Robots, Men, and Minds: Psychology in the Modern World.

by Ludwig Von Bertalanffy

Early non-fiction book on cybernetics.

Genres: Psychology, Technology

Paperback

Published January 1, 1969

About the author

Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy (September 19, 1901, Atzgersdorf near Vienna – June 12, 1972, Buffalo, New York) was an Austrian-born biologist known as one of the founders of general systems theory (GST). GST is an interdisciplinary practice that describes systems with interacting components, applicable to biology, cybernetics, and other fields. Bertalanffy proposed that the classical laws of thermodynamics applied to closed systems, but not necessarily to "open systems," such as living things. His mathematical model of an organism's growth over time, published in 1934, is still in use today.
Von Bertalanffy grew up in Austria and subsequently worked in Vienna, London, Canada and the USA.

Reviews

[Toby Newton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written by a testy old geezer, smarting, understandably, at the neglect of his ideas when they were first propounded, and at the now begrudging way in which a tithe of them are being accepted into contemporary thought (this is in 1967), this is a very enlightening read.

Basically, it's an exercise in new paradigm thinking that has been ignored and marginalised by normal science ever since its publication. Bertalanffy's fate is to watch as the discredited but highly effective model it seeks to topple, gradually co-opts and domesticates his insights, putting them to use where it can and hermetically sealing them in the vault labelled "crankery and pseudoscience" where it can't.

My copy was a second-hand purchase, whose previous life had been spent at Eastern Baptist College Library. It had not been checked out even once. Bertalanffy brings a gospel of uncertainty that man can't stomach.