Behavior, Purpose and Teleology (Rosenblueth, Wiener and Bigelow)
Conducta, propósito y teleología (Rosenblueth, Wiener y Bigelow)
- Date
- 1943 · confidence high
- Place
- Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- Credited to
- Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener and Julian Bigelow
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What was discovered
A paper describing goal-directed behaviour through negative feedback, applicable alike to machines and organisms. It was the conceptual basis of cybernetics, born from Wiener's collaboration with the Mexican physiologist Rosenblueth.
The paper appeared in Philosophy of Science (1943); Rosenblueth later founded the National Institute of Cardiology and Cinvestav in Mexico.
What it led to
- Cybernetics (Wiener, 1948)
- Systems and control theory in biology
- Neurophysiology and thinking machines in the 20th century