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The Macy Conferences on Cybernetics Occur

1946 to 1953
Cover of the new collected edition of the Macy Conferences edited by Claus Pias and published by the University of Chicago Press in 2016.
Image Source: press.uchicago.edu

Cover of the new collected edition of the Macy Conferences edited by Claus Pias and published by the University of Chicago Press in 2016.

At the initiative of Warren McCulloch, from 1946 to 1953 the ten Macy Conferences on “Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems,” occurred in New York to set the foundations for a general science of the workings of the human mind. The conferences brought together a diverse group of scholars representing fields from mathematics to the physical, life, social, and information sciences, and resulted in breakthroughs in systems theory, cybernetics, and what eventually became known as cognitive science.

Timeline Themes

Computer Science / Computing Theory
Science
Computers & the Human Brain / Neuromorphic Computing

Related Entries

Warren McCulloch:

McCulloch & Pitts Publish the First Mathematical Model of a Neural Network
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The Earliest Video Game Competition Takes Place at Stanford University, for the Game "Spacewar."
Oliver Selfridge's Pioneering Program in Pattern Recognition
"The Design of Machines to Simulate the Behavior of the Human Brain"