THE ADAPT IVE BRAIN - The Cybernetic Brain - page 5

Figure 1.2 . The four pioneers of cybernetics ( left to right ): ross ashby, warren
mcculloch, grey walter, and norbert wiener. source: de latil 1956, facing p. 53.
1994). But figure 1.2, a photograph taken in the early 1950s, originally ap-
peared with the not unreasonable caption “The Four Pioneers of Cybernetics,”
and what I find striking is that, with Wiener as the exception, three of the
four—Ashby, Walter, and McCulloch—spent much or all of their professional
careers in research on the human brain, often in psychiatric milieus. 3 We can
explore the specifically psychiatric origins of cybernetics in detail in chapters
3 and 4, but for the moment it is enough to note that the distinctive object of
British cybernetics was the brain , itself understood in a distinctive way. This
requires some explanation now, since it is a way into all that follows.
To put it very crudely, there are two ways to think about the brain and what
it does. The way that comes naturally to me is to think of the brain as an organ
of knowledge . My brain contains representations, stories, memories, pictures