Constructing a Social Science for Postwar America: The Cybernetics Group, 1946-1953

by Steve Joshua Heims

In this sequel to his acclaimed double biography, John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener, Steve Heims recounts another fascinating story in twentieth-century intellectual history - a series of encounters... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 026258123X
• ISBN13: 9780262581233
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
• Length: 348 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Top minds trying to find common ground

I have only seen a hardcover copy of this book from 1991. Many of the issues that others have brought to my attention in my lifetime were put in specific professional frames of reference in this book. As history, I'm afraid it strives for the kind of understanding that will totally escape a TV culture nation of shoppers spending itself into a plastic financial hole. Those who would like to see the background which allowed Michel Foucault to emerge as an expert in the way civilized society attempts to deal with people who are considered mad by people who no longer function well together would benefit from the context in which professionals who had compteting responsibilites could observe each other trying the same aspects of psychotic multiplicity on each other again and again without finding the kind of resolution any sane society would insist upon. Foucault gets quoted and mentioned as a frame of reference suitable in 1991 for understanding issues raised in Macy conferences and subsequent papers by the outstanding participants.