Heinz von Foerster
Encyclopedia
Heinz von Foerster was an Austrian American scientist combining physics
and philosophy
. Together with Warren McCulloch, Norbert Wiener
, John von Neumann
, Lawrence J. Fogel
, and others, Heinz von Foerster was an architect of cybernetics
.
, Austria, as Heinz von Förster. He studied physics at the Technical University of Vienna and at the University of Breslau, where in 1944 he received a Ph.D.
in physics
.
He moved to the USA
in 1949, and worked at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
, where he was a professor of electrical engineering from 1951 to 1975. From 1962 to 1975 he also was professor of biophysics
and 1958–75 director of the Biological Computer Laboratory
. Additionally, in 1956–57 and 1963–64 he was a Guggenheim-Fellow. From 1963 to 1965 he was president of the Wenner-Gren-Foundation for anthropological research.
He knew well and was in conversation with John von Neumann
, Norbert Wiener
, Humberto Maturana
, Francisco Varela
, Gordon Pask
, Gregory Bateson
, Lawrence J. Fogel
and Margaret Mead
, among many others. He influenced generations of students as a teacher and inclusive, enthusiastic collaborator.
and Ludwig Wittgenstein
. He worked in the field of cybernetics
and is known as the inventor of second-order cybernetics
. He made important contributions to constructivism
. He is also known for his interest in computer music and magic
.
He also worked on mathematical models of population dynamics and developed a general model now called the "von Foerster Equation"
, studying similarities in cybernetic systems in biology
and electronics
.
and editor of the five volumes of Cybernetics (1949–1953), a series of conference transcripts that represent important foundational conversations in the field. It was von Foerster who suggested that Wiener's coinage "Cybernetics
" be applied to this conference series, that had previously been called "Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems".
magazine included an article by von Foerster and his colleagues P.M.Mora and L.W.Amiot proposing a formula representing a best fit to available historical data on world population; the authors then predicted future population growth on the basis of this formula.
The formula gave 2.7 billion as the 1960 world population and predicted that population growth would become infinite by Friday, November 13, 2026 - von Foerster's 115th birthday anniversary - a prediction that earned it the name "the Doomsday Equation."
Based on population data obtained from various sources, von Foerster and his students concluded that world population growth over the centuries was faster than an exponential. In such a situation, doubling-time decreases over time. Von Foerster's tongue-in-cheek prediction of Doomsday on November 13, 2026, was based on an extrapolation into the future of doubling-time, with the finding that doubling-time would decrease to zero on that date.
Responders to his Doomsday prediction objected on the grounds of the finite human gestation time of 9 months, and the transparent fact that biological systems rarely persist in exponential growth for any substantial length of time. Those who knew von Foerster could see in his rejoinders an evident sense of humor.
of the world population
observed until the 1970s has recently been correlated to a non-linear second order positive feedback between demographic growth and technological development that can be spelled out as follows:
Articles, a selection:
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
and philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
. Together with Warren McCulloch, Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener was an American mathematician.A famous child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.Wiener is regarded as the originator of cybernetics, a...
, John von Neumann
John von Neumann
John von Neumann was a Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath who made major contributions to a vast number of fields, including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, geometry, fluid dynamics, economics and game theory, computer science, numerical analysis,...
, Lawrence J. Fogel
Lawrence J. Fogel
Dr. Lawrence J. Fogel , was a pioneer in evolutionary computation and human factors analysis. He is known as the father of evolutionary programming. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he earned his B.E.E. from New York University in 1948, M.S. from Rutgers University in 1952 and Ph.D...
, and others, Heinz von Foerster was an architect of cybernetics
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
.
Biography
Von Foerster was born in 1911 in ViennaVienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, Austria, as Heinz von Förster. He studied physics at the Technical University of Vienna and at the University of Breslau, where in 1944 he received a Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
.
He moved to the USA
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in 1949, and worked at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...
, where he was a professor of electrical engineering from 1951 to 1975. From 1962 to 1975 he also was professor of biophysics
Biophysics
Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that uses the methods of physical science to study biological systems. Studies included under the branches of biophysics span all levels of biological organization, from the molecular scale to whole organisms and ecosystems...
and 1958–75 director of the Biological Computer Laboratory
Biological Computer Laboratory
The Biological Computer Laboratory was a research institute of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was founded on 1 January 1958 by the then Professor of Electrical Engineering Heinz von Foerster...
. Additionally, in 1956–57 and 1963–64 he was a Guggenheim-Fellow. From 1963 to 1965 he was president of the Wenner-Gren-Foundation for anthropological research.
He knew well and was in conversation with John von Neumann
John von Neumann
John von Neumann was a Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath who made major contributions to a vast number of fields, including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, geometry, fluid dynamics, economics and game theory, computer science, numerical analysis,...
, Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener was an American mathematician.A famous child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.Wiener is regarded as the originator of cybernetics, a...
, Humberto Maturana
Humberto Maturana
Humberto Maturana is a Chilean biologist and philosopher. He is considered a member of the second wave of cybernetics, known for developing a theory of autopoiesis about the nature of reflexive feedback control in living systems.- Biography :After completing secondary school at the Liceo Manuel de...
, Francisco Varela
Francisco Varela
Francisco Javier Varela García , was a Chilean biologist, philosopher and neuroscientist who, together with his teacher Humberto Maturana, is best known for introducing the concept of autopoiesis to biology.-Biography:...
, Gordon Pask
Gordon Pask
Andrew Gordon Speedie Pask was an English cybernetician and psychologist who made significant contributions to cybernetics, instructional psychology, experimental epistemology and educational technology....
, Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. He had a natural ability to recognize order and pattern in the universe...
, Lawrence J. Fogel
Lawrence J. Fogel
Dr. Lawrence J. Fogel , was a pioneer in evolutionary computation and human factors analysis. He is known as the father of evolutionary programming. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he earned his B.E.E. from New York University in 1948, M.S. from Rutgers University in 1952 and Ph.D...
and Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist, who was frequently a featured writer and speaker in the mass media throughout the 1960s and 1970s....
, among many others. He influenced generations of students as a teacher and inclusive, enthusiastic collaborator.
Work
Von Foerster was influenced by the Vienna CircleVienna Circle
The Vienna Circle was an association of philosophers gathered around the University of Vienna in 1922, chaired by Moritz Schlick, also known as the Ernst Mach Society in honour of Ernst Mach...
and Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
. He worked in the field of cybernetics
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
and is known as the inventor of second-order cybernetics
Second-order cybernetics
Second-order cybernetics, also known as the cybernetics of cybernetics, investigates the construction of models of cybernetic systems. It investigates cybernetics with awareness that the investigators are part of the system, and of the importance of self-referentiality, self-organizing, the...
. He made important contributions to constructivism
Constructivist epistemology
Constructivist epistemology is an epistemological perspective in philosophy about the nature of scientific knowledge. Constructivists maintain that scientific knowledge is constructed by scientists and not discovered from the world. Constructivists claim that the concepts of science are mental...
. He is also known for his interest in computer music and magic
Magic (illusion)
Magic is a performing art that entertains audiences by staging tricks or creating illusions of seemingly impossible or supernatural feats using natural means...
.
The electron tube laboratory
In 1949 Von Foerster started work at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign at the electron tube laboratory of the Electrical Engineering Department, where he succeeded Joseph Tykociński-Tykociner. With his students he developed many innovative devices, including ultra-high-frequency electronicsHe also worked on mathematical models of population dynamics and developed a general model now called the "von Foerster Equation"
Biological Computer Laboratory
In 1958 he formed the Biological Computer LabBiological Computer Laboratory
The Biological Computer Laboratory was a research institute of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was founded on 1 January 1958 by the then Professor of Electrical Engineering Heinz von Foerster...
, studying similarities in cybernetic systems in biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
and electronics
Electronics
Electronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...
.
Macy conferences
He was the youngest member of the core group of the Macy conferencesMacy conferences
The Macy Conferences were a set of meetings of scholars from various disciplines held in New York by the initiative of Warren McCulloch and the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation from 1946 to 1953...
and editor of the five volumes of Cybernetics (1949–1953), a series of conference transcripts that represent important foundational conversations in the field. It was von Foerster who suggested that Wiener's coinage "Cybernetics
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
" be applied to this conference series, that had previously been called "Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems".
Doomsday Equation
A 1960 issue of ScienceScience (magazine)
Science was a general science magazine published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science . It was intended to "bridge the distance between science and citizen", aimed at a technically literate audience who may not work professionally in the sciences...
magazine included an article by von Foerster and his colleagues P.M.Mora and L.W.Amiot proposing a formula representing a best fit to available historical data on world population; the authors then predicted future population growth on the basis of this formula.
The formula gave 2.7 billion as the 1960 world population and predicted that population growth would become infinite by Friday, November 13, 2026 - von Foerster's 115th birthday anniversary - a prediction that earned it the name "the Doomsday Equation."
Based on population data obtained from various sources, von Foerster and his students concluded that world population growth over the centuries was faster than an exponential. In such a situation, doubling-time decreases over time. Von Foerster's tongue-in-cheek prediction of Doomsday on November 13, 2026, was based on an extrapolation into the future of doubling-time, with the finding that doubling-time would decrease to zero on that date.
Responders to his Doomsday prediction objected on the grounds of the finite human gestation time of 9 months, and the transparent fact that biological systems rarely persist in exponential growth for any substantial length of time. Those who knew von Foerster could see in his rejoinders an evident sense of humor.
Doomsday Equation: recent research
Recent research has confirmed the basic soundness of von Foerster's findings. The hyperbolic growthHyperbolic growth
When a quantity grows towards a singularity under a finite variation it is said to undergo hyperbolic growth.More precisely, the reciprocal function 1/x has a hyperbola as a graph, and has a singularity at 0, meaning that the limit as x \to 0 is infinity: any similar graph is said to exhibit...
of the world population
World population
The world population is the total number of living humans on the planet Earth. As of today, it is estimated to be billion by the United States Census Bureau...
observed until the 1970s has recently been correlated to a non-linear second order positive feedback between demographic growth and technological development that can be spelled out as follows:
- technological growth implies an increase in carrying capacityCarrying capacityThe carrying capacity of a biological species in an environment is the maximum population size of the species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available in the environment...
, an increase in the number of people who can survive on any given plot of land - demographic growth (more people) implies more potential inventors and hence an acceleration of technological growth
- accelerating technological growth causes accelerating growth of carrying capacity, in a positive feedback loop
- faster population growth likewise feeds back by accelerating growth of the number of potential inventors, and then even faster technological growth
- hence, even faster growth of the Earth's carrying capacity for people, and so on
See also
- Logarithmic timelineLogarithmic timelineA logarithmic timeline is a timeline laid out according to a logarithmic scale. This necessarily implies a zero point and an infinity point, neither of which can be displayed. The most natural zero point is the Big Bang, looking forward, but the most common is the ever-changing present, looking...
- Das NetzDas NetzDas Netz is an independent film directed by Lutz Dammbeck and subtitled "The Unabomber, LSD and the Internet". Das Netz premiered in 2003....
: interview with von Foerster, 2003 - Power lawPower lawA power law is a special kind of mathematical relationship between two quantities. When the frequency of an event varies as a power of some attribute of that event , the frequency is said to follow a power law. For instance, the number of cities having a certain population size is found to vary...
: The equation that he derived for the date calculated is one that nowadays is called a power law.
Publications
Von Foerster authored more than 100 publications. Books, a selection:- 1949, Cybernetics: Transactions of the Sixth Conference, (editor), Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation: New York, 220 pp.
- 2002, Understanding understanding, a volume of von Foerster's papers, published by Springer-Verlag, 2002.
- 2010, with Monika Broecker: Part of the World. Fractals of Ethics - A Drama in Three Acts. Heinz von Foerster's most extensive biography. First published in German in 2002: with Monika Broecker. Teil der Welt. Fraktale einer Ethik - ein Drama in drei Akten.
Articles, a selection:
- 1958, "Basic Concepts of Homeostasis." In: Homeostatic Mechanisms, Upton, New York, pp. 216–242, 1958.
- 1960, "Doomsday: Friday, November 13, AD 2026," with P. M. Mora und L. W. Amiot, Science 132, pp. 1291–1295, 1960.
- 1961, "A Predictive Model for Self-Organizing Systems," Part I: Cybernetica 3, pp. 258–300; Part II: Cybernetica 4, pp. 20–55, with Gordon PaskGordon PaskAndrew Gordon Speedie Pask was an English cybernetician and psychologist who made significant contributions to cybernetics, instructional psychology, experimental epistemology and educational technology....
, 1961. - 1964, "Biological Computers," with W. Ross Ashby, In: Bioastronautics, K. E. Schaefer, Macmillan Co., New York, pp. 333– 360, 1964.
- 1969, "What is Memory that it may have Hindsight and Foresight"
- 1971, "Computing in the Semantic Domain"
- 1971, "Technology. What Will It Mean to Librarians?"
External links
- Asaro, Peter M. (2007). "Heinz von Foerster and the Bio-Computing Movements of the 1960s," in Albert Müller and Karl H. Müller (eds.) An Unfinished Revolution? Heinz von Foerster and the Biological Computer Laboratory | BCL 1958-1976. Vienna, Austria: Edition Echoraum.
- Stanford Humanities Review Interview
- The Heinz von Foerster Page
- Korotayev A., Malkov A., Khaltourina D. Introduction to Social Macrodynamics: Compact Macromodels of the World System Growth. Moscow: URSS, 2006. ISBN 5-484-00414-4 http://urss.ru/cgi-bin/db.pl?cp=&lang=en&blang=en&list=14&page=Book&id=34250.
- Biological Computer Laboratory web site, University of Illinois
- An anthology of Circularity Principles from the Heinz von Foerster entry at The Cybernetics Society
- Gooch, Sherwin, & Nordin, Hud, "High Tech Heroes television interview, episode 10, part 1," Heinz von Foerster discusses the founding of Cybernetics, and the possibility of achieving immortality through prosthetic brains, Foothill College, California, August 22, 1989.
- "High Tech Heroes, episode 10, part 2."