Symposium on Principles of Self-Organization

The Symposium on Principles of Self-Organization was held at Allerton House on 8–9 June 1960. It was a key conference in the development of cybernetics and was in many ways a continuation of the Macy Conferences. it was organised by Heinz von Foerster through the Biological Computer Laboratory based at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was sponsored by the Information Systems Branch of the U.S. Office of Naval Research.

Participants
There were 38 male participants:

Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois
This was the host organisation.


 * Murray Babcock
 * Heinz von Foerster
 * Alfred Inselberg
 * Lars Löfgren
 * Albert Mullin
 * Albert Novikoff
 * Paul Weston
 * George Zopf

Other participants from Illinois

 * John Bowman, Technological Institute, Northwestern University
 * Scott Cameron, Armour Research Foundation
 * Peter Greene, Committee on Mathematical Biology, University of Chicago
 * Friedrich Hayek, Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago
 * George Jacobi, Armour Research Foundation
 * John R. Platt, Department of Physics, University of Chicago
 * Stephen Sherwood, Illinois State Psychiatric Institute, Chicago
 * A Shimbel, Illinois State Psychiatric Institute, Chicago

Cambridge Massachusetts

 * Manuel Blum, W. S. McCulloch Room, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
 * Jack Cowan, W. S. McCulloch Room, MIT
 * Jerome I. Elkind, Bolt, Beranek, Newman Inc.
 * Warren McCulloch, W. S. McCulloch Room, MIT
 * Leo Verbeek, W. S. McCulloch Room, MIT

Other participants

 * Saul Amarel, Radio Corporation of America
 * Ross Ashby,
 * Stafford Beer, United Steel Companies
 * Ludwig von Bertalanffy
 * Raymond Beurle, English Electric Valve Company
 * Hewitt Crane, Stanford Research Institute, Menlo Park, California
 * Joseph Hawkins
 * Hans Oestriecher
 * Gordon Pask
 * Anatol Rapaport
 * Charles Rosen
 * Frank Rosenblatt
 * Jack E. Steele
 * Roger Sperry
 * John Tooley
 * David Willis
 * Marshal Yovits

Two women participated, Kathy Forbes providing secretarial services and Cornelia Schaeffer of Athenium Publishers providing assistance in preparing the subsequent publication of the transactions of the symposium.