Heinz von Foerster (née von Förster; November 13, 1911 – October 2, 2002) was an Austrian-American scientist combining physics and philosophy, and widely attributed as the originator of second-order cybernetics. He was twice a Guggenheim fellow (1956–57 and 1963–64) and also was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1980. He is well known for his 1960 Doomsday equation formula published in Science predicting future population growth.[1]
As a polymath, he wrote nearly two hundred professional papers, gaining renown in fields ranging from computer science and artificial intelligence to epistemology, and researched high-speed electronics and electro-optics switching devices as a physicist, and in biophysics, the study of memory and knowledge. He worked on cognition based on neurophysiology, mathematics, and philosophy and was called "one of the most consequential thinkers in the history of cybernetics".[2] He came to the United States, and stayed after meeting with Warren Sturgis McCulloch, where he received funding from The Pentagon to establish the Biological Computer Laboratory, which built the first parallel computer, the Numa-Rete.[3] Working with William Ross Ashby, one of the original Ratio Club members, and together with Warren McCulloch, Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann and Lawrence J. Fogel, Heinz von Foerster was an architect of cybernetics and one of the members of the Macy conferences,[4] eventually becoming editor of its early proceedings alongside Hans-Lukas Teuber and Margaret Mead.[5]
^Heinz von Foerster, P. M. Mora and L. W. Amiot (November 1960). "Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026. At this date human population will approach infinity if it grows as it has grown in the last two millennia". Science. 132 (3436): 1291–1295. Bibcode:1960Sci...132.1291V. doi:10.1126/science.132.3436.1291. PMID 13782058.
^Foerster, Heinz V; Müller, Albert; Müller, Karl H.; Rooks, Elinor; Kasenbacher, Michael (2013). The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name: Seven Days with Second-Order Cybernetics. Fordham University Press. ISBN 978-0823255610.
^Jamie Hutchinson. Von Foerster made Illinois a cybernetics "nerve center" Ingenuity newsletter, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, May 2004
^"The Heinz von Foerster Page". Archived from the original on 2004-08-03. Retrieved 2004-08-20.
^Biography of Heinz von Foerster 2002
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HeinzvonFoerster (née von Förster; November 13, 1911 – October 2, 2002) was an Austrian-American scientist combining physics and philosophy, and widely...
had participants included Ross Ashby, Gregory Bateson, HeinzvonFoerster, Margaret Mead, John von Neumann, and Norbert Wiener. In the UK, similar focuses...
such as Ashby, Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann, and HeinzvonFoerster examined complex systems mathematically; Von Neumann discovered cellular automata...
epidemiology, and subsequently independently in 1959 by biophysics professor HeinzvonFoerster for describing cell cycles. The mathematical formula can be derived...
cyberneticist or a cybernetician is a person who applies cybernetics. HeinzvonFoerster once told Stuart Umpleby that Norbert Wiener preferred the term "cybernetician"...
second-order cybernetics theoreticians such as HeinzvonFoerster, Gordon Pask, Herbert Brün and Ernst von Glasersfeld, but in fact he was a biologist,...
Nielsen. Similar principles of eschatology were proposed earlier by HeinzvonFoerster, among others. A more general form was given earlier in the Lindy...
The Dream of Reality: HeinzvonFoerster's Constructivism is a book by Lynn Segal first published in 1986. Segal, a licensed clinical social worker, examines...
the term working body when referring to the system. The biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy became one of the pioneers of the general systems theory. In...
closely related to second-order cybernetics, and especially the work of HeinzvonFoerster, Humberto Maturana, and Francisco Varela. During the 1980s, Siegfried...
Archived from the original on July 30, 2018. Dixon 1971, pp. 170–172. vonFoerster, Heinz; Mora, Patricia M.; Amiot, Lawrence W. (1960-11-01). "Doomsday: Friday...
Evolution". Around the same time it was also explored by the cyberneticist HeinzvonFoerster, who used it to propose that memories naturally fade in an exponential...
evolution of cybernetic science from Norbert Wiener to Gordon Pask, HeinzvonFoerster, and Autopoiesis, and in related fields such as Autocatalysis, the...
science of "control and communication in the animal and the machine". HeinzvonFoerster went on to distinguish a first order cybernetics, "the study of observed...
Austrian Decoration for Science and Art. In January 2010 he received the Heinz-von-Foerster Price at the University of Hagen for organizations- cybernetics. On...
"Realism – Relativism – Constructivism". In 2018 Mitterer delivered the HeinzvonFoerster Lecture at the University of Vienna. The Non-dualizing Philosophy...
Churchman Manfred Clynes George Dantzig Edsger W. Dijkstra Fred Emery HeinzvonFoerster Stephanie Forrest Jay Wright Forrester Barbara Grosz Charles A. S...
Churchman Manfred Clynes George Dantzig Edsger W. Dijkstra Fred Emery HeinzvonFoerster Stephanie Forrest Jay Wright Forrester Barbara Grosz Charles A. S...
A. (1952). Communication Between Men: The Meaning of Language. In HeinzvonFoerster (ed), Transactions of 8th Macy Conference - Cybernetics: Circular...
Churchman Manfred Clynes George Dantzig Edsger W. Dijkstra Fred Emery HeinzvonFoerster Stephanie Forrest Jay Wright Forrester Barbara Grosz Charles A. S...
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