Macy Conferences - Overview

Overview

The Macy Conferences were organised by the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, motivated by Lawrence K. Frank and Frank Fremont-Smith of the Macy Foundation. The participants were leading scientists from a wide range of fields. Casual recollections of several participants stress the communicative difficulties in the beginning, giving way to the gradual establishment of a common language powerful enough to communicate the intricacies of the various fields of expertise present.

The scientists participating in all or most of the conferences are known as the "core group." They include:

• William Ross Ashby; psychiatrist and a pioneer in cybernetics
• Gregory Bateson; anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist
• Julian Bigelow; pioneering computer engineer
• Heinz von Foerster; biophysicist, scientist combining physics and philosophy and architect of cybernetics
• Lawrence K. Frank; social scientist
• Ralph W. Gerard; neurophysiologist and behavioral scientist known for his work on the nervous system, nerve metabolism, psychopharmacology, and biological basis of schizophrenia
• Molly Harrower; pioneering clinical psychologist
• Lawrence Kubie; psychiatrist
• Paul Lazarsfeld; sociologist and founder of Columbia University's Bureau for Applied Social Research
• Kurt Lewin; psychologist, often regarded as the founder of social psychology
• Warren McCulloch (chair); psychiatrist, neurophysiologist and cybernetician
• Margaret Mead; cultural anthropologist
• John von Neumann; one of the foremost mathematicians of the 20th century
• Walter Pitts; logician and co-author of the paper that founded neural networks
• Arturo Rosenblueth; researcher, physician, physiologist and a pioneer of cybernetics
• Leonard J. Savage; mathematician and statistician
• Norbert Wiener; mathematician and founder of cybernetics

In addition to the core group several invited guests participated in the conferences. Amongst many others:

• Max Delbrück; geneticist and biophysicist
• Erik Erikson; developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory of social development
• Claude Shannon; electronic engineer and mathematician, "the father of information theory"
• Talcott Parsons; sociologist.

Some of the researchers present at the conferences later went on to do extensive government funded research on the psychological effects of LSD, and its potential as a tool for interrogation and psychological manipulation in such projects as the CIA's MKULTRA program.