The Macy conferences were a set of meetings of scholars from various

academic discipline An academic discipline or academic field is a subdivision of knowledge that is taught and researched at the college or university level. Disciplines are defined (in part) and recognized by the academic journals in which research is published, a ...

s 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 the conferences was to promote meaningful communication across scientific disciplines, and restore unity to science. There were different sets of conferences designed to cover specific topics, for a total of 160 conferences over the 19 years this program was active; the phrase "Macy conference" does not apply only to those on

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 ...

, although it is sometimes used that way informally by those familiar only with that set of events. Disciplinary isolation within

medicine Medicine is the science and Praxis (process), practice of caring for patients, managing the Medical diagnosis, diagnosis, prognosis, Preventive medicine, prevention, therapy, treatment, Palliative care, palliation of their injury or disease, ...

was viewed as particularly problematic by the Macy Foundation, and given that their mandate was to aid medical research, they decided to do something about it. Thus other topics covered in different sets of conferences included:

aging Ageing (or aging in American English) is the process of becoming Old age, older until death. The term refers mainly to humans, many other animals, and fungi; whereas for example, bacteria, perennial plants and some simple animals are potentiall ...

, adrenal cortex, biological

antioxidant Antioxidants are Chemical compound, compounds that inhibit Redox, oxidation, a chemical reaction that can produce Radical (chemistry), free radicals. Autoxidation leads to degradation of organic compounds, including living matter. Antioxidants ...

blood clotting Coagulation, also known as clotting, is the process by which blood changes from a liquid to a gel, forming a thrombus, blood clot. It results in hemostasis, the cessation of blood loss from a damaged vessel, followed by repair. The process of co ...

blood pressure Blood pressure (BP) is the pressure of Circulatory system, circulating blood against the walls of blood vessels. Most of this pressure results from the heart pumping blood through the circulatory system. When used without qualification, the term ...

connective tissue Connective tissue is one of the four primary types of animal tissue, a group of cells that are similar in structure, along with epithelial tissue, muscle tissue, and nervous tissue. It develops mostly from the mesenchyme, derived from the mesod ...

s, infancy and childhood, liver injury,

metabolic Metabolism (, from ''metabolē'', "change") is the set of life-sustaining chemical reactions in organisms. The three main functions of metabolism are: the conversion of the energy in food to energy available to run cellular processes; the ...

interrelations,

nerve impulse An action potential (also known as a nerve impulse or "spike" when in a neuron) is a series of quick changes in voltage across a cell membrane. An action potential occurs when the membrane potential of a specific Cell (biology), cell rapidly ri ...

, problems of

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of a state or object, either internal to oneself or in one's external environment. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations, and debate among philosophers, scientists, an ...

, and renal function.

Overview

The Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation developed two innovations specifically designed to encourage and facilitate interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary exchanges; one was oral: the Macy conferences, and one was written: the Macy transactions (published transcriptions of the conferences). Macy conferences were essentially conversations held in a conference setting, with participants presenting research while it was still in process (rather than after it had been completed). These were more formal than conversations (papers were prepared ahead of time and circulated) but less formal than conferences. Macy transactions were transcriptions widely circulated to those who could not attend. These were far more informal than typical proceedings, which publish revised versions of conference papers, and served to invite additional scholars into the exchange. The explicit goal was to let a wider audience hear the experts exchange ideas and think out loud about their own work. But even participants themselves found the transactions valuable, as a way to prompt memories, and to catch comments they might have missed. A few comments were made explicitly referring to later publication of the conference discussions, so clearly participants took this into account. However, Fremont-Smith explicitly stated that actual discussion should always take priority. Participants were leading scientists from a wide range of fields. Casual recollections of several participants as well as published comments in the Transactions volumes stress the communicative difficulties in the beginning of each set of conferences, giving way to the gradual establishment of a common language powerful enough to communicate the intricacies of the various fields of expertise present. Participants were deliberately chosen for their willingness to engage in interdisciplinary conversations, or for having formal training in multiple disciplines, and many brought relevant past experiences (gained either from earlier Macy conferences or other venues). As participants became more secure in their ability to understand one another over the course of a set of conferences on a single topic, their willingness to think outside their own specializations meant that creativity increased.

Conference topics

Cerebral Inhibition Meeting

The Macy Cybernetics Conferences were preceded by the Cerebral Inhibition Meeting, organized by Frank Fremont-Smith and Lawrence K. Frank, and held on 13–15 May 1942. Those invited were Gregory Bateson, Frank Beach, Carl Binger,

Felix Deutsch Helene Deutsch (; ; 9 October 1884 – 29 March 1982) was a Polish-American psychoanalysis, psychoanalyst and colleague of Sigmund Freud. She founded the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute. In 1935, she immigrated to Cambridge, Massachusetts, wher ...

, Flanders Dunbar, Julie Eisenbud, Carlyla Jacobsen, Lawrence Kubie, Jules Masserman, Margaret Mead,

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 ...

, Bela Mittelmann, David Rapoport, Arturo Rosenblueth, Donald Sheehan, Georg Soule, Robert White, John Whitehorn, and Harold Wolff. There were two topics: * Hypnotism introduced by Milton Erickson * Conditioned reflex introduced by Howard Liddell

Cybernetics Conferences

The Cybernetics conferences were held between 1946 and 1953, organized by the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, motivated by Lawrence K. Frank and Frank Fremont-Smith of the Foundation.HISTORY OF CYBERNETICS
by the American Society for Cybernetics, retrieved 15 April 2008 As chair of this set of conferences,

had responsibility to ensure that disciplinary boundaries were crossed. The Cybernetics were particularly complex as a result of bringing together the most diverse group of participants of any of the Macy conferences, so they were the most difficult to organize and maintain. The principal purpose of these series of conferences was to set the foundations for a ''general science of the workings of the human mind''. These were one of the first organized studies of

interdisciplinarity Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several fields such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, economi ...

, spawning breakthroughs in

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 ...

, and what later became known as

cognitive science Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition (in a broad sense). Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include percep ...

. One of the topics spanning a majority of the conferences was reflexivity.

Claude Shannon Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, computer scientist, cryptographer and inventor known as the "father of information theory" and the man who laid the foundations of th ...

, one of the attendees, had previously worked on

information theory Information theory is the mathematical study of the quantification (science), quantification, Data storage, storage, and telecommunications, communication of information. The field was established and formalized by Claude Shannon in the 1940s, ...

and laid one of the initial frameworks for the Cybernetic Conferences by postulating

information Information is an Abstraction, abstract concept that refers to something which has the power Communication, to inform. At the most fundamental level, it pertains to the Interpretation (philosophy), interpretation (perhaps Interpretation (log ...

as a probabilistic element which reduced the uncertainty from a set of choices (i.e. being told a statement is true, or even false, completely reduces the ambiguity of its message). Other conference members, especially Donald MacKay, sought to reconcile Shannon's view of

, which they called selective information, with theirs of 'structural' information which signified how selective information was to be understood (i.e. a true statement might acquire additional meanings in varied settings though the information exchanged itself has not changed). The addition of meaning into the concept of information necessarily brought the role of the observer into the Macy Conferences. MacKay argued that by receiving and interpreting a message, the observer and the information they perceived ceased to exist independently of one another. The individual reading and processing the information does so relative to their preexisting internal state, consisting of what they already know and have experienced, and only then acts. MacKay further muddled the role of information and its meaning by introducing the idea of reflexivity and feedback loops into his thought experiment. By claiming that the influence of the original message on the initial observer could be perceived by a separate individual, MacKay turned the second individual into an additional observer which could be elicited to react just how the initial observer did, a reaction that could then further be observed by a nested doll of observers ''ad infinitum''. Reflexive feedback loops continued to come up during the Macy Conferences and became a prominent issue during its later discussions as well, most notably in the discussions regarding behavioral patterns of the

human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus ''Homo''. They are Hominidae, great apes characterized by their Prehistory of nakedness and clothing ...

mind The mind is that which thinks, feels, perceives, imagines, remembers, and wills. It covers the totality of mental phenomena, including both conscious processes, through which an individual is aware of external and internal circumstances ...

and

Walter Pitts Walter Harry Pitts, Jr. (April 23, 1923 – May 14, 1969) was an American logician who worked in the field of computational neuroscience.Smalheiser, Neil R"Walter Pitts", ''Perspectives in Biology and Medicine'', Volume 43, Number 2, Wint ...

, also attendees, had previously worked on designing the first mathematical schema of a

neuron A neuron (American English), neurone (British English), or nerve cell, is an membrane potential#Cell excitability, excitable cell (biology), cell that fires electric signals called action potentials across a neural network (biology), neural net ...

based on the idea that each

had a threshold level that was to be reached, via excitation signals from incoming neurons, before firing its own

signal A signal is both the process and the result of transmission of data over some media accomplished by embedding some variation. Signals are important in multiple subject fields including signal processing, information theory and biology. In ...

onto others. Similarly to how Shannon had previously proven with his work in relay and switch circuits, McCulloch and Pitts proved that

neural networks A neural network is a group of interconnected units called neurons that send signals to one another. Neurons can be either Cell (biology), biological cells or signal pathways. While individual neurons are simple, many of them together in a netwo ...

were capable of carrying out any

boolean algebra In mathematics and mathematical logic, Boolean algebra is a branch of algebra. It differs from elementary algebra in two ways. First, the values of the variable (mathematics), variables are the truth values ''true'' and ''false'', usually denot ...

calculations. At the Macy Conferences, McCulloch proposed that the firing of a

can be associated with an event or interaction taking place in the external world which provides sensory stimulus that is then picked up by the

nervous system In biology, the nervous system is the complex system, highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its behavior, actions and sense, sensory information by transmitting action potential, signals to and from different parts of its body. Th ...

and processed by the

s. But McCulloch also showed how a neural network's signal pathway could be set up reflexively with itself causing the neurons to continuously fire onto each other in a 'reverberating' circular

feedback Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause and effect that forms a circuit or loop. The system can then be said to ''feed back'' into itself. The notion of cause-and-effect has to be handle ...

loop without any original 'firing' signal or any new additional incoming signals. McCulloch claimed this accounted for conscious phenomena in which individuals' world view, or the reaffirmation of their senses' perceived external stimulus, was cognitively distorted or all together missing as seen in individuals with phantom limb syndrome (claiming to feel an arm that has been amputated or lost) or

hallucination A hallucination is a perception in the absence of an external stimulus that has the compelling sense of reality. They are distinguishable from several related phenomena, such as dreaming ( REM sleep), which does not involve wakefulness; pse ...

s (perceived sensory stimulus without an original external signal). Lawrence Kubie, another attending conference member and a psychiatrist, noted how repetitive and obsessive behaviors manifesting themselves in neurotics bore a resemblance to the behavior enacted by McCulloch's 'reverberating' loops. Shannon had developed a maze-solving device which attendees of the Macy Conferences likened to a rat. Shannon's 'rat' was designed and programmed to find its marked goal when dropped at any point in a maze by giving it the ability to recall on past experiences, previous paths it had taken around the maze, so as to help it reach its endpoint - which it did repeatedly. Though goal-oriented, Shannon showed how his rat's design was prone to erratic behavior that negated its original function entirely via reflexive

loops. If Shannon's rat encountered itself in a path in which its 'memory' failed to fire correctly, that is to recall the paths which lead it to its goal, it would get stuck in an endless loop chasing its tail. Completely abandoning its goal-oriented design, Shannon's rat had seemingly become neurotic. The Macy Conferences failed to reconcile the subjectivity of information (its meaning) and that of the human mind but succeeding in showing how concepts such as that of the observer, reflexivity, black box systems, and

neural network A neural network is a group of interconnected units called neurons that send signals to one another. Neurons can be either biological cells or signal pathways. While individual neurons are simple, many of them together in a network can perfor ...

s would have to be approached in conjunction and eventually overcome in order to form a complete working theory of the mind. The Macy Conferences were discontinued shortly after the ninth conference. :*First Cybernetics Conference, 21–22 March 1946. Titled "Feedback Mechanisms and Circular Causal Systems in Biological and Social Systems". :*Second Cybernetics Conference, 17–18 October 1946. Title changed to "Teleological Mechanisms and Circular Causal Systems" :*Third Cybernetics Conference, 13–14 March 1947. :*Fourth Cybernetics Conference, 23–24 October 1947. Title changed to "Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems". :*Fifth Cybernetics Conference, 18–19 March 1948 :*Sixth Cybernetics Conference, 24–25 March 1949 :*Seventh Cybernetics Conference, 23–24 March 1950. Title changed to "Cybernetics: Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems". :*Eighth Cybernetics Conference, 15–16 March 1951 :*Ninth Cybernetics Conference, 20–21 March 1952 :*Tenth Cybernetics Conference, 22–24 April 1953 Participants: (as members or guests) in at least one of the Cybernetics conferences: Harold Alexander Abramson, Ackerman, Vahe E. Amassian,

William 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 ...

, Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, Gregory Bateson, Alex Bavelas, Julian H. Bigelow, Herbert G. Birch, John R. Bowman, Henry W. Brosin, Yuen Ren Chao (who memorably recited the '' Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den''), Jan Droogleever-Fortuyn, M. Ericsson, Fitch, Lawrence K. Frank, Ralph Waldo Gerard, William Grey Walter, Molly Harrower, George Evelyn Hutchinson, Heinrich Klüver, Lawrence S. Kubie, Paul Lazarsfeld,

Kurt Lewin Kurt Lewin ( ; ; 9 September 1890 – 12 February 1947) was a German-American psychologist, known as one of the modern pioneers of social psychology, social, industrial and organizational psychology, organizational, and applied psychology in the ...

, J. C. R. Licklider, Howard S. Liddell, Donald B. Lindsley, W. K. Livingston, David Lloyd, Rafael Lorente de Nó, R. Duncan Luce, Donald M. MacKay, Donald G. Marquis, Warren S. McCulloch, Turner McLardy, Margaret Mead, Frederick A. Mettier, Marcel Monnier,

Oskar Morgenstern Oskar Morgenstern (; January 24, 1902 – July 26, 1977) was a German-born economist. In collaboration with mathematician John von Neumann, he is credited with founding the field of game theory and its application to social sciences and strategic ...

, F. S. C. Northrop,

, Henry Quastler, Antoine Remond, I. A. Richards, David McKenzie Rioch, Arturo Rosenblueth, Leonard J. Savage, T. C. Schneirla,

, John Stroud, Hans-Lukas Teuber, Mottram Torre, Gerhardt von Bonin, Heinz von Foerster,

John von Neumann John von Neumann ( ; ; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian and American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist and engineer. Von Neumann had perhaps the widest coverage of any mathematician of his time, in ...

, Heinz Werner,

Norbert Wiener Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 – March 18, 1964) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and philosopher. He became a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT). A child prodigy, Wiener late ...

, Jerome B. Wiesner, J. Z. Young This is a sampling of the topics discussed each year. ;1946, March (NYC) :* Self-regulating and

teleological Teleology (from , and )Partridge, Eric. 1977''Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English'' London: Routledge, p. 4187. or finalityDubray, Charles. 2020 912Teleology. In ''The Catholic Encyclopedia'' 14. New York: Robert Applet ...

mechanisms :* Simulated

s emulating the calculus of propositional logic :*

Anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...

and how

computer A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...

s might learn how to learn :* Object perception's

mechanisms :* Perceptual differences due to

brain damage Brain injury (BI) is the destruction or degeneration of brain cells. Brain injuries occur due to a wide range of internal and external factors. In general, brain damage refers to significant, undiscriminating trauma-induced damage. A common ...

:* Deriving

ethics Ethics is the philosophy, philosophical study of Morality, moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates Normativity, normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches inclu ...

from science :* Compulsive repetitive behavior ;1946, October (NYC) :*

Teleological Teleology (from , and )Partridge, Eric. 1977''Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English'' London: Routledge, p. 4187. or finalityDubray, Charles. 2020 912Teleology. In ''The Catholic Encyclopedia'' 14. New York: Robert Applet ...

mechanisms in society :* Concepts from Gestalt psychology :* Tactile and chemical communications among ant soldiers ;1947, March (NYC) :* Child psychology ;1947, October (NYC) :* The field perspective on psychology :* Analog vs. digital approaches to psychological models ;1948, Spring (NYC) :* Formation of "I" in language :* Formal modeling applied to chicken pecking order formation ;1949, March (NYC) :* Are the number of

s and their connections sufficient to account for human capacities? :*

Memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembe ...

:* An appeal for collaboration between physics and psychology ;1950, March (NYC) :* Analog vs. digital interpretations of the mind :* Language and Shannon's

:* Language, symbols and neurosis :* Intelligibility in speech communications :* A formal analysis of semantic redundancy in printed English ;1951, March (NYC) :* Information as semantic :* Can automatons engage in deductive logic? :*

Decision theory Decision theory or the theory of rational choice is a branch of probability theory, probability, economics, and analytic philosophy that uses expected utility and probabilities, probability to model how individuals would behave Rationality, ratio ...

:* Feedforward :* Small group dynamics and group communications :* The applicability of game theory to psychic motivations :* The type of language needed to analyze language :* Mere behavior vs. true communication :* Is psychiatry scientific? :* Can a mental event that creates a memory ever be unconscious? ;1952, March (NYC) :* The relation of neurophysiological details to broad issues in philosophy and epistemology :* The relation of

at the microlevel to biochemical and cellular processes :* The

complexity Complexity characterizes the behavior of a system or model whose components interact in multiple ways and follow local rules, leading to non-linearity, randomness, collective dynamics, hierarchy, and emergence. The term is generally used to c ...

of organisms as a function of information :* Humor, communication, and paradox :* Do chess playing automatons need randomness to defeat humans? :*

Homeostasis In biology, homeostasis (British English, British also homoeostasis; ) is the state of steady internal physics, physical and chemistry, chemical conditions maintained by organism, living systems. This is the condition of optimal functioning fo ...

and learning ;1953, April (Princeton) :* Studies on the activity of the brain :* Semantic information and its measures :* Meaning in language and how its acquired :* How neural mechanisms can recognize shapes and musical chords :* What consensus, if any, the Macy Conferences have arrived at Some of the researchers present at the cybernetics conferences later went on to do extensive government-funded research on the psychological effects of LSD, and its potential as a tool for

interrogation Interrogation (also called questioning) is interviewing as commonly employed by law enforcement officers, military personnel, intelligence agencies, organized crime syndicates, and terrorist organizations with the goal of eliciting useful informa ...

and psychological manipulation in such projects as the CIA's MKULTRA program.

Neuropharmacological Conferences

Five annual Neuropharmacological Conferences took place from 1954 to 1959 with a skipped year in 1958. While the conferences have developed a reputation as being primarily about LSD, the drug was discussed extensively at the second conference and was not the primary focus of most of the sessions. In the first conference, for instance, reference to LSD appears only one time, as a side comment during discussion. ;First Neuropharmacological Conference, 26–28 May 1954 Participants: Hudson Hoagland (Chairman), Harold A. Abramson (Secretary), Philip Bard (absent), Henry K. Beecher (absent), Mary A. B. Brazier, G. L. Cantoni, Ralph W. Gerard, Roy R. Grinker, Seymour S. Kety, Chauncey D. Leake (absent), Horace W. Magoun, Amedeo S. Marrazzi, I. Arthur Mirsky, J. H. Quastel (absent), Orr E. Reynolds, Curt P. Richter (absent), Ernst A. Scharrer, David Shakow (absent) Guests: Charles D. Aring, William Borberg, Enoch Callaway III, Conan Kornetsky, Joost A. M. Meerloo, John I. Nurnberger, Carl C. Pfeiffer, Anatol Rapoport, Maurice H. Seevers, Richard Trumbull Topics: "Considerations of the Effects of Pharmacological Agents on the Over-All Circulation and Metabolism of the Brain" (Seymour Kety) "Functional Organization of the Brain" (Ernest A. Scharrer) "Studies of Electrical Activity of the Brain in Relation to Anesthesia" (Mary A. B. Brazier) "Ascending Reticular System and Anesthesia (Horace W. Magoun) "Observations on New CNS Convulsants" (Carl C. Pfeiffer)

Group Processes Conferences

The Group Processes Conferences were held between 1954 and 1960. They are of particular interest due to the element of reflexivity: participants were interested in their own functioning as a group, and made numerous comments about their understanding of how Macy conferences were designed to work. For example, there were a series of jokes made about the disease afflicting them all, interdisciplinitis, or how multidisciplinarian researchers were neither fish nor fowl. When

Erving Goffman Erving Goffman (11 June 1922 – 19 November 1982) was a Canadian-born American sociologist, social psychologist, and writer, considered by some "the most influential American sociologist of the twentieth century". In 2007, '' The Time ...

made a guest appearance at the Third conference, he explicitly prefaced his comments by saying that his ideas were partly speculative, and Frank Fremont-Smith responded by stating that their goal was to discuss ideas that had not been crystallized.Schaffner, B. (Ed.). (1957). ''Group processes: Transactions of the third conference.'' New York: Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, p. 144. :*First Group Processes Conference, 26–30 September 1954 :*Second Group Processes Conference, 9–12 October 1955 :*Third Group Processes Conference, 7–10 October 1956 :*Fourth Group Processes Conference, 13–16 October 1957 :*Fifth Group Processes Conference, 12–15 October 1960 Participants: (as members or guests) in at least one of the Group Processes conferences: Grace Baker, Donald H. Barron, Gregory Bateson, Alex Bavelas, Frank A. Beach, Leo Berman, Ray L. Birdwhistell, Robert L. Blake, Helen Blauvelt, Jerome S. Bruner, George W. Boguslavsky, Charlotte Bühler, Eliot D. Chapple, Stanley Cobb, Nicholas E. Collias, Jocelyn Crane, Erik H. Erikson, L. Thomas Evans, Jerome Frank, Frank S. Freeman, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann,

, Arthur D. Hasler, Eckhard H. Hess, Sol Kramer, Daniel S. Lehrman, Seymour Levy, Howard Liddell, Robert Jay Lifton, Margarethe Lorenz, Konrad Z. Lorenz, William D. Lotspeich,

Ernst Mayr Ernst Walter Mayr ( ; ; 5 July 1904 – 3 February 2005) was a German-American evolutionary biologist. He was also a renowned Taxonomy (biology), taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, Philosophy of biology, philosopher of biology, and ...

, Margaret Mead, Joost A. M. Meerloo, I. Arthur Mirsky, Horst Mittelstaedt, A. Ulric Moore, R. C. Murphy, Harris B. Peck, Karl H. Pribram, Fritz Redl, Julius B. Richmond, Bertram Schaffner, T. C. Schneirla, Theodore Schwartz, William J. L. Sladen, Robert J. Smith, John P. Spiegel, H. Burr Steinbach, Niko Tinbergen, Mottram P. Torre, William Grey Walter, E. P. Wheeler, II.

References

External links

Macy Conferences Summaries by AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR CYBERNETICS

The Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation
Cybernetics Academic conferences Systems theory Systems sciences organizations Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation