and their singular work in a dazzling array of fields. Psychiatry, engineering, management, politics, music, architecture, education, tantric yoga, the Beats, and the sixties counterculture all come into play as Pickering follows the history of cybernetics' impact on the world, from contemporary robotics and complexity theory to the Chilean economy under Salvador Allende. What underpins this fascinating history, Pickering contends, is a shared but unconventional vision of the world as ultimately unknowable, a place where genuine novelty is always emerging. And thus, Pickering avers, the history of cybernetics provides us with an imaginative model of open-ended experimentation in stark opposition to the modern urge to achieve domination over nature and each other.About the Author
Andrew Pickering is professor and chair of sociology at the University of Exeter. He is the author of several books, including Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics and The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science, both published by the University of Chicago Press.
Dimensions (Overall): 8.9 Inches (H) x 6.0 Inches (W) x 1.2 Inches (D)
Weight: 1.45 Pounds
Suggested Age: 22 Years and Up
Number of Pages: 536
Genre: Computers + Internet
Sub-Genre: Cybernetics
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Format: Paperback
Author: Andrew Pickering
Language: English
Street Date: November 15, 2011
TCIN: 1006092190
UPC: 9780226667904
Item Number (DPCI): 247-26-9422
Origin: Made in the USA or Imported
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Shipping details
Estimated ship dimensions: 1.2 inches length x 6 inches width x 8.9 inches height
Estimated ship weight: 1.45 pounds
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