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paper entitled “The Mode of Action of Electro-convulsive Therapy,” in which
he reported his own research on rats subjected to ECT, using an assay of his own
devising to explore ECT's effects on the “adenohypophyseal-adrenocortical
system” (Ashby 1953a; see also Ashby 1949b for earlier rat experiments on
this topic).
It is clear, then, that Ashby was actively involved in a certain kind of clinical
psychiatric research well into his fifties, trying to understand the material pe-
culiarities of pathological brains and how therapeutic interventions worked.
This was his professional life until he left Britain in 1961, and I will come back
to it. Now, however, we can move to a more rarefied plane and explore the
development of Ashby's distinctive cybernetic understanding of the brain.
Ashby's hobby
Shortly after Ashby's death, his wife wrote to Mai von Foerster, Heinz's wife
and a family friend at the University of Illinois:
I came across a very private notebook the other day written in 1951. In it Ross
wrote: After I qualified, work on the brain, of the type recorded in my note-
books, was to me merely a delightful amusement, a hobby I could retreat to, a
world where I could weave complex and delightful patterns of pure thought,
untroubled by social, financial or other distractions. So the work which I had
treated for years only as a hobby began to arouse interest. I was asked to broad-
cast about it in March, 1949. My fear is now that I may become conspicuous,
for a topic of mine is in the press. For this sort of success I have no liking. My
ambitions are vague—someday to produce something faultless.
8
The notebook in question is “Passing through Nature,” Ashby's biographical
notebook, written between 1951 and 1957 (see note 4).
9
The broadcast Ashby
referred to was a thirty-minute program on BBC radio, “Imitating the Brain,”
transmitted on 8 March 1949, for which he was paid twenty-six pounds and
five shillings (i.e., twenty-five guineas) plus fifteen shillings and threepence
rail fare; the topic is
Design for a Brain
, which appeared in 1952.
10
My aim now
is to trace out the evolution of the strand of Ashby's early work that led up to
and included
Design
. I am interested in its substance and how it emerged from
the hobbyist shadows to establish Ashby's reputation as one of the world's
leading cyberneticians. In a biographical note from 1962 Ashby wrote that
“since 1928 Ashby has given most of his attention to the problem: How can
the brain be at once mechanistic and adaptive? He obtained the solution in
