Heinz von Foerster

Von Foerster was born in 1911 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, as Heinz von Förster. His paternal grandfather was the Austrian architect . His maternal grandmother was Marie Lang, an Austrian feminist, theosophist, and publisher. He studied physics at the Technical University of Vienna and at the University of Breslau, where in 1944 he received a PhD in physics. His relatives included Ludwig Wittgenstein, Erwin Lang and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Ludwig Förster was his great-grandfather. His Jewish roots did not cause him much trouble while he worked in radar laboratories during the Nazi era, as "he hid his ancestry with the help of an employer who chose not to press him for documents on his family." He moved to the US in 1949 and worked at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he was a professor of electrical engineering from 1951 to 1975. He was also professor of biophysics (1962–1975) and director of the Biological Computer Laboratory (1958–1975). Additionally, in 1956–57 and 1963–64, he was a Guggenheim Fellow and also President of the Wenner-Gren-Foundation for anthropological research from 1963 to 1965. He knew well and was in conversation with John von Neumann, Norbert Wiener, Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela, Gordon Pask, Gregory Bateson, Lawrence J. Fogel and Margaret Mead, among many others. He died on October 2, 2002, in Pescadero, California. ==Work==

Von Foerster was influenced by the Vienna Circle and Ludwig Wittgenstein. He worked in the field of cybernetics and is known as the inventor of second-order cybernetics. He is also known for his interest in computer music and magic. The electron tube laboratory In 1949, von Foerster started work at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign at the electron tube laboratory of the Electrical Engineering Department, where he succeeded Joseph Tykociński-Tykociner. With his students he developed many innovative devices, including ultra-high-frequency electronics He also worked on mathematical models of population dynamics and in 1959 published a model now called the "von Foerster equation", which is derivable from the principles of constant aging and conservation of mass. :\frac{\partial n}{\partial t} + \frac{\partial n}{\partial a} = - m(a)n, where: n = n(t,a), t stands for time and a for age. m(a) is the death in function of the population age; n(t,a) is the population density in function of age. When m(a) = 0, we have: :\frac{\partial n}{\partial t} = - \frac{\partial n}{\partial a} It relates that a population ages, and that fact is the only one that influences change in population density. It is therefore a continuity equation; it can be solved using the method of characteristics. Macy conferences He was the youngest member of the core group of the Macy conferences on Cybernetics and editor of the five volumes of Cybernetics (1949–1953), a series of conference transcripts that represent important foundational conversations in the field. It was von Foerster who suggested that Wiener's coinage "Cybernetics" be applied to this conference series, which had previously been called "Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems". Doomsday equation A 1960 issue of Science magazine included an article by von Foerster and his colleagues P. M. Mora and L. W. Amiot proposing a formula representing a best fit to available historical data on world population; the authors then predicted future population growth on the basis of this formula. The formula gave 2.7 billion as the 1960 world population and predicted that population growth would become infinite by Friday, November 13, 2026 – von Foerster's 115th birthday anniversary – a prediction that earned it the name "the Doomsday Equation." Based on population data obtained from various sources, von Foerster and his students concluded that world population growth over the centuries was faster than an exponential. In such a situation, doubling-time decreases over time. Von Foerster's tongue-in-cheek prediction of Doomsday on November 13, 2026, was based on an extrapolation into the future of doubling-time, with the finding that doubling-time would decrease to zero on that date. Responders to his Doomsday prediction objected on the grounds of the finite human gestation time of 9 months, and the transparent fact that biological systems rarely persist in exponential growth for any substantial length of time. Those who knew von Foerster could see in his rejoinders an evident sense of humor. ==See also==

Von Foerster authored more than 100 publications. Books, a selection: • 1949, Cybernetics: Transactions of the Sixth Conference, (editor), Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation: New York, 220 pp. • 2002, Understanding understanding, a volume of von Foerster's papers, published by Springer-Verlag, 2002. • 2010, with Monika Broecker: Part of the World. Fractals of Ethics – A Drama in Three Acts. Heinz von Foerster's most extensive biography. First published in German in 2002: with Monika Broecker. Teil der Welt. Fraktale einer Ethik – ein Drama in drei Akten. Articles, a selection: • 1958, "Basic Concepts of Homeostasis." In: Homeostatic Mechanisms, Upton, New York, pp. 216–242, 1958. • 1960, "Doomsday: Friday, November 13, AD 2026," with P. M. Mora und L. W. Amiot, Science 132, pp. 1291–1295, 1960. • 1961, "A Predictive Model for Self-Organizing Systems," Part I: Cybernetica 3, pp. 258–300; Part II: Cybernetica 4, pp. 20–55, with Gordon Pask, 1961. • 1964, "Biological Computers," with W. Ross Ashby, In: Bioastronautics, K. E. Schaefer, Macmillan Co., New York, pp. 333– 360, 1964. • 1969, "What is Memory that it may have Hindsight and Foresight" • 1971, "Computing in the Semantic Domain" • 1971, "Technology. What Will It Mean to Librarians?" == References ==