Heinz von Foerster
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Heinz von Foerster in 1963 at the Biological Computer Laboratory, University of Illinois
Heinz von Foerster (Nov 13, 1911,
Vienna – Oct 2, 2002,
Pescadero, California) was an Austrian American scientist combining
physics and
philosophy. Together with
Warren McCulloch,
Norbert Wiener,
John von Neumann,
Lawrence J. Fogel, and others, Heinz von Foerster was an architect of
cybernetics.
(1)Biography
Von Foerster was born in 1911 in
Vienna, Austria, as Heinz von Förster. He studied physics at the
Technical University of Vienna and at the
University of Breslau, where in 1944 he received a
Ph.D. in
physics.He moved to the
USA in 1949, and worked at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was a professor of electrical engineering from 1951 to 1975. From 1962 to 1975 he also was professor of
biophysics and 1958–75 director of the
Biological Computer Laboratory. Additionally, in 1956–57 and 1963–64 he was a Guggenheim-Fellow. From 1963 to 1965 he was president of the Wenner-Gren-Foundation for anthropological research.
He knew well and was in conversation with
John von Neumann,
Norbert Wiener,
Humberto Maturana,
Francisco Varela,
Gordon Pask,
Gregory Bateson,
Lawrence J. Fogel and
Margaret Mead, among many others. He influenced generations of students as a teacher and inclusive, enthusiastic collaborator.
Work
Von Foerster was influenced by the
Vienna Circle and
Ludwig Wittgenstein. He worked in the field of
cybernetics and is known as the inventor of
second-order cybernetics. He made important contributions to
constructivism. He is also known for his interest in computer music and
magic.
The electron tube laboratory
In 1949 Von Foerster started work at the
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign at the electron tube laboratory of the Electrical Engineering Department, where he succeeded
Joseph Tykociński-Tykociner. With his students he developed many innovative devices, including ultra-high-frequency electronics
(2) He also worked on mathematical models of population dynamics and developed a general model now called the "von Foerster Equation"
(3)Biological Computer Laboratory
In 1958 he formed the
Biological Computer Lab, studying similarities in cybernetic systems in
biology and
electronics.
(4)Macy conferences
He was the youngest member of the core group of the
Macy conferences and editor of the five volumes of
Cybernetics (1949-1953), a series of conference transcripts that represent important foundational conversations in the field. It was von Foerster who suggested that Wiener's coinage "
Cybernetics" be applied to this conference series, that had previously been called "Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems".
Doomsday Equation
A 1960 issue of
Science magazine included an article by von Foerster and his colleagues P.M.Mora and L.W.Amiot proposing a formula representing a best fit to available historical data on world population; the authors then predicted future population growth on the basis of this formula.
[JOURNAL
], Heinz von Foerster, P. M. Mora and L. W. Amiot
, Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026. At this date human population will approach infinity if it grows as it has grown in the last two millenia
,
Science (journal), Science, 1960
, November
, 132
, 1291–1295
, 13782058
The formula gave 2.7 billion as the 1960 world population and predicted that population growth would become infinite by Friday, November 13, 2026 - von Foerster's 115th birthday anniversary - a prediction that earned it the name "the
Doomsday Equation."Based on population data obtained from various sources, von Foerster and his students concluded that world population growth over the centuries was faster than an exponential. In such a situation, doubling-time decreases over time. Von Foerster's tongue-in-cheek prediction of Doomsday on November 13, 2026, was based on an extrapolation into the future of doubling-time, with the finding that doubling-time would decrease to zero on that date.Responders to his Doomsday prediction objected on the grounds of the finite human gestation time of 9 months, and the transparent fact that biological systems rarely persist in exponential growth for any substantial length of time. Those who knew von Foerster could see in his rejoinders an evident sense of humor.
Doomsday Equation: recent research
Recent research has confirmed the basic soundness of von Foerster's findings. The
hyperbolic growth of the
world population observed until the 1970s has recently been correlated to a non-linear second order positive feedback between demographic growth and technological development that can be spelled out as follows
(5):
- technological growth implies an increase in carrying capacity, an increase in the number of people who can survive on any given plot of land
- demographic growth (more people) implies more potential inventors and hence an acceleration of technological growth
- accelerating technological growth causes accelerating growth of carrying capacity, in a positive feedback loop
- faster population growth likewise feeds back by accelerating growth of the number of potential inventors, and then even faster technological growth
- hence, even faster growth of the Earth's carrying capacity for people, and so on
See also
Publications
Von Foerster authored more than 100 publications.
(6) Books, a selection:
- 1949, Cybernetics: Transactions of the Sixth Conference, (editor), Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation: New York, 220 pp.
- 2002, Understanding understanding, a volume of von Foerster's papers, published by Springer-Verlag, 2002.
Articles, a selection:
- 1958, "Basic Concepts of Homeostasis." In: Homeostatic Mechanisms, Upton, New York, pp. 216–242, 1958.
- 1960, "Doomsday: Friday, November 13, AD 2026," with P. M. Mora und L. W. Amiot, Science 132, pp. 1291–1295, 1960.
- 1961, "A Predictive Model for Self-Organizing Systems," Part I: Cybernetica 3, pp. 258–300; Part II: Cybernetica 4, pp. 20–55, with Gordon Pask, 1961.
- 1964, "Biological Computers," with W. Ross Ashby, In: Bioastronautics, K. E. Schaefer, Macmillan Co., New York, pp. 333- 360, 1964.
- 1969, "What is Memory that it may have Hindsight and Foresight"
- 1971, "Computing in the Semantic Domain"
- 1971, "Technology. What Will It Mean to Librarians?"
References
-
[The Heinz von Foerster Page]
-
[See for example, in Review of Scientific Instruments 25: 640–653, 1954.]
-
["Some Remarks on Changing Populations" in The Kinetics of Cellular Proliferation, F. Stohlman, Jr., ed., Grune & Stratton, New York, pp. 382-407 (1959); E. Trucco, Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics 27: 285-304 and 449-471, 1965]
-
[Biological Computer Laboratory]
-
[see, e.g., Introduction to Social Macrodynamics by Andrey Korotayev et al.]
-
[ The Bibliography of Heinz von Foerster 1943–2003, from Alexander Riegler, dec 2003 gives an overview of all his publications.]
External links
{{Cybernetics}}{{Systems}}{{Society for General Systems Research Presidents}}
Heinz von FoersterHeinz von FoersterHeinz von FoersterHeinz von FoersterHeinz von FoersterHeinz von FoersterФёрстер, Хейнц фон
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