Encounter of behavioral sciences with new machine-organism analogies in the 1940's

Abstract

In the 1940's a number of social and behavioral scientists attended a series of interdisciplinary conferences, through which they became acquainted with new machine-organism analogies, analogies which had originated in connection with computers and communication engineering. Responses to the ideas proposed by engineers and mathematicians differed from individual to individual. At one of their meetings the proponents of the new analogies were confronted by W. Koehler with the apparently conflicting viewpoint of Gestalt psychology.