Arturo Rosenblueth and Wiener’s Work in Physiology

Abstract

The year 1933, that witnessed the untimely death of R. E. A. C. Paley, also saw Wiener’s introduction to Dr. Arturo Rosenblueth, a Mexican physiologist, of Hungarian descent, trained at the Sorbonne and working with Dr. Walter Cannon of the Harvard Medical School. Wiener became a regular participant in an interdisciplinary seminar on scientific method which Rosenblueth was conducting at the school, the “Philosophy of Science Club”. The role of this seminar in the genesis of cybernetics and in Wiener’s life can hardly be exaggerated. The seminar ended in 1944 when Rosenblueth left for Mexico to become the Head of the Department of Physiology of the new National Institute of Cardiology. But Rosenblueth’s contacts with Wiener lasted much longer, and he was to become one of Wiener’s closest collaborators, and also one with whom Wiener had the warmest relationship. Wiener’s description of Rosenblueth reads:

He had not started as a scientist but as a musician, and had earned his living for some time by playing classical piano music in a Mexico City restaurant. Arturo is also a first-rate chess player and a superb bridge player, so good that in neither of these games does he allow me to play with him He is a great enthusiast for the climate and arts of his native land… He is a hard worker, and he makes the greatest demands on the sincerity and industry of those about him, demands which are only exceeded by those he makes upon himself. [56g, p. 278]