This panel examines how in the second half of the 20th century, the human sciences employed mathematical, engineering, and computer sciences to model, formalize, and control the human mind and behavior. The simulation of social and mental processes was relevant for computer programming, the scientific study of human nature, and the development of new forms of governance. However, as these papers argue, the translation of the social and the human into a symbolic language was far from a straightforward process and exact sciences did not provide scholars with neutral, apolitical, and purely objective models and formalizations.
To assay the political and epistemological ramifications of models and formalizations in the human sciences, the four panelists explore historical cases from educational psychology, cognitive science and social science in capitalist and socialist parts of the world. Jonnie Penn examines how Herbert Simon, Allan Newell and J. Clifford Shaw’s formalization of human adaptability was shaped by Simon’s training in political science and earlier work on the logic of administrative organization. Ekaterina Babintseva examines how in the 1960s-1970s, Soviet psychologists took different approaches to write special teaching algorithms and heuristic programs to train student’s creativity, a skill considered to be key for the country’s future economic success. Angelica Clayton looks at how models of thought as language were influenced by cybernetic models of stressed minds guided by Cold War politics. Finally, Bo An considers the long interdisciplinary history of Chinese cybernetics with a case study of Qian Xuesen’s “somatic science”.
