This paper aims to enrich our understanding of the history and substance of cybernetics. It reviews the work of three British cyberneticians - W. Ross Ashby, Stafford Beer and Gordon Pask - paying attention particularly to the materiality of their practice - the strange and fascinating devices and systems that were at the heart of their work - and to the worldly projects they pursued - scientific, technological, artistic, organizational, political and spiritual. Connections are drawn between cybernetics and recent theoretical work in science and technology studies, in the hope of illuminating key features of both. The paper concludes by suggesting that the antidisciplinary impulse of contemporary science studies might find inspiration in the work of cyberneticians - that theory does not have to remain confined to the realm of theory.

background

Ludwik Fleck: Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Edited by T. J. Trenn & R. K. Merton. Translated by F. Bradley & T. J. Trenn. Foreword by T. S. Kuhn. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979, 203 pp

Cybernetics and the Mangle: Ashby, Beer and Pask

The sociology of science, once marginal, has become a growth industry practiced by an increasing number of scholars. In addition to a large annual spate of books, there is a quarterly, Social Studies of Science, founded in 1970, and the Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook, launched in 1977, not to mention numerous pieces in general sociological journals. Besides, the discipline has become a regular feature in the programs of all the major universities. It often comes as the nucleus of the so-called STS (science, technology, and society) programs and centers. Several new directions have emerged in the sociology of science (henceforth SS) since the 1960s. Although they differ on several points, these new styles share a number of tenets. These are externalism, or the thesis that conceptual content is determined by social context; constructivism or subjectivism, the idea that the inquiring subject constructs not only his accounts of facts but also the facts themselves, and possibly the entire world; relativism, or the thesis that there are no objective and universal truths; pragmatism, or emphasis on action and interaction at the expense of ideas, and the equation of science with technology; ordinarism, or the thesis that scientific research is pure perspiration and no inspiration, and the refusal to accord science a special status and to distinguish it from ideology, pseudoscience, or

A Critical Examination of the New Sociology of Science Part 1

Rapid activation and proliferative expansion of specific CD8(+) memory T (CD8(+) TM ) cells upon antigen re-encounter is a critical component of the adaptive immune response that confers enhanced immune protection. In this context, however, the requirements for costimulation in general, and CD28 signaling in particular, remain incompletely defined. In the current issue of the European Journal of Immunology, Frohlich et al. [Eur. J. Immunol. 2016. 46: 1644-1655] provide definitive evidence that optimal elaboration of CD8(+) TM -cell recall responses is indeed contingent on CD28 expressed by these cells. Here, we discuss the "CD28 costimulation paradigm" in its historical context and highlight some of the unresolved complexities pertaining to CD28-dependent interactions that shape CD8(+) T-cell phenotypes, functionalities, and recall reactivity.

CD28 days later: Resurrecting costimulation for CD8(+) memory T cells.

Thought Styles in Text and Discourse

Hans Rothfels was one of the most influential historians in the early Federal Republic of Germany. Recently, a controversy has been sparked off among German historians about his political attitude towards National Socialism. The article argues that the focus of this debate is too narrow and that an examination of Rothfels’ intellectual biography can give an insight into more general historical problems and contexts: long-term intellectual continuities and transformations of German historiography, the determinants of scholarlyscientific production, and the intellectual functions of historiographical operations and interpretations. Covering the whole career of Rothfels from the 1920s through to the 1960s, the article first analyses the way in which Rothfels’ histororiography was shaped by the social and institutional conditions of his academic work. In a second step, it shows that, at its core, his historiography was a way of reflecting about contemporary events and developments. In the different stages of ...

Ludwik Fleck: Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Edited by T. J. Trenn & R. K. Merton. Translated by F. Bradley & T. J. Trenn. Foreword by T. S. Kuhn. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979, 203 pp

Citations

Cybernetics and the Mangle: Ashby, Beer and Pask

A Critical Examination of the New Sociology of Science Part 1

CD28 days later: Resurrecting costimulation for CD8(+) memory T cells.

Thought Styles in Text and Discourse

Hans Rothfels — An Intellectual Biography in the Age of Extremes