The Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL) was a research institute of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United ...
. It was founded on 1 January 1958, by then Professor of Electrical Engineering
Heinz von Foerster
Heinz von Foerster (; 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 ...
. He was head of BCL until his retirement in 1975.
The focus of research at BCL was
systems theory
Systems theory is the Transdisciplinarity, transdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or artificial. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, de ...
bionics
Bionics or biologically inspired engineering is the application of biological methods and systems found in nature to the study and design of engineering systems and modern technology.
The word ''bionic'', coined by Jack E. Steele in August 195 ...
, and
bio-inspired computing
Bio-inspired computing, short for biologically inspired computing, is a field of study which seeks to solve computer science problems using models of biology. It relates to connectionism, social behavior, and emergence. Within computer science, b ...
; that is, analyzing, formalizing, and implementing biological processes using computers. BCL was inspired by the ideas of
Warren McCulloch
Warren Sturgis McCulloch (November 16, 1898 – September 24, 1969) was an American neurophysiologist and cybernetician known for his work on the foundation for certain brain theories and his contribution to the cybernetics movement.Ken Aizawa ...
and the
Macy Conferences
The Macy conferences were a set of meetings of scholars from various academic disciplines held in New York under the direction of Frank Fremont-Smith at the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation starting in 1941 and ending in 1960. The explicit aim of th ...
, as well as many other thinkers in the field of
cybernetics
Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular causal processes such as feedback and recursion, where the effects of a system's actions (its outputs) return as inputs to that system, influencing subsequent action. It is concerned with ...
.
In the first decade of its existence, BCL was primarily a non-teaching research lab. Although students could work at BCL, they were not trained.
Until 1965, many researchers had a visiting professorship at BCL: W. William Ainsworth (England), Alex Andrew (England),
W. Ross Ashby
William Ross Ashby (6 September 1903 – 15 November 1972) was an English psychiatrist and a pioneer in cybernetics, the study of the science of communications and automatic control systems in both machines and living things. His first name was ...
(England),
Gordon Pask
Andrew Gordon Speedie Pask (28 June 1928 – 29 March 1996) was a British cybernetician, inventor and polymath who made multiple contributions to cybernetics, educational psychology, educational technology, applied epistemology, chemical comp ...
(England),
Gotthard Günther
Gotthard Günther (15 June 1900 – 29 November 1984) was a German (Prussian) philosopher.
Biography
Günther was born in Arnsdorf, Hirschberg im Riesengebirge, Prussian Silesia (modern day Jelenia Góra, Poland). From 1921 to 1933, Günther ...
(USA, Germany), Dan Cohen (Israel), Lars Löfgren (Sweden),
Humberto Maturana
Humberto Maturana Romesín (September 14, 1928 – May 6, 2021) was a Chilean biologist and philosopher. Some name him a second-order cybernetics theoretician alongside the likes of Heinz von Foerster, Gordon Pask, Herbert Brün and Ern ...
(Chile),
Francisco Varela
Francisco Javier Varela García (September 7, 1946 – May 28, 2001) was a Chilean biologist, philosopher, cybernetician, and neuroscientist who, together with his mentor Humberto Maturana, is best known for introducing the concept of autopoie ...
(Chile),
Ernst von Glasersfeld
Ernst von Glasersfeld (March 8, 1917, Munich – November 12, 2010, Leverett, Massachusetts, Leverett, Franklin County, Massachusetts) was a philosopher, and emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Georgia, research associate at ...
(Austria),
Stafford Beer
Anthony Stafford Beer (25 September 1926 – 23 August 2002) was a British theorist, consultant and professor at Manchester Business School. He is known for his work in the fields of operational research and management cybernetics, and for his ...
(England),
John C. Lilly
John Cunningham Lilly (January 6, 1915 – September 30, 2001)John C. Lilly at
(USA). Ashby (since 1961) and Günther (since 1967) received regular professorships, and Löfgren and Pask remained in constant contact with BCL even after their visiting professorship.
BCL was financed primarily by grants. This came in part from military organizations such as
U.S. Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its origins to 1 ...
and
U.S. Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest displacement, at 4.5 million tons in 2021. It has the world's largest aircraft ...
Public Health Service
The United States Public Health Service (USPHS or PHS) is a collection of agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services which manages public health, containing nine out of the department's twelve operating divisions. The Assistant Se ...
,
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...
,
National Science Foundation
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...
, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research in New York,
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the United States's civil space program, aeronautics research and space research. Established in 1958, it su ...
,
Electronics Research Center
The Electronics Research Center (ERC) was a NASA research facility located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, established in 1964 to serve the agency's need for internal expertise in electronics. It also administered contracts, grants, and other NASA ...
, Boston, Massachusetts Office of Education, Bureau of Research, Washington, DC and the Point Foundation in San Francisco, California. With the beginning of the 1970s, military research funding became limited to projects that provided militarily useful results, and von Foerster was unable to identify adequate sponsors. In 1974, the BCL was closed due to lack of research funds.
Sources
* Albert Mueller, A brief history of the BCL. In: ''Austrian Journal of History''. 11 (1), 2000, pp. 9–30.
* Bernard Scott, Heinz von Foerster obituary, ''The Independent'', 25 October 2002.
* Heinz von Foerster, ''Understanding systems: Conversations on epistemology and ethics'', Springer, 2002.
Books
Albert Muller, Karl Muller (eds), ''An Unfinished Revolution?: Heinz von Foerster and the Biological Computer Laboratory / BCL 1958–1976'', Edition Echoraum, 2007.