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Cybernetics: A Mexican Genesis? A Literature Review

May 30, 2020

In the November 1948 issue of Scientific American, readers were introduced to a curious word: cybernetics: “a new field of study shared by many sciences;” it proposed a “new approach” to science — “an integration of studies which is not strictly biological or strictly physi­cal, but a combination of the two.”1 This novel field would soon birth many areas of research familiar today: from artificial intelligence to computer science to cognitive behavioral theory. We live in a post-cybernetic world, but a question remains: where did this peculiar science originate? Many histories of cybernetics exist — nearly all of them proposing that cybernetics originated in the United States as an American science. Yet, in a 1962 lecture given at the International School of Physics at the Institute of Physical Theory of the University of Naples, Wiener offhandedly mentions that his groundbreaking book introducing the term and the science of Cybernetics to the world “was written on one of my several trips to Mexico.”2 Could it be that cybernetics has Mexican roots? Wiener’s time in Mexico is only briefly mentioned in histories of cybernetics, and it seems to be scarcely documented. In this literature review, I will explore the histories that exist from the perspective of each author who has written about this connection — including Wiener’s own first-party accounts — and conclude with the gaps that need further archival research.

I first encountered this history by listening to a lecture given by Stafford Beer, one of the later cybernetic pioneers — there are at least two interviews where Beer mentions cybernetics’ Mexican roots: one where he uses the history of cybernetics to expound on the question “what is cybernetics,”3 and one where he explains the history of cybernetics to students in Wales in 1994 as an introduction to a much broader conversation.4 While both contain similar accounts, they are told from slightly different vantage points. In the first, Beer suggests:

“we know when this [cybernetics] started, and it started in the 1940s, and it started in Mexico City of all places… and the reason for that was, that a lot of the world’s greatest scientists were working on wartime projects… and they were sort of evacuated to a neutral country, to Mexico City, to work in peace”5

He continues to introduce us to the relationship between Arturo Rosenblueth, a Mexican neurophysiologist, and Norbert Wiener, a mathematician, and the founder of cybernetics. In the second interview he adds another character to the mix: Warren McCollough. He also mentions an autobiography of Wiener by “a chap called Masani.”6

There are two academic biographies about Wiener: one by Masani,7 and one by Heims,8 which focuses on both John Von Neumann and Norbert Wiener. I discovered the second one by paging through a history of cybernetics for popular audiences by Conway and Sieglman,9 Dark Hero of the Information Age, which does go into a bit deeper into relationship Mexico had with the Wiener and the development of cybernetics. Those elements are very scattered throughout the text, and the book is largely focused on interpersonal dynamics. There is scant mention of the influence Mexico might have had on the development of cybernetics, but it does provide an outline that may be worth mimicking in my work.

Masani’s10 academic biography is by far the most extensive; in this book, Masani outlines a detailed timeline of Wiener’s trips to Mexico — going so far as to correct Wiener’s own autobiography. Masani notes that Wiener came to Mexico several times across about five years, thanks to a Rockefeller Foundation grant that enabled Wiener to visit Mexico for six months at a time — meanwhile, in the opposite six months, Rosenblueth would come to the US.11 Perhaps most intriguingly, Masani’s biography includes a full text of the letter Wiener sent to Alfred Hitchcock, where he notes

“I have recently been in Mexico working in a scientific laboratory where I have run into a combination of characters and even of possible situations lending themselves ideally to a suspense and horror movie of the type where you are expert.”12

The second academic biography by Heims13 is less detailed about Wiener’s time in Mexico. It also notes that another character — Walter Pitts — also “traveled… to Mexico City to be in touch with Rosenblueth.”14 This is the first mention of Walter Pitts spending time with Wiener and possibly McCollough in Mexico City that I have found — in another of his books, however, The Cybernetics Group, Heims15 explores that just a bit further. Heims16 details a story about Walter Pitts, Norbert Wiener, and yet another character, Oliver Selfridge driving a secondhand Cadillac hearse from Boston to Mexico City through Colorado to deliver a Gibbs analyzer to Arturo Rosenblueth — and the hearse breaking down in San Antonio. This story is retold by Kline,17 in passing, in his history of cybernetics for popular audiences entitled The Cybernetics Moment. In particular, he notes that “they spent all of their money on an auto trip to Mexico to work with Wiener’s collaborator, neurophysiologist Arturo Rosenblueth.”18

Perhaps the most interesting detail uncovered by Heims19 was the revelation that Rosenblueth wanted to stay at Harvard, but was denied tenure and forced to return to Mexico due to racism and anti-semitism. At one point Rosenblueth’s department head, Walter Cannon, in a rather unfortunate letter, defended him as having “none of the unpleasant characteristics sometimes associated with the Jew.”20 Warren McCulloch offered him a tenure-track position at the University of Illinois, but Rosenblueth backed out upon learning he would have to give up his Mexican citizenship to be eligible for tenure.21 Perhaps this explains the odd exchange relationship set up by Wiener and Rosenblueth — it is possible this was driven by the forces of xenophobia, not anything particularly uniquely Mexican — but this is only a hypothesis.

This relationship was so important that their work together was noted in Rosenblueth’s entry in the Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, which suggests that it “was the starting point of the work that led Wiener to edify the new science of cybernetics”22 and in a Spanish language paper by Quintanilla,23 “Arturo Rosenblueth y Norbert Wiener: dos científicos en la historiografía de la educación contemporánea,” or, “Arturo Rosenblueth and Norbert Wiener: two scientists in the historiography of contemporary education,” which describes their relationship in some depth and continues on to describe the effect that relationship had on educational institutions in Mexico.

Perhaps the best source of Wiener’s time in Mexico may be Wiener himself — Wiener24 published an extensive autobiography; which includes poetic language about his journeys in Mexico; he clearly enjoyed his time there. It also mentions of a whole cast of characters — many of whom have not been introduced by any other sources and require further investigation. Yet, it doesn’t contain any details on the ways Mexico might have shaped cybernetics — or the reasons for the connection in the first place, other than the fact that Rosenblueth was here — as mentioned earlier, the question of why Rosenbleuth was in Mexico and not the United States was only briefly hinted on in Heims’25 history.

These pieces together highlight that there was a deep relationship between Mexico and the development of cybernetics, but the exact details of that relationship remain frustratingly just out of reach. My focus so far has largely been on Wiener, and to a lesser extent, Rosenblueth, but there are several characters (Walter Pitts, Warren McCullough) which deserve a much deeper investigation. Additionally, another step for me would be to begin doing archival research — Wiener’s archives at MIT would be a great first step. It is clear to me given this research that there is definitely a story to be told here.

  1. Norbert Wiener, “Cybernetics,” Scientific American 179, no. 5 (1948): 14, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24945913 ↩︎

  2. “Invited Review Article (C. Musès) - Wiener’s Paper Not in the Collected Works: The History and Prehistory of Cybernetics,” Kybernetes 27, no. 1 (February 1998): 33, https://doi.org/10.1108/03684929810795180 ↩︎

  3. Javier Livas Cantú, “What Is Cybernetics? Conference by Stafford Beer,” May 2012, ↩︎

  4. Javier Livas Cantú, “Cybernetics, History & Origins 1994,” May 2012, ↩︎

  5. Javier Livas Cantú, “What Is Cybernetics? Conference by Stafford Beer,” May 2012, 10:03, ↩︎

  6. Javier Livas Cantú, “Cybernetics, History & Origins 1994,” May 2012, 6:00, ↩︎

  7. Norbert Wiener: 1894-1964 (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1990), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1058072745 ↩︎

  8. John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980), https://archive.org/details/johnvonneumannno00heim ↩︎

  9. John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980), https://archive.org/details/johnvonneumannno00heim ↩︎

  10. Norbert Wiener: 1894-1964 (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1990), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1058072745 ↩︎

  11. Pesi Rustom Masani, Norbert Wiener: 1894-1964 (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1990), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1058072745 ↩︎

  12. Pesi Rustom Masani, Norbert Wiener: 1894-1964 (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1990), 339, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1058072745 ↩︎

  13. John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980), https://archive.org/details/johnvonneumannno00heim ↩︎

  14. Steve J Heims, John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980), 186, https://archive.org/details/johnvonneumannno00heim ↩︎

  15. The Cybernetics Group (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/2260.001.0001 ↩︎

  16. The Cybernetics Group (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/2260.001.0001 ↩︎

  17. The Cybernetics Moment: Or Why We Call Our Age the Information Age (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2017), http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1012740099 ↩︎

  18. Ronald R Kline, The Cybernetics Moment: Or Why We Call Our Age the Information Age (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2017), 9, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1012740099 ↩︎

  19. The Cybernetics Group (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/2260.001.0001 ↩︎

  20. The Cybernetics Group (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), 49, https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/2260.001.0001 ↩︎

  21. Steve J Heims, The Cybernetics Group (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/2260.001.0001 ↩︎

  22. “Rosenblueth, Arturo,” Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography 11 (2008): 546, https://www.worldcat.org/title/complete-dictionary-of-scientific-biography/oclc/731317700&referer=brief_results ↩︎

  23. “Arturo Rosenblueth Y Norbert Wiener: Dos Científicos En La Historiografía de La Educación Contemporánea [Arturo Rosenblueth and Norbert Wiener: Two Scientists in the Historiography of Contemporary Education],” Revista Mexicana de Investigación Educativa 7, no. 15 (May 2002): 303–29, https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/140/14001506.pdf ↩︎

  24. Norbert Wiener - A Life in Cybernetics (The MIT Press, 2018), https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11597.001.0001 ↩︎

  25. The Cybernetics Group (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/2260.001.0001 ↩︎