Re: Systems Science • Joseph Simpson

Let me step back and talk about the research intention driving this work.

In a very real sense everything I’ve been doing along this line of inquiry for the last fifty years falls within the larger traditions of AI, A-Life, cybernetics, and systems theory that first got my attention in the late 1960s.  Arbib, Ashby, McCulloch, Minsky and Papert, Wiener stand out among the early influences that whetted my appetite for computational and systems-theoretic approaches to inquiry.  It’s fair to say the questions they asked, the hints and tools they provided are always on my mind even today.

A few references, among many others …

• Arbib, M.A., Brains, Machines, and Mathematics.  1st edition 1964.  2nd edition, Springer-Verlag, New York, NY, 1987.
• Ashby, W.R., An Introduction to Cybernetics, Chapman and Hall, London, UK, 1956.  Methuen and Company, London, UK, 1964.
• McCulloch, W.S., Embodiments of Mind, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1965.  3rd printing 1975.
• Minsky, M., and Papert, S., Perceptrons : An Introduction to Computational Geometry, 1st edition 1969, 2nd printing 1972.  Expanded edition, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1988.
• Wiener, N., Cybernetics : or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, 1st edition 1948.  2nd edition, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1961.

Time scarce and scattered, will get to the rest later …

cc: Ontolog Forum • Structural Modeling • Systems Science