Cybernetyka i charakter (‘Cybernetics and Character’, 1976) — an overview

Chapter 1. Cybernetics (pp. 5–25)

The opening chapter is a sketch of the changes that science has undergone and of the place that cybernetics occupies within it (Fig. 1.1); character appears in it only in a brief remark that psychology on its own will not settle this subject. What matters most for further reading is the distinction between the levels at which cybernetics can be practised — from apparent cybernetics, which replaces explanation with a diagram, through didactic and formal cybernetics, to physical cybernetics, which, by taking the laws of physics into account, establishes what must happen; of his own book the author later stipulates that it is not meant to be merely a didactic translation of known knowledge into the language of cybernetics. The background is an account of how knowledge broke up into narrow specialisms and how the disciplines later drew closer together, having noticed, while working on shared practical tasks, that the relationships each of them studied were alike. Cybernetics appears here as the science of control, asking how things work rather than what they are made of; the author argues for proceeding from the general to the particular with an invented parable.

Concepts introduced in the chapter: no dictionary definitions come from this part of the book.

Chapter 2. Terminological conventions (pp. 26–30)

This short methodological chapter lays down a rule that holds throughout the book: every important concept is introduced by convention — first a description of the phenomenon, then a name chosen to fit it. Mazur contrasts this practice with inquiring into the ‘true meanings’ of words, which he sees as a barren habit, especially in the humanities. A hint for the reader: the book's terms mean what their convention says, not what everyday speech suggests, and arguing over whether the convention itself is ‘apt’ makes no sense.

Concepts introduced in the chapter: no dictionary definitions come from this part of the book.

Chapter 3. Theory and empirical knowledge (pp. 31–43)

At the end of the chapter the author applies the distinction between empirical and theoretical knowledge to getting to know the human being: cybernetics, as a theory, knows in his view the causes of behaviour, even though the mechanism of the psyche itself cannot be observed, while psychology is left with conjectures from what can be seen from the outside. Underlying this is the thesis that verification works in both directions: neither theory nor experience is the judge of the other side in advance — the advantage lies with whichever is stronger in the matter at hand; the author rejects the demand that a theory be measured against ‘reality’ itself, because reality always remains unknown. Before that, the chapter discusses the knowability of the world from the standpoint of metrology — every measurement has an error and interferes with the object under study, so knowability comes in degrees — and sets side by side two paths of cognition, the empirical and the theoretical (Fig. 3.1). A warning against ‘theories’ made up of nothing but linkages between observations is illustrated by an invented tale.

Concepts introduced in the chapter: no dictionary definitions come from this part of the book.

Chapter 4. System (pp. 44–62)

The chapter gives the book its basic vocabulary: from here on every object under study, the human being included, is a system in a strictly defined sense. For the theory of character its second half, devoted to identity, matters most: whether we are dealing with ‘the same’ system is decided by behaviour, not by the persistence of the material or of the name — Mazur considers this through several variants of an ancient puzzle about identity. The author announces that he will come back to identity and to membership of a class of systems in Chapter 17, in connection with illusions about someone else's character. The first half is a vocabulary of systems concepts (structure, subsystem, supersystem, environment, input and output; Fig. 4.1) together with four requirements that a definition of a system must meet; using a simple diagram (Fig. 4.2), the author shows that meeting them makes it possible to list every possible interaction.

Concepts introduced in the chapter: no dictionary definitions come from this part of the book.

Chapter 5. Coupling (pp. 63–98)

The central theorem of the chapter (5.3) shifts attention from each side separately to the pair: the course of the exchange is determined by a single quantity — the product of the two partners' reactivities. Of the first fourteen chapters, this is the only one with numbered theorems — ten of them, on the interaction of two connected systems — accompanied by six figures and elementary calculations with products. Some of the theorems overturn common beliefs, for instance the belief that in a dispute only the other party is to blame (the causes of behaviour lie on both sides at once), while others put in order what people know from experience, for instance how much depends on what the first step was. The chapter's calculus is the author's own approach: it assumes that the two sides act in turn, cycle after cycle — which captures human contacts better than the classical, more difficult mathematics of continuous processes — and thanks to this it comes down to multiplication. Finally, the sign and the magnitude of the product give six kinds of coupling (Figs. 5.5–5.6).

Concepts introduced in the chapter (1): reactivity.

Chapter 6. Control (pp. 99–116)

The axis of the chapter is the diagram of the controlling system (Fig. 6.2), in which goals, ways and means do not form a sequence but condition one another; the chapter arrives at it through a typology of problems and the definition of control. The chapter is also the source of a methodological reservation that matters for the rest of the book: examples from life serve in the book solely as illustrations, and only what follows from the theory of systems counts as proof. The typology is closed — six kinds of problems, three cognitive and three decision problems — and in practice the two groups are intertwined. The definitions of control and of the derived concepts (Fig. 6.1) have gone into the dictionary; in the polemical part Mazur argues that a computer decides nothing, because it calculates on data supplied by people and will not put right a badly chosen goal.

Concepts introduced in the chapter (5): control, control loop, controlled system, controlling system, control path.

Chapter 7. Information (pp. 117–146)

The chapter supplements Shannon's theory, which measures the amount of information but leaves its content aside, with a qualitative concept of information itself — and leads to the conclusion that information is not something separate from matter and energy. Of the chapter's concepts, the one that covers the most everyday phenomena is parainformation (Fig. 7.3), that is, information that the receiver owes to linkages fixed earlier: from it Mazur derives the sense of humour, a resolution of the old dispute about the form and content of a work of art and, finally, the very understanding of words and allusions. The computational basis of the chapter is a formula in which information depends on the power flowing along a given path and on the conductance of that path; it is preceded by the definitions of a message, information and a code on the diagram of the control path (Figs. 7.1–7.2) — the last two in a shorter version than in Jakościowa teoria informacji, from which the dictionary takes their definitions. The same approach implies that information can be transmitted and copied whatever the kind of carrier. Towards the end come a classification of the distortions of informing and the concept of metainformation, which makes it possible to tell a falsehood from a lie; the last pages return to counting the amount of information.

Concepts introduced in the chapter: none in the dictionary — the concepts of this chapter have definitions there from elsewhere (links in the text).

Chapter 8. The struggle to understand the human being (pp. 147–162)

The core of this transitional chapter is the identification of a blank spot between two sciences: physiology studies energy processes, psychology studies information processes, and the source of motivation, where the former turn into the latter, eludes both. The author sets his own theory a high bar: it is to explain how the characters of particular people differ. The historical part is a brief sketch of discoveries — from Copernicus to cybernetics — that one after another undermined the belief that the human being is exceptional, and that usually met with resistance. The chapter ends by announcing the method: instead of building models of the organism, the author derives the principles to which every system capable of surviving must be subject, and since human beings exist, these principles apply to them as well; he explains this approach with an invented parable.

Concepts introduced in the chapter: no dictionary definitions come from this part of the book.

Chapter 9. The human being as an autonomous system (pp. 163–173)

This short chapter is the turning point of the book: it introduces the autonomous system (in the 1966 book, układ samodzielny, literally ‘self-reliant system’) and places the human being in this class of systems, which later makes it possible to derive character from theory rather than from observation. The human being is here one member of a wider class, not its pattern, so there is no question of ‘modelling’ the human being; the author regards the dispute over whether a machine thinks as pointless until the parties agree on a measure. He justifies the human being's membership of this class in three ways: by definition, through organs understood as functions rather than parts of the body, and through the history of technology. The definition implies six organs (Fig. 9.1); the key one is the homeostat, which maintains functional equilibrium and gives the system an interest of its own — in the technical sense, not the moral one.

Concepts introduced in the chapter (8): alimentators, effectors, correlator, receptors, autonomous system, accumulator, homeostat, functional equilibrium.

Chapter 10. Psyche (pp. 174–223)

The longest of Chapters 1–14 (50 pages, 32 concepts in the dictionary) describes mental phenomena in the language of physics — as flows of energy in the correlator, which depend on the conductance of paths and on potentials (Fig. 10.1). The description does not depend on anatomy: it covers any correlator that performs the information tasks of the system. Much space is given to motivation — its varieties, quandary and the rash decision (Figs. 10.6–10.7) — together with a polemic against the image of the human being as ‘homo oeconomicus’: according to Mazur, choices are settled by how energy is distributed in the correlator, not by a calculation of gains.

Mazur reduces memory to the physics of flow: a flow of energy increases the conductance of a path, but the increase is not permanent (Figs. 10.2–10.3); separately, the author distinguishes two meanings of everyday ‘forgetting’. On linkages he bases his explanation of conditioned reflexes (exactly three kinds of them emerge), of superstitions and of creative originality. The remaining concepts — from decision, emotion and reflection to consciousness, thinking, extravertism and introvertism — are collected in the dictionary, and Fig. 10.8 closes the chapter with a diagram of the whole circuit from stimulus to reaction, expressed solely in terms of potentials, conductance and power in the correlator.

Concepts introduced in the chapter (32): correlational power, correlational conductance, psyche, effector potential, homeostatic potential, perturbation potential, receptor potential, linkage registrate / linkage correlate, linkage, decision, decision potential, approval, attraction, aversion, disapproval, emotion, reflection, sensation / sensation registrate, representation / representation registrate, motivation, offensive motivation, defensive motivation, wavering motivation, quandary, rash decision, zero motivation, idle motivation, thinking, belated reflection, consciousness, extravertism, introvertism.

Chapter 11. Physiological and sociological power (pp. 224–240)

The chapter describes the energy side of the system (Fig. 11.1) and arrives at the conclusion on which the rest of the theory of character rests: in the first part of life the system's expansion outpaces its ageing, and in the second it lags behind. The closing pages concern free power, that is, what remains of disposable power once working power has been covered; it makes it possible to acquire sociological power, and stagnation threatens both when it is lacking and when freedom is unlimited. The pair of concepts in the title concerns who bears the cost of the work the system needs: the environment, which the system is able to harness (sociological power), or the system itself (physiological power); both return later in the theory of dynamism. It is the chapter richest in formulae in the whole book (fifteen numbered ones): a simple model of life in which ageing lowers the quality of material, expansion increases its quantity, and the ratio of the rates of the two processes is the dynamism coefficient. The author makes clear that converting the model into years of human life serves only as an illustration; in the model, existence ends at the moment when all the organism's power goes on merely keeping it going, and before that the power curve passes through a single maximum (Figs. 11.4–11.5).

Concepts introduced in the chapter (23): physiological power, sociological power, load, tension, unloading, relaxing, loading, tensing, quantity of material, quality of material, unit power, ageing, expansion, dynamism coefficient, balanced uniform expansion, idle power, lossiness, existence time, disposable power, non-uniform expansion, working power, free power, freedom coefficient.

Chapter 12. Behaviour (pp. 241–267)

The chapter joins the two halves of the model: the common link is the homeostat, which belongs to both the information area and the energy area (Fig. 12.1). The most far-reaching conclusion concerns the dispute between determinism and indeterminism: behaviour is subject to the laws of physics, and yet responsibility still makes sense, because enforcing it acts as a stimulus in its own right. Mazur explains sleep and dreams by the homeostat periodically lowering the equilibrium, and behaviour that is seemingly disinterested or contrary to self-interest by the fact that the homeostat looks after its own equilibrium, not after advantage in the everyday sense. The chapter's diagram itself coincides with the diagram of control from Chapter 6: the homeostat is responsible for the goal, the correlator for the way, the accumulator for the means. The author devotes a separate part to the influence of other people: persuasion will not get through what a person perceives as contrary to their own interest; forcing succeeds only for the stronger side; and the choice itself, which costs a negligible amount of energy, cannot be taken away by weakening the person.

Concepts introduced in the chapter: no dictionary definitions come from this part of the book.

Chapter 13. Character (pp. 268–278)

The chapter defines the book's central concept: character is the set of rigid control properties, that is, those independent of influences from the environment, and each of them is one of the character parameters. The basic theorem that Mazur derives from this definition is that character cannot be remade; he develops it into a set of short conclusions about oneself, about others and about partners, and their practical sense comes down to this: effort should be directed at choosing the conditions of one's life, which requires self-knowledge. More than a dozen quoted psychological definitions of ‘personality’ serve the author as a warning: in his view they have nothing in common but the word itself, whereas his ‘character’ is a concept fixed by a terminological convention. The differences between people are quantitative: everyone has the same parameters, intermediate values predominate, and in a couple what counts is whether the characters are compatible, not which of them is ‘better’. This does not mean that character stands still — with age it shifts without anyone's intervention, and in a direction that can be predicted. Nor does it mean that no one is responsible for anything: responsibility, in the author's view, covers that part of conduct which follows from properties that change under the influence of the environment, and so lies outside character.

Concepts introduced in the chapter (4): control properties, rigid properties, character, character parameters.

Chapter 14. Character level (pp. 279–288)

The first of the three parameters concerns the information side: character level is the number of elements of the correlator that have already been linked, and on it depends how richly a person discerns their surroundings and how varied their responses to them are. Level changes with age: from the stock of linkages provided by evolution, through a period of growth, to old age, in which fading prevails. The chapter is short (ten pages), but in it the author applies the concept of level to seemingly distant matters — school, art and the difference between human beings and animals. In his view, at school a curriculum cut to the average pupil wrongs everyone who departs from that average, and since the capacity of memory has limits, it is more sensible to teach principles that cover many cases than to fill it with individual facts. The standing of a work of art is decided, in his view, by how many possibilities were within the creator's reach when deciding each detail — the richer that choice, the higher the author's level that shows in the work. He reduces the human being's advantage over animals to scale: more than ten billion correlational elements open up incomparably more possible linkages, and something new can emerge only from these. The further entries of the chapter concern what level depends on: intelligence, aptitude and talent are grounded in three independent features of the correlator — correlator capacity, correlator registrativity and correlator preferentiality — and Mazur bases a typology of intellect on their combinations.

Concepts introduced in the chapter (8): character level, intelligence, correlator capacity, correlator preferentiality, correlator registrativity, intellect / intellectual faculties, aptitude, talent.

Chapter 15. Character dynamism (pp. 289–363)

The most extensive chapter (75 pages, almost 18% of the text) is devoted to character dynamism, defined by the logarithm of the ratio of the rate of expansion to the rate of ageing; in the English summary the author calls it the most important parameter. The conclusion for school: instead of ‘shaping’ everyone to a single pattern, the teacher should be able to recognise which stage of the changes of dynamism a given pupil has reached — including whether they pass through them earlier (character acceleration) or later (character delay) than their peers.

The bulk of the chapter is made up of 35 numbered theorems on particular manifestations of dynamism, which the author brings together in Table 15.2; they are preceded by the definition and by the division of the scale into classes — statism in the middle, exodynamism and endodynamism at the extremes, and two intermediate classes between them (Figs. 15.1–15.3). The table serves two purposes: assessing someone's class from visible manifestations, and predicting how someone will change with age. The author regards all the theorems as derived from the first one, which concerns whether a life is directed towards dissipating or accumulating energy — Table 15.1 sets out the general effects of this difference for the two extreme classes — and among other things they concern attitudes to principles, the kind of activity, convictions, memories, truthfulness, money and time. The source of the differences is a property of the homeostat: how strongly it responds to load with tension decides whether approvals and lively reactions predominate, or disapprovals and restrained ones. Mazur takes childhood as a test: the traits that the theory derives for exodynamic people agree with what is known about children empirically — and they have to agree, because life begins with positive dynamism. The theorems are illustrated with examples from everyday life and with literary characters.

Concepts introduced in the chapter (9): character dynamism, exodynamism, endodynamism, statism, classes of character dynamism, endostatism, exostatism, character delay, character acceleration.

Chapter 16. Character breadth (pp. 364–379)

The third parameter, character breadth, says how far from their own dynamism a person will still agree to a situation; Mazur defines it as the sum of two quantities — tolerance (the stretch on which agreement comes of itself) and susceptibility (the further stretch on which agreement can be forced). From this distinction the author derives a critique of superiors who are convinced that sufficiently strong pressure will force any behaviour: coercion, in his view, makes sense only within the zone of susceptibility, because where a person would want it anyway it is unnecessary, and beyond character breadth nothing can be done. The author derives tolerance from a feature shared by regulating devices, which do not correct small deviations; the homeostat is one of them (Figs. 16.1–16.2). The formulae of the chapter make it possible to trace breadth over the course of life: it is greatest at its beginning and at its end, and in between it passes through a minimum (Fig. 16.3). The chapter closes with a description of the effects of sudden changes of fortune: for a time a sudden loss works one way and a sudden success another, while what changes permanently is susceptibility — loss raises it, success lowers it.

Concepts introduced in the chapter (5): tolerance, stimulus acceptance, impassable dynamism, susceptibility, character breadth.

Chapter 17. Characterological configurations (pp. 380–427)

The extensive (48-page) closing chapter deals with couples and groups of people; its key concept is the characterological configuration — which characters meet in a given relationship, in practice described by the classes of dynamism of both sides. The author rebuts the charge that literary examples are arbitrary — generations of readers bear witness to the truth of the characters — and the chapter does indeed rest on portraits of couples from literature and from life. Its core is Table 17.1: of the fifteen possible pairs of the five classes, Mazur discusses nine, grouped according to whether the partners belong to the same class, to successive classes or to opposite ones, and treats the remaining six as intermediate cases; the names of the bonds assigned to the groups are in the list of concepts below.

Two further distinctions bring in character breadth and time: character matching of partners (agreement of tolerances) differs from character adjustment (making up for deficiencies by yielding), and since characters shift with age, some configurations increase matching over time while others reduce it (encouraging / discouraging configurations; Figs. 17.3–17.4). The content of relationships is described by positive tendencies and negative tendencies; Mazur arranges them on two scales (Fig. 17.1) whose steps range from the emotions of the person acting to the emotions of the partner, and which of them prevail depends on whether the partner appears as an ally or as an opponent. He gives particular attention to marriages, and he settles the dispute over whether partners are better chosen for similarity or for opposition with the case of two static people, because zero dynamism is at the same time its own opposite. The author orders his analysis of illusions about someone else's character by where they come from: from the environment, which imposes an apparent character on a person (characterological conformisation); from the person observed, when they pretend (characterological mystification); or from the observer, whose desires distort the image of the partner (characterological error). Separately he describes character deconformisation: long imperceptible and then sudden (he calls this moment character crystallisation), after which a person begins to act in accordance with their real character.

Concepts introduced in the chapter (28): ambition, aspiration, characterological configuration, negative tendencies, positive tendencies, affection, antipathy, hatred, retaliation, sympathy, transaction, envy, jealousy, friendship, solidarity, love, attachment, adoration / patronage, subservience / protectiveness, character matching, character adjustment, encouraging / discouraging configuration, compensatory tendency, apparent character, characterological error, characterological illusion, characterological mystification, characterological conformisation.

List of symbols, index and English summary (pp. 428–446)

The volume closes with a list of the symbols used in the formulae, a subject index compiled by the author and an English summary several pages long that restates the main theses chapter by chapter, as well as a table of contents, the publisher's imprint and a short note about the author.

Concepts introduced in the chapter: no dictionary definitions come from this part of the book.

How to read it

It is best to begin with Chapters 1 and 4 and then move on to Chapter 9, which introduces the concept of the autonomous system. The hardest are Chapters 10 and 11 (potentials, conductances, exponential graphs); on a first reading it is enough to follow the conclusions. Chapter 5 is computationally simple and relates directly to everyday situations. Readers interested above all in character can begin with Chapter 15 and Table 15.2, and read Chapter 17 as an essay on relationships between people.

Concepts from this book in the dictionary

In total: 124 entries with 124 definitions from this book — 88 in the domain theory of character, 36 in the domain cybernetics.

Our own account, working version; definitions of concepts are in the dictionary, with their sources.

All summaries