Heinz von Foerster

Heinz von Foerster (1911–2002) came to the University of Illinois in 1949 and in 1958 founded the Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL), directing it until 1975 as a center for the study of computational and cognitive principles in living systems. Building on the classical cybernetics of Norbert Wiener’s Macy Conference generation, he became a founder of second-order cybernetics — the study of observing systems rather than merely observed ones — a distinction that shaped the later work of BCL visitors Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela.