“Behavior, Purpose and Teleology” was published in the journal Philosophy of Science in 1943. It is short, informal, and among the most influential papers in the history of cybernetics.
The argument
The authors proposed to study behaviour from the outside, as an observer sees it, and to classify it. Behaviour can be active or passive, purposeful or random. Purposeful behaviour can be feedback-controlled (teleological) or not, and feedback-controlled behaviour can be predictive or non-predictive.
Their central claim was that purpose, long treated by science as an unscientific notion because it seemed to make the future cause the present, could be described precisely: purposeful behaviour is behaviour directed towards a goal and corrected by negative feedback from the difference between the current state and the goal. A torpedo homing on a ship and a hand reaching for a glass are the same kind of thing.
Background and influence
The paper grew out of Wiener and Bigelow’s wartime work on anti-aircraft prediction and Rosenblueth’s physiology, including studies of patients whose tremors resembled the oscillations of badly tuned servomechanisms. Rosenblueth’s presentation of the ideas at a 1942 meeting led directly to the Macy Conferences.
The philosopher Richard Taylor objected in 1950 that the account made purpose too cheap, and the debate continues in philosophy of biology. The paper’s way of treating goals as a feature of feedback organisation remains basic to control theory, robotics and theories of agency.
Further reading
- Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener and Julian Bigelow, “Behavior, Purpose and Teleology”, Philosophy of Science 10 (1943)
Mentioned in
- Article A Brief History of Cybernetics
- Person Julian Bigelow
- Concept Feedback
- Person Arturo Rosenblueth
- Person Norbert Wiener