The Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL) was a research institute of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univers ...

. It was founded on 1 January 1958, by then Professor of Electrical Engineering

Heinz von Foerster Heinz von Foerster (German spelling: Heinz von Förster; November 13, 1911 – October 2, 2002) was an Austrian American scientist combining physics and philosophy, and widely attributed as the originator of Second-order cybernetics. He was twice ...

. He was head of BCL until his retirement in 1975. The focus of research at BCL was

systems theory Systems theory is the interdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or human-made. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, defined by its structu ...

and specifically the area of self-organizing systems, bionics, and bio-inspired computing; that is, analyzing, formalizing, and implementing biological processes using computers. BCL was inspired by the ideas of

Warren McCulloch Warren Sturgis McCulloch (November 16, 1898 – September 24, 1969) was an American neurophysiologist and cybernetician, known for his work on the foundation for certain brain theories and his contribution to the cybernetics movement.Ken Aizawa ( ...

and the Macy Conferences, as well as many other thinkers in the field of cybernetics. In the first decade of its existence, BCL was primarily a non-teaching research lab. Although students could work at BCL, they were not trained. Until 1965, many researchers had a visiting professorship at BCL: W. William Ainsworth (England), Alex Andrew (England), W. Ross Ashby (England),

Gordon Pask Andrew Gordon Speedie Pask (28 June 1928 – 29 March 1996) was an English author, inventor, educational theorist, cybernetician and psychologist who made contributions to cybernetics, instructional psychology, experimental epistemology and ed ...

(England), Gotthard Günther (USA, Germany), Dan Cohen (Israel), Lars Löfgren (Sweden),

Humberto Maturana Humberto Maturana Romesín (September 14, 1928 – May 6, 2021) was a Chilean biologist and philosopher. Many consider him a member of a group of second-order cybernetics theoreticians such as Heinz von Foerster, Gordon Pask, Herbert Brün ...

(Chile),

Francisco Varela Francisco Javier Varela García (September 7, 1946 – May 28, 2001) was a Chilean biologist, philosopher, cybernetician, and neuroscientist who, together with his mentor Humberto Maturana, is best known for introducing the concept of autopoiesi ...

(Chile), Ernst von Glasersfeld (Austria),

Stafford Beer Anthony Stafford Beer (25 September 1926 – 23 August 2002) was a British theorist, consultant and professor at the Manchester Business School. He is best known for his work in the fields of operational research and management cybernetics. ...

(England), John C. Lilly (USA). Ashby (since 1961) and Günther (since 1967) received regular professorships, and Löfgren and Pask remained in constant contact with BCL even after their visiting professorship. BCL was financed primarily by grants. This came in part from military organizations such as

U.S. Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Sign ...

and

U.S. Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage o ...

which, in the 1950s and 60s, possessed large budgets for basic research. Non-military donors included the Department of Health, Education and Welfare,

Public Health Service In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research in New York, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Electronics Research Center, Boston, Massachusetts Office of Education, Bureau of Research, Washington, DC and the Point Foundation in San Francisco, California. With the beginning of the 1970s, military research funding became limited to projects that provided militarily useful results, and von Foerster was unable to identify adequate sponsors. In 1974, the BCL was closed due to lack of research funds.

Sources

* Albert Mueller, A brief history of the BCL. In: ''Austrian Journal of History''. 11 (1), 2000, pp. 9–30. * Bernard Scott, Heinz von Foerster obituary, ''The Independent'', 25 October 2002. * Heinz von Foerster, ''Understanding systems: Conversations on epistemology and ethics'', Springer, 2002.

Books

Albert Muller, Karl Muller (eds), ''An Unfinished Revolution?: Heinz von Foerster and the Biological Computer Laboratory / BCL 1958–1976'', Edition Echoraum, 2007.

External links

BCL homepage

The End of the BCL
{dead link, date=November 2016 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes (PDF 478 kB) University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign centers and institutes 1958 establishments in Illinois 1974 disestablishments in Illinois