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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
The idea that cybernetics can throw light on problems connected with thinking and learning is now a familiar one. Psychologists who are concerned with these problems often make use of cybernetic analogies, and some cyberneticians claim that their science provides an answer to philosophical problems about the nature of thought. On this last topic a great deal has been written recently; but it is comparatively seldom that it is suggested that cybernetics can be applied to problems of aesthetics. On the face of it, the mere idea of such an application might well seem absurd. Cybernetics, it will be said, is by definition the study of certain types of machines, and what light can possibly be thrown by such a study on questions which concern the nature of art? But even the strangest-sounding questions can prove enlightening, and in a recent broadcast talk Dr. F. H.George thought it worth while to ask whether a machine could create a work of art. This paper isdevoted to the development, and criticism, of some of the points which he made.
1 “Can a Machine Create Art?” Printed in The Listener, 09 18, 1958.Google Scholar
2 Zwölftonsystem: often rendered as“Twelve-Tone System”.Google Scholar
3 The fullest work in English on the twelve-note system is Composition with Twelve Notes, by Rufer, Josef, translated by Humphrey Searle (London,1954).Google Scholar The classical exposition is that by Schoenberg, himself, “Composition with Twelve Tones”, printed in Style and Idea (London, 1952). The method will also be familiar to readers of Thomas Mann, who ascribes it to his imaginary composer Adrian Leverkuhn in Chapter 22 of Dr. Faustus.Google Scholar
4 Style and Idea, p. 105.Google Scholar
5 The term is due to Dr. Wiesengrund-Adorno.Google Scholar
6 One can, of course, speak of the “music” of an Aeolian harp; but in this context “music” simply means “harmonious sounds”.Google Scholar
7 Rufer, op. cit., p. 105.Google Scholar
8 Delius, quoted by Fenby, Eric in Delius as I knew him, London, 1936, p. 36.Google Scholar
9 Rufer, op. cit., Pp. 94–5.
10 See, for example, Howes, Frank analysis of the first movement of William Walton's Violin Concerto in The Music of William Walton (Oxford, Musical Pilgrim Series), Volume 1, p.62.Google Scholar
