The Ratio Club was a small British informal

dining club A dining club (UK) or eating club (US) is a social group, usually requiring membership (which may, or may not be available only to certain people), which meets for dinners and discussion on a regular basis. They may also often have guest speakers. ...

from 1949 to 1958 of young

psychiatrists A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their sy ...

psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...

physiologists Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical ...

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

s and

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

s who met to discuss issues in

cybernetics Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causality, such as feedback, in regulatory and purposive systems. Cybernetics is named after an example of circular causal feedback, that of steering a ship, where the helmsperson m ...

., p. 95.

History

The idea of the club arose from a

symposium In ancient Greece, the symposium ( grc-gre, συμπόσιον ''symposion'' or ''symposio'', from συμπίνειν ''sympinein'', "to drink together") was a part of a banquet that took place after the meal, when drinking for pleasure was acc ...

animal behaviour Ethology is the scientific study of animal behaviour, usually with a focus on behaviour under natural conditions, and viewing behaviour as an evolutionarily adaptive trait. Behaviourism as a term also describes the scientific and objectiv ...

held in July 1949 by the Society of Experimental

Biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

. The club was founded by the

neurologist Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal c ...

John Bates, with other notable members such as W. Ross Ashby. The name ''Ratio'' was suggested by Albert Uttley, it being the Latin root meaning "computation or the faculty of mind which calculates, plans and reasons". He pointed out that it is also the root of ''rationarium'', meaning a statistical account, and ''ratiocinatius'', meaning argumentative. The use was probably inspired by an earlier suggestion by Donald Mackay of the 'MR club', from ''Machina ratiocinatrix'', a term used by Norbert Wiener in the introduction to his then recently published book '' Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine''. Wiener used the term in reference to ''calculus ratiocinator'', a calculating machine constructed by

Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of ma ...

. The initial membership was W. Ross Ashby,

Horace Barlow Horace Basil Barlow FRS (8 December 1921 – 5 July 2020) was a British vision scientist. Life Barlow was the son of the civil servant Sir Alan Barlow and his wife Lady Nora (granddaughter of the naturalist Charles Darwin). He was educated ...

, John Bates, George Dawson,

Thomas Gold Thomas Gold (May 22, 1920 – June 22, 2004) was an Austrian-born American astrophysicist, a professor of astronomy at Cornell University, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the Royal Society (London). Gold was ...

, W. E. Hick, Victor Little, Donald MacKay, Turner McLardy, P. A. Merton, John Pringle, Harold Shipton, Donald Sholl,

Eliot Slater Eliot Trevor Oakeshott Slater MD (28 August 1904 – 15 May 1983) was a British psychiatrist who was a pioneer in the field of the genetics of mental disorders. He held senior posts at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, Queen Square, Lo ...

, Albert Uttley,

W. Grey Walter William Grey Walter (February 19, 1910 – May 6, 1977) was an American-born British neurophysiologist, cybernetician and robotician. Early life and education Walter was born in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, on 19 February 1910, the on ...

and John Hugh Westcott.

Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical com ...

joined after the first meeting with

I. J. Good Irving John Good (9 December 1916 – 5 April 2009)The Times of 16-apr-09, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6100314.ece was a British mathematician who worked as a cryptologist at Bletchley Park with Alan Turing. Afte ...

, Philip Woodward and William Rushton added soon after.

Giles Brindley Giles Skey Brindley FRS (born April 30, 1926), is a British physiologist, musicologist and composer, known for his contributions to the physiology of the retina and colour vision, and treatment of erectile dysfunction. Medical career Brindley is ...

was also a member for a short period. The club was the most intellectually powerful and influential cybernetics grouping in the UK, and many of its members went on to become extremely prominent scientists.

References

External links

* * {{Citation , last1 = Husbands , first1 = Phil , author-link = Phil Husbands , last2 = Holland , first2 = Owen , author2-link = Owen Holland (academic) , title = The Ratio Club: A Hub of British Cybernetics , year = 2008 , url = http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/philh/pubs/Ratio2.pdf 1949 establishments in England Scientific organizations established in 1949 Cybernetics Dining clubs History of artificial intelligence Systems sciences organizations