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me place of the sciences of man in the system of sciences 41
on the interpretation of the discipline, to such an extent that L. de Broglie could
consider the bringing together of the problems of entropy and information as
one of the most fruitful and stimulating discoveries of the last decades. Moreover,
one cannot open any contemporary work on biology without continually en-
countering problems of information, from the codification of genetic infor-
mation in the spiral order of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid, the constituent of the
genome) to the problems of conserving acquired knowledge or ‘memory’ (this
term alone reveals the trend we have already mentioned towards humanizing
elementary processes), which memory probably presupposes the indivisibility
of RNA (ribonucleic acid, which has a fundamental part to play during the whole
epigenetic process including phenotypical adaptations).
Another very striking example is to be found in the ‘theory of games’ or
decision, which has been adapted to the needs of econometry by Von Neumann
and Morgenstern. This technique, which has proved increasingly useful in the
study of human behaviour (from perception with Tanner to moral behaviour
WithBraitswaithe), has also had its effect on the natural sciences, as the following
two examples wil show. The first is to be found in the well-known problem of
Maxwell’s demon in thermodynamics, of which Sczilard had already worked
out a very promising reformulation about 40 years ago and on which a rational
theory based on the notion of its ‘information cost’ can be put forward today.
The second belongs to biology, in which problems of economics are in fact
constantly arising: Ashby has shown recently that one of the simplest models for
biological or nervous regulation can be based on ‘strategics’ and on an implica-
tion chart based on the theory of games.
Cybernetics as a whole, dealing as it does with problems of communications,
as already mentioned, and of guidance, today constitutes an essential link
between physics and biology. It cannot perhaps be seen, from this point of
view, as emanating directly from the sciences of man, since man is sometimes
more interested in guiding his robots than himself. But he does sometimes give
thought to directing his own conduct, and it cannot be denied that human guid-
ance played its part in the construction of cybernetics. One has only to reflect
in this context on the evolution of the idea of finality. It is well known that
finalism in its rather crude Aristotelian form covers a system of notions inspired
by deliberate human action and therefore qualified as anthropomorphic in
accordance with Cartesian and classical reasoning. Rut if the idea of finality is
still obscure, the problems of adaptation, of functional utility, of anticipation,
etc., raised by finalism remain entire; and in discovering the ‘mechanical equiv-
alents of finality’, in elaborating a ‘teleonomy’ distinguished by its rationality
from teleology in its usual meaning, cybernetics has made an essential contri-
bution both to the sciences of man and, through reverse action, to the natural
sciences (in this particular case to biology as a whole).
III. Cybernetics is a first example of a discipline which it is difficult to place
accurately between the natural sciences and the sciences of man. There are
many other examples, and this is a third argument of growing importance in
favour of continuity.