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G R E Y W A L T E R
F R O M E L E C T R O S H O C K T O T H E
P S Y C H E D E L I C S I X T I E S
THE BRuTE POINT IS THAT A wORkINg gOlEm IS . . . PREfERABlE TO TO-
TAl IgNORANCE. . . . IT IS ClEAR BY NOw THAT THE ImmEdIATE fuTuRE Of
STudY IN mOdEllINg THE BRAIN lIES wITH THE SYNTHESIS Of gAdgETS mORE
THAN wITH THE ANAlYSIS Of dATA.
Jerome Lettvin,
EmbodimEnts of mind
(1988, vI, vII)
In an obituary for his long-standing friend and colleague, H. W. Shipton
described Grey Walter as, “in every sense of the phrase a free thinker [with]
contempt for those who followed well paved paths. He was flamboyant, per-
suasive, iconoclastic and a great admirer of beauty in art, literature, science,
and not least, woman” (1977, iii). The historian of science Rhodri Hayward
remarks on Walter's “swashbuckling image” as an “emotional adventurer,”
and on his popular and academic reputation, which ranged from “robotics
pioneer, home guard explosives expert, wife swapper, t.v.-pundit, experimen-
tal drugs user and skin diver to anarcho-syndicalist champion of leucotomy
and electro-convulsive therapy” (2001a, 616). I am interested in Walter the
cybernetician, so the swashbuckling will get short shrift, alas.
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After an outline of Walter's life and career, I turn to robot-tortoises, explor-
ing their contribution to a science of the performative brain while also showing
the ways in which they went beyond that. I discuss the tortoises as ontological
