Symposium on Principles of Self-Organization

The Symposium on Principles of Self-Organization was held at Allerton House on 8–9 June 1960. It was a key conference in the development of cybernetics and was in many ways a continuation of the Macy Conferences. it was organised by Heinz von Foerster through the Biological Computer Laboratory based at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.^[1] It was sponsored by the Information Systems Branch of the U.S. Office of Naval Research.^[2]

Participants

There were 38 male participants:^[1]

Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois

This was the host organisation.

• Murray Babcock
• Heinz von Foerster
• Alfred Inselberg
• Lars Löfgren
• Albert Mullin
• Albert Novikoff
• Paul Weston
• George Zopf

Other participants from Illinois

• John Bowman, Technological Institute, Northwestern University
• Scott Cameron, Armour Research Foundation
• Peter Greene, Committee on Mathematical Biology, University of Chicago
• Friedrich Hayek, Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago
• George Jacobi, Armour Research Foundation
• John R. Platt, Department of Physics, University of Chicago
• Stephen Sherwood, Illinois State Psychiatric Institute, Chicago
• A Shimbel, Illinois State Psychiatric Institute, Chicago

Cambridge Massachusetts

• Manuel Blum, W. S. McCulloch Room, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• Jack Cowan, W. S. McCulloch Room, MIT
• Jerome I. Elkind, Bolt, Beranek, Newman Inc.
• Warren McCulloch, W. S. McCulloch Room, MIT
• Leo Verbeek, W. S. McCulloch Room, MIT

Other participants

• Saul Amarel, Radio Corporation of America
• Ross Ashby,
• Stafford Beer, United Steel Companies
• Ludwig von Bertalanffy
• Raymond Beurle, English Electric Valve Company
• Hewitt Crane, Stanford Research Institute, Menlo Park, California
• Joseph Hawkins
• Hans Oestriecher
• Gordon Pask
• Anatol Rapaport
• Charles Rosen
• Frank Rosenblatt
• Jack E. Steele
• Roger Sperry
• John Tooley
• David Willis
• Marshal Yovits

Two women participated, Kathy Forbes providing secretarial services and Cornelia Schaeffer of Athenium Publishers providing assistance in preparing the subsequent publication of the transactions of the symposium.^[3]