Nascent Cybernetics, Humanism, and Some Scientistic Challenges

Zachary M. Mabee

I argue in this paper that certain broad programmatic concerns offered by Norbert Wiener regarding the then-nascent field of cybernetics help us to see how the field has a certain kind of implicitly humanistic orientation. I take this orientation to be emergent or manifest in regard both to its interdisciplinarity and, in particular, to the way in which it highlights the need for not-just-scientific values to be at play in the evaluation and reception of its work. I marshal these points in response to some key recent varieties of scientism, namely those defended, respectively, by Alex Rosenberg and by James Ladyman, Don Ross, and David Spurrett, which have been philosophically resurgent of late. I contend that a humanistic approach to the sciences, following generally upon Wiener’s cautionary points, escapes some obvious problems that ultimately beset varieties of scientism, particularly relating to the role that various values often play in and around scientific work.

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