Behavior, Purpose and Teleology

Three authors proposed describing goal-directed behaviour through negative feedback, in the same terms for an animal and for a machine.

Why it matters

Purpose stopped being a property of living things and became a testable control scheme that could be built.

The paper separates behaviour that is teleological, meaning guided by feedback, from behaviour that is not. The authors do not claim a machine thinks; they claim that purpose in behaviour is described by a mechanism rather than by intent. This is the frame the Macy conferences and early cybernetics worked inside.

Event record

Event date

January 1943

Timeline date

Event date

Verification

Checked against the source by a person · September 30, 2026

Lines

Learning theory

ID

evt-0058

Publication date in Philosophy of Science, volume 10, issue 1.

Sources

primary Behavior, Purpose and Teleology
Philosophy of Science · Published January 1943
secondary Revisiting Rosenblueth, Wiener, and Bigelow's "Behavior, Purpose and Teleology" (1943) (Auguste Nahas)
Biological Theory 21, pp. 210-216 (Springer Nature) · Published March 6, 2026
archive Behavior, Purpose and Teleology (full text)
California State University Long Beach · Published January 1943
archive Finding aid for the Julian Bigelow papers (MEM.BIGELOW)
Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center, Institute for Advanced Study

Related events

Earlier

Enables Wiener's anti-aircraft predictor 1942links to this record
The 1943 paper on behaviour and purpose is the generalisation; this is the problem it grew out of.
- Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (Introduction) · MIT Press (2019 open-access reissue of the 1961 second edition, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
- From communications engineering to communications science: cybernetics and information theory in the United States, France, and the Soviet Union · Routledge (Mark Walker, ed., Science and Ideology: A Comparative History)
- The Ontology of the Enemy: An Interview with Peter Galison · Cabinet

Later

Related McCulloch and Pitts neuron model 1943
Both 1943 papers describe behaviour mechanically, one through the logic of a neuron, the other through feedback.
Builds on First Macy conference on feedback 1946links to this record
The conferences continued the feedback discussion that the 1943 paper opened.
- Summary of the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics · American Society for Cybernetics
Builds on Cybernetics 1948links to this record
The book develops the programme stated in the 1943 paper.
- Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine · M.I.T. Press (second edition, 1961) / Internet Archive