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the place of the bands that broke in the fantasy machine of his 1945 publica-
tion (with the added advantage that the uniselectors were always capable of
moving to another position, unlike elastic bands, which never recover from
breaking). Started off in any configuration, the homeostat would randomly
reorganize itself to find a condition of dynamic equilibrium with its environ-
ment, without any external intervention.
The homeostat was, then, a major milestone in Ashby's twenty-year quest
to understand the brain as a machine. Now he had a real electromechani-
cal device that could serve in understanding the go of the adaptive brain.
It was also a major development in the overall cybernetic tradition then
crystallizing around Wiener's Cybernetics , also published in 1948. 14 I want
to pause, therefore, to enter some commentary before returning to the
historical narrative—first on ontology, then on the social basis of Ashby's
cybernetics.
The homeostat as ontological Theater
asHby's brilliant idea of tHe unpurposeful random mecHanism wHicH
seeks for its own purpose tHrougH a process of learning is . . . one
of tHe great pHilosopHical contributions of tHe present day.
NoRbeRT WieNeR, ThE huMan uSE of huMan BEingS ,
2nd ed. (1967 [1950]), 54
tHere can't be a proper tHeory of tHe brain until tHere is a proper
tHeory of tHe environment as well. . . . tHe subject Has been
Hampered by our not paying sufficiently serious attention to tHe
environmental Half of tHe process. . . . tHe “psycHology” of tHe
environment will Have to be given almost as mucH tHougHt as tHe psy-
cHology of tHe nerve network itself.
Ross Ashby, discussion at tHe 1952 macy conference
(asHby 1953b, 86-87)
My ontological commentary on the homeostat can follow much the same
lines as that on the tortoise, though I also want to mark important differences.
First, like the tortoise, the homeostat stages for us an image of an immediately
performative engagement of the brain and the world, a little model of a per-
formative ontology more generally. Again, at the heart of this engagement was
a process of random, trial-and-error search. The tortoise physically explored
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