Arturo Rosenblueth Sterns (1900--1970)

24 Jul 2023 21:58

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Yet Another Inadequate Placeholder

I grew interested in Rosenblueth initially as a collaborator of Norbert Wiener's, indeed perhaps the key collaborator. But in the course of writing about their joint work I became interested in Rosenblueth in his own right, as an interdisciplinary scientist who led a life that was both unusual and exemplified important trends.

Recommended, primary:
• AR, Mind and Brain: A Philosophy of Science
• AR, Norbert Wiener and Julian Bigelow, "Behavior, Purpose and Teleology", Philosophy of Science 10 (1943): 18--24
• AR and Norbert Wiener
  • "The Role of Models in Science", Philosophy of Science 12 (1945): 316--321
  • "Purposeful and Non-Purposeful Behavior", Philosophy of Science 17 (1950): 318--326

Recommended, secondary [with thanks to Prof. A. E. Owen for help in reading]:
• José Fernando Guadalajara Boo, "Dr. Arturo Rosenblueth Stearns (1900--1970) en el Instituto Nacional de Cardiología ``Ignacio Chávez'' (1944--1961)", Revista de la Facultad de Medicina de la UNAM 55:5 (2012): 4--10
• Ruth Guzik Glantz
  • "Entra la experimentación y los modelos abstractos: Breve historia de vida de Arturo Rosenblueth (1900--1970)", Antropología: Revista Interdisciplinaria del INAH 99 (2015): 20--36
  • "Relaciones de un Cientiífico Mexicano con el Extranjero: El case de Arturo Rosenblueth", Revista mexicana de investigación educativa 14:40 (2009): 43--67
• Fernando Salmerón, "Noticia sobre Arturo Rosenblueth", Diálogos 14:5(83) (1978): 27--29

Modesty forbids me to recommend:
• CRS, "Introduction to Rosenblueth and Wiener's 'The Role of Models in Science'," forthcoming in David Krakauer (ed.), Foundational Papers in Complexity Science

Dis-recommended:
• Most of the English-language articles on Rosenblueth I have been able to find seem to be (to put it generously) conveying the results of Prof. Guzik's research, with the addition of commentary aimed at the latest turns of the US culture wars.

To read:
• Ruth Guzik Glantz, Arturo Rosenblueth, 1900--1970 [Except "to read" here is hopelessly aspirational on my part. I could, laboriously, work my way through the articles above using my childhood Italian, Google Translate, and the assistance of a long-suffering spouse fluent in Spanish, but that is not going to cut it for a whole monograph. There needs to be a translation!]