Warren McCulloch and the British Cyberneticians

2012/09/01 by Phil Husbands, Owen Holland · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Computer Science · Medicine · #Cybernetics and Technology in Society #Cellular Automata and Applications #History of Computing Technologies #Cybernetics #Club #Sociology #Art history #Media studies #History #Epistemology #Philosophy #Medicine

paper · doi:10.1179/0308018812z.00000000019

openalex publication_date 2012/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11

Abstract

The relationships and interactions between Warren McCulloch and a number of British cyberneticians are traced. He interacted regularly with most of the main figures on the British cybernetics scene, forming close friendships and collaborations with several, as well as mentoring others. Many of these interactions stemmed from a 1949 visit to London, during which he gave the opening talk at the inaugural meeting of the Ratio Club, a gathering of brilliant, mainly young, British scientists working in areas related to cybernetics.

Citations

• Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine
• A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity
• An Asymmetric Relationship: The Spirit of Kenneth Craik and the Work of Warren McCulloch
• (Physio)logical circuits: The intellectual origins of the McCulloch–Pitts neural networks
• What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain
• On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem

Cited by

• Kenneth Craik [wikipedia]

Related

• An Asymmetric Relationship: The Spirit of Kenneth Craik and the Work of Warren McCulloch
• A Short History of Cybernetics in the United States
• How to be Universal: Some Cybernetic Strategies, 1943-70
• Claude Elwood Shannon 30 April 1916 — 24 February 2001
• Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine