Raymond Ruyer’s book Cybernetics and the Origin of Information was the first sustained philosophical response to cybernetics and Information Theory. By extension and implication, it was one of the first philosophical works to deal with issues in automated reasoning and information systems which today typically go under names such as Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science, and which are increasingly topical and pressing. First published in 1954, a second, substantially revised edition was issued in 1967. Ruyer’s book is a response to the cybernetics of Norbert Wiener and other prominent researchers in the area, and like cybernetics itslef, traverses disciplines including communications, engineering, psychology, biology, and physics. While reciveing apparently little attention at the time, it was a hidden but deep influence on Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of technology.
While many of the detailed descriptions of the technologies of his time now appear dated, Ruyer in many ways remains compelling in identifying the differences between conscious thought and mechanical functioning. Moreover, many of the questions he raises and proposes provocative answers to, such as the limits of automation and the exact nature of information, remain unsettled topics of debate in contemporary philosophy of information and computing. Paradoxically, then, this old book is more relevant now then it has ever been.
The concept of information introduced with cybernetics promised to bring together the technical meaning of the term, as a statistical, probabilistic analysis of signal transmission, and the common meaning, as knowledge and understanding. It was therefore thought to have the potential to unify the natural and human sciences, machines and living beings, in a generalised theory of information systems. In sum, Ruyer’s argument is that cybernetics has a vast importance, but is confused and limited by its insistence on mechanistic models. Through mutiple detailed arguments, he seeks to demonstrate that cybernetics falls too far on the side of mechanism to adequately account for not just meaning in the human world, but organisation and development in biology. Ultimately, Ruyer argues that information must be understood to have a double origin and reality, both physical and metaphysical (or material and ideal).
The lecturer is a contributor to the first English translation of Cybernetics and the Origin of Information, due to be published with Rowman & Littlefield in 2024. Students will have early access to this translation.
Schedule and readings
Lecture 1: Introduction to Ruyer and Cybernetics
- General introduction to Ruyer
- General overview of the text
Readings:
- Cybernetics ‘Introduction’
- Cybernetics Chpt. 1: The Main Types of Information Machines (optional)
- Ashley Woodward, ‘Raymond Ruyer and the Philosophy of Information’ (optional)
Lecture 2: Value and Purpose
- Critique of teleology in cybernetics
- Framing
- Axiological space
Readings:
- Cybernetics Chpt. 2: Framing Activities and Framed Mechanisms
- Cybernetics Chpt. 3: The Space of Behaviour and Axiological ‘Space’
Lecture 3: Information and Communication
- Critique of the cybernetic theory of information and communication
- Information Theory
- Wiener’s concept of communication
Readings:
- Cybernetics Chpt. 4: Communication
- Cybernetics Chpt. 5: The Origin of Information
Lecture 4: Entropy and Time
- Physics, entropy, and time
- Critique of mechanistic models of organisation and development
- Critique of Wiener’s claim that cybernetic machines exist in Bergsonian time
Readings:
- Cybernetics Chpt. 6: Negative Anti-chance and Positive Anti-chance
- Cybernetics Chapt. 7: Past-Future and Cybernetics
Lecture 5: Beyond Cybernetics
- Conclusions: for an expanded cybernetics
- Later developments
- Information, from cybernetics to informatics, systems theory – and AI?
Readings:
- Cybernetics chpt. 8: The Mixed Origin of Information
- Cybernetics chpt. 9: Summary and Conclusion to the First Edition
- Cybernetics chpt. 10: The Problems of Cybernetics in 1967 (optional)
- Ruyer, ‘The Fracture Line of Cybernetics in 1979’ (optional)