Preamble, I mentioned in both the 2024/25 deck-clearing and previously in my project-summary, that the significance of Dupuy’s “Mechanisation of the Mind” was much greater than I’d given credit, and actually suggested it was a good introduction to the whole.
For me, it was the first time (back in 2002) I’d heard of the 1946-onwards Macy Conferences on Cybernetics and systems thinking generally. Apart from being knocked-out by the introductory chapters making explicit the idea that implicit, humanistic aspects of knowledge were at least as important as the objective, mechanistic forms, and that Cybernetics was rooted in human governance following two world wars (despite increasing association of the word with feedback control and computer / internet technologies generally.)
The quotes about “literature as superior knowledge” and about the significance of the “foggie froggies” (ie the post-modernists) reinforced my new-found born-again-reader drive and led to self-identifying as PoPoMo (post-post-modernist), once I’d given the PoMo’s head-space.
To this day, I discover, the ASC (American Society for Cybernetics) have Dupuy as their main source for proceedings on the Macy conferences.
Anyway, the point of this post, having had the conversation above over book-club-books in the pub, I thought I’d bring in my copy (covered in notes) or maybe obtain a new copy for the bar.
Turns out, as well as my copy being covered in notes – hard-back (2000) “New French Thought” translation of the (1994) French original, not only is it out of print, but used copies command collector prices. Whatever happens I don’t want to lose my copy.
There was a later (2009) MIT Press paperback edition, also unobtainable new, used or remaindered, under £30 including shipping. Anyway I bought a copy for the club.
Apart from the switching of title & subtitle between those two editions …
Title <> Subtitle: On the Origins of Cognitive Science.
Subtitle <> Title: The Mechanization of the Mind.
Author: Jean-Pierre Dupuy (1994)
Translator: M.B. DeBevoise (2000)
MIT Press edition: (2009)
… the only difference I could find was an additional preface by the author, and an updated dedication following the death in 2002 of Heinz von Foerster, an important source acknowledged by Dupuy in the original.
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I captured the new preface: