Spontaneity and Control: Friedrich Hayek, Stafford Beer, and the Principles of Self-Organization.

Friedrich Hayek, the Austrian economist, and Stafford Beer, best known for engineering socialist Chile's CYBERSYN project, met exactly once, at the 1960 Symposium on the Principles of Self-Organization, hosted by the Biological Computer Laboratory at the University of Illinois. Independently, in the...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Modern Intellectual History Vol. 22; no. 1/2; pp. 1 - 21
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Cambridge University Press Mar2025
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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Sumario:Friedrich Hayek, the Austrian economist, and Stafford Beer, best known for engineering socialist Chile's CYBERSYN project, met exactly once, at the 1960 Symposium on the Principles of Self-Organization, hosted by the Biological Computer Laboratory at the University of Illinois. Independently, in the decade that followed, Beer and Hayek each sought to apply the principles of self-organization to the design of economic institutions. They were joined in the belief that the full enjoyment of human liberty would require a self-organizing world economy. To understand why, this article delves into the explanatory logic and intellectual history of "self-organization." I use points of convergence between Beer's thought and Hayek's to reframe a key moment in the history of neoliberalism.