Thinking by Machine: A Study of Cybernetics

VII Foreword

3 - Chapter I: An Explosive Science
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4 - The New Round Table Conference
6 - The Advantages of Feedback
8 - A Quick Review of the Milestones
11 - Are Machines capable of Reasoning?
14 - The Science of Self-government
17 - The Mathematics of Human Activity
21 - Synthetic Animals?

25 - Chapter II: The Realm of the Artificial
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25 - What is a Tool? What is a Machine?
29 - Controlling Energy and Operational Energy
32 - The Determination of Automatism
41 - The Recording of Thought
43 - The Nine Components of Action

47 - Chapter III: The Miracles of Feedback
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48 - Where the Machine surpasses Itself
52 - The Wonderful Mechanism of Anti-fading
55 - An Industrial Revolution

61 - Chapter IV: Towards Factories Without Men: Automatic Control
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61 - The Defects of Feedback: Lack of Strength and Delay in Regulation
65 - The Farcot Servo-motor
73 - Fixed and Variable References
76 - Regulators and Servo-mechanisms
79 - An Important Mechanism: the Amplifier with Negative Feedback
81 - General Definitions
83 - Master and Slave Mechanisms

86 - Chapter V: The Logic of Effects
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87 - The Study of Well-trodden Paths
89 - Constancy Effectors and Tendency Effectors
91 - Direction of the Effects and the Factors
92 - The Regulation and the Guiding of a Factor
96 - Regulation by Interaction
101 - Regulation by Retroaction
105 - More Complex Cases
107 - The Universal Law of Regulation
108 - Interaction and Retroaction

112 - Chapter VI: Retroaction and the Secret of Natural Activity
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112 - All Stabilization is effected by Feedback
116 - The "Baille-blé" (Mill-hopper), Progenitor of Retroaction
118 - Chemical Equilibria
122 - Vital Equilibria
123 - Where Logic destroys Mankind
125 - Stable and Unstable Equilibria
127 - A Strange Relationship: An Oscillating Circuit and an Atomic Pile
130 - The End-Goal as a Logical Concept
133 - From Bus Queues to Indian Famines
137 - A New Light on Political Economy
141 - The Secret of the Stars
143 - Bancroft’s "Universal Law"

146 - Chapter VII: Functional Causality
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148 - Progressive Organization
150 - Facing a Blank Wall
151 - The Uncertainties of Causality
153 - The Effect as a Function
157 - The Law and the Field
161 - The Enchanted Field of the Lady Variables
164 - Does Chance Exist?
168 - The Probability of Effects
171 - When the Causal Chains fuse
174 - A Definition of Probability

177 - Chapter VIII: Anti-Chance
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178 - The Important Concept of "Clinamen"
181 - The Law of Twofold Function
185 - Eddington’s Views on Anti-chance
186 - When the Cause is Part of the Effect
191 - Contingency, Determinism, Organization
195 - The Establishment of Order
198 - Essential Laws and Existential Laws
201 - An Image of the Universe
204 - Entropy and Anatropy

208 - Chapter IX: Synthetic Animals
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212 - Subtle Behaviour
216 - The Secrets of the Tortoises
220 - A Principle of Life: the Economy of Means

224 - Chapter X: The Use of Models
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228 - The "Animal-Machine" of Descartes
230 - Condillac’s Statue and Grey Walter’s Tortoises
234 - The Tropism of the Tortoise
238 - The Chess Player of Torres y Quevedo
240 - An Essential Concept: the Unpredictable
244 - Why should the Problem not be Equally Simple?
245 - The Art of Compromise
247 - The Learning Box

250 - Chapter XI: Calculating Machines
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250 - The Principle of Calculating Machines
253 - Addition by Electrical Impulses
255 - Binary System: the Logical Language
258 - The Way of the Mind and the Way of the Machine
259 - The First American Realizations
262 - In the Land of Descartes
264 - The "Memory" Unit
267 - Electronic Brains?

271 - Chapter XII: The Mechanisms of Anticipation and Memory
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271 - Where Feedback is Powerless
273 - Has Cybernetics many Practical Applications?
275 - The "Intellectual" Operations of Anti-aircraft Defence
278 - A Parallel between a Gun and a Man
278 - Mechanical Reasoning
284 - Machines without Men
287 - Memory and Logic
289 - The Machine which teaches Itself

295 - Chapter XIII
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295 - Ashby's Homeostat and Fifth Degree of Automatism
295 - Walter Cannon and Homeostatis
297 - A Mechanism that is like No Other
299 - Spare "Determinisms"
301 - The Machine which finds Its Own Way
304 - Artificial Education
306 - The Machine that receives Punishment
307 - Design for a Brain
310 - Towards Machine Government

312 - Chapter XIV: At the Level of Human Functions
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314 - The Multistat, a Multiple Goal-seeking Machine
316 - Equilibrium: the Ultimate Goal
319 - The Organism integrates what It perceives
323 - Machina Liberata: The Integration of the Machine, seen from the Temporal Aspect
332 - A Model of Nervous Function
334 - The Machine is Something Else
336 - Where Certain Words are Meaningless

341 - Chapter XV: The Highest Degrees of Automatism
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343 - Does Matter arise out of the Void?
345 - The "Qualities" of Freedom
348 - Between Probability and Certainty
351 - The Logic of Effects

List of Illustrations
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34 - Vivian Dovey and Grey Walter with their two children: Timothy, a human baby, and Elsie, the electronic tortoise.
35 - Pioneers of cybernetics: W. Ross Ashby, W. Mc­Culloch, Grey Walter and Norbert Wiener
50 - The internal anatomy of Elsie, machina speculatrix, created by Grey Walter
51 - The Conditional Reflex Analogue, CORA, made by Grey Walter to demonstrate his hypothesis of learning
258 - A game of chess played betweeen the classical mechanical device and a cybernetician
259 - Louis Couffignal and Aiken at the Cybernetic Conference of Paris
274 - Ashby’s machine: a revolutionary concept
275 - The behaviour of the electronic tortoise Elsie during a period of two minutes