CONSONANTIST PSYCHOLOGY AND CYBERNETICS. FROM .T.ODOBLEJA TO N:WIENER

Abstract

The idea of our article comes to clarify the paternity of one of the most influential sciences of the 20th century - cybernetics, whose genesis was claimed by two famous scholars - the American mathematician N. based on the confessions of the Romanian scientist inserted into authentic texts, in less known talks and inedited publications about the similarity of concepts in consonantist psychology, whose author he is, and cybernetics.

Headnote

Abstract: The idea of our article comes to clarify the paternity of one of the most influential sciences of the 20th century - cybernetics, whose genesis was claimed by two famous scholars - the American mathematician N. based on the confessions of the Romanian scientist inserted into authentic texts, in less known talks and inedited publications about the similarity of concepts in consonantist psychology, whose author he is, and cybernetics.

Keywords consonantist psychology, cybernetics, system, resonance, the law of reversibility, feed-back.

"We do not see with our eyes, but with our mind.

If the mind is empty, our eyes look without seeing ''.

St.Odobleja

Who is §tefan Odobleja?

Founder of consonantism and generalized cybernetics, Stephen Odobleja was born in a modest peasant family in the Blahnita Plain on the 13th of October 1902, in Izvorul Aneçtilor village, Mehedinti county, and died on the 4th of October in Drobeta-Turnu Severin. He was a military doctor, scientist, post-mortem member of the Romanian Academy (1990)1. A brilliant pupil in the primary school, in his native village, he attended secondary school and the high school "Traian" in Turnu Severin. For the last years of high school he attended extramural classes, but "borrowing 30 books at a time from the school library, which he used to devour in the patriarchal peace and quiet of his native village". After graduating from high school and working for one year as a substitute teacher in the village Putintei and on the island of Ada Kaleh, in 1922, he won a scholarship at the Military Institute of Forensic Medicine, and he thus managed to attend the Faculty of Medicine in Bucharest. A very hard working student, with a real calling for reading to improve his knowledge, he had imposed himself, even since he was in high school, a personal method of studying and learning foreign languages, and managed to go through an immense bibliography, suitable for becoming an "uomo universal."

As a student, he made inquiries in the clinics of Bucharest, being first concerned with the principle of sound propagation in the living organisms. In 1928 he earned the title of PhD. in medicine and surgery with the thesis 'Car Accidents' and thereafter he performed his military service in different garrisons in the country, (Bräila, Lipcani, Turda, Turnu Severin, Dorohoi, Dej, Tâgoviçte, Lugoj, Cernavoda) looking for peace and quiet for his study.

His first research works appeared in specialized journals and, in 1935, he published, in Paris, his work, 'La phonoscopie, nouvelle méthode d'exploration clinique' for which he received the Romanian Academy Award 'General Dr. Al. Papiu'. In 1937, participating in the International Congress of Military Medicine held in Bucharest, he announced his monumental 'Psychologie consonantiste', a systemic and visionary work that was published in two volumes in Lugoj (1938-1939), with the copyright of distribution by 'Librairie Maloine' from Paris. But the war interrupted the reception of this work in the milieu of his time, although there were two ample works, published in French, where the author laid the basis avant la lettre of the principles of the 20th century science, cybernetics.

Having returned from the war with the rank of lieutenant colonel, Dr. Stefan Odobleja fell victim of the communist regime. He was forbidden to practise his profession and withdrew to his native village. He was also forced to withdraw his works (over 1,000 copies having remained remaining undistributed after the war), as in the 2nd volume the author demonstrated in a few pages the aberrations and failure of the communist system. However, institutions and scientists from the country and abroad received the two volumes, which had curiously remained unreceived for over 30 years. The two references on 'The Consonantist Psychology' which had appeared in the journals 'Modern Military Spirit' (1939, Romania) and the 'Psychological Abstracts' (1941, USA) did not echo properly, the paradigmatic scientific value of Odobleja's work being received only much later, more precisely, after the emergence of the 20th century science, cybernetics.

In the 1970s, the creator of consonantism discovered, in his turn, his ideas, mainly the law of reversibility or the reverse connection, in Norbert Wiener's feed-back of cybernetics (the Nobel Prize). Encouraged by several writers and by the press, still in full creative power, he came into the attention of scientists, the priority of his work being recognized first in the country, then abroad, and he was called "father of cybernetics" because his work had appeared 10 years before N. Wiener's 'Cybernetics'. This recognition took time, almost a decade (1970-1978), and even posthumously, and, on the other hand, the Romanian science remained deprived of another work of the Romanian scholar 'The Logic of Resonance'. This work was interrupted in the 70s, when the author was forced to write 'The Consonantist Psychology and Cybernetics', a polemical volume appeared posthumously (1978). Later, in 1982, the Romanian translation of 'The Consonantist Psychology appeared. From 'The Logic of Resonance' only the 'Introduction' was published (1984), while the rest of his work remained scattered on thousands sheets of manuscripts.

In the summer of 1978, although seriously suffering from cirrhosis, the scientist prepared a communication for the Congress of specialists in cybernetics which was held in Amsterdam in August. He came with original proposals as to applications of generalized cybernetics starting from universal laws (which today bears his name), systematized in the 'Consonantiste Psychology'. The next day after the news of his successful communication in Amsterdam, he left this world, leaving here, on earth, a legacy which has started to become increasingly precious in our millennium. In our appreciations we rely on everything that followed posthumously - a recourse to consonantist pan psychologism, in the Romanian scientist's work being found the paradigms that explain the phenomena of nature, the binary nature of biological and psychological processes with the help of the reverse connection, a concept (a universal law launched by the author) involving the law of reaction and the law of reversibility in all the other creative, spiritual and material realities. 'The Consonantist Psychology', more famous and percussive in posterity, is much alike the author's destiny, as vice versa. It is the work of a great visionary, which, before reaching its destination (the receiver), resurrected on the way.

What does consonantist psychology mean?

St. Odobleja developed a new outlook on psychology in his work entitled 'The Consonantist Psychology published in French in Lugoj, in two volumes, in the 1938s-1939s and distributed by 'Librairie Maloine' from Paris, but which, because of World War II was confronted with over 35 years of oblivion. It was reviewed only in a Romanian publication in 19392 and in an American journal in 19413.

After the reviews of the years 1939-1941, mentioned above, the first comeback of Odobleja's work in the public eye was due to I. Oancea-Stroe, a friend of the author of 'The Consonantist Psychology' and to V. Pîrvânescu, who published a note in the newspaper of Mehedinti county.4 Then Dr. Olaru presented a paper on Consonantist Psychology in 19735 followed by a series of articles in Tribuna (Cluj) and Flacära magazines. In parallel with the discussions in the press, the first debates took place and the first studies on St. Odobleja's work started to be published. About 120 copies of his work were offered to academic and medical libraries in the most important cultural centres - Rome, Naples, Bologna, Lisbon, Madrid, Copenhagen, London, Stockholm, Athens, Brussels, The Hague, Amsterdam, Cairo, Calcutta, Bombay, Tokyo, Peking, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Mexico, Boston, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc.

In the country, 'The Consonantist Psychology' benefited from the good appreciation of some personalities of the time, among whom C.Parhon, C.Rädulescu-Motru, D.Bagdasar, Lothar Rädäceanu I.Balif, N.Bagdasar, M.Ghilerdea, Gh. Zapan, C.Atanasiu, I.Raianu and others.

The legacy that St. Odobleja left us in the field of psychological creation imposes itself by its intrinsic quality and value rather than by its quantitative dimensions. Besides, as it can be easily inferred even from skimming Odobleja's texts, the author was reluctant to verbosity, endless descriptions, sophisticated sentences full of words but not of scientific content.

At the end of the second tome of the French edition of the 'The Consonantist Psychology', we find a self-characterization that could not be more appropriated for §t. Odobleja's way of thinking and writing about the psychic, the psychical phenomena and other phenomena related to them - "By its external concision, says the author, by its abbreviations, by the limited number of concrete examples, by the synoptic tables, this book is rather a table of contents, a directory or a dictionary of psychology, a general plan for a large 'Treaty of Psychology' which should contain 20-30 toms (660)"

His work really looks like a huge dictionary, showing all terms of a modern treaty of psychology, in a condensed manner, with schematic trends, searching everywhere a unifying principle of logic with psychology, the basis of logicizing psychology and, further on, the universal principle of harmony and synthesis. "For what is consonance, if not a kind of harmony? What is the consonantist psychology, if not a kind of logical harmony?"6

Consonance, as Çt.Odobleja understood it, is an interaction with regulatory character, on the one hand, between the various subassemblies inside one and the same system and, on the other hand, between the system as a whole and the environment. In this context, it is sheer cybernetic (in the contemporary meaning of the term) the emphasis of the author of the 'The Consonantist Psychology' that both the maintenance of a state of optimum balance and adjustment assume that the system make up an internal model (an image) suitable for its external environment. This implies logically the process of communication, the energetic and informational exchange between the system and the environment. In the interpretation of systems, the consonantist psychology rejects the unilateral-absolutist treatments, the so-called "robot type" models and asserts for the first time the logical scheme of the interactional type model, which is central in cybernetics.

Thus, the system behavior is analyzed by correlating the two main links - the input link and the output link. The "input" expresses the necessary dependence of the system considered by the external environment, which can be either only an energetic-informational dependence, such as the one for technical and artificial systems, or an energetic-informational and substantial one, such as the one for biological systems. The "output" expresses the system self-delimitation of the system in relation to the environment and the assertion of an own scope of the system. Between the two links, St. Odobleja postulates a circular type relationship; a direct connection from the "input" to the "output" and a reverse one, from the "output" to the "input".7 The author gave this relation the name of the law of reversibility. "Reversibility is a vicious circle (here, vicious circle is not taken in the sense of the classical logic, but in the sense of feedback, n.n.) between cause and effect. It is an association between two conditions that determine each other alternatively"8

Is not this just the logical scheme of the control and communication process of self-adjustment?9

Consonance arises, in Odobleja's conception, as he himself confesses, from the interdisciplinary approach to sciences, the author making the indisputable proof of a systemic outlook on human knowledge of the universe, implicitly on the human psyche, but a physicist and, at the same, mechanistic outlook on psychology and, respectively, on psychic phenomena, especially on thinking.

We support these appreciations by the author's own arguments: "The Consonantist Psychology - a work of synthesis - resulted from research in the field of classical, settled sciences. I did not achieve it through research in 'border areas', on virgin lands or no one' territories. The interdisciplinary sciences, multiplied today in excess, did not exist in 1938 or were rather scarce, sporadic, accidental. They resulted from the "marriage" - binary match - of two of the scientists from the known ones, from each marriage resulting two daughters of mixed composition <psychology + techniques - > technical psychology + psychological technique. So, the two 'parents' gave birth to 'two daughters sisters'."

The consonantist psychology - to be read: cybernetics - is an interdisciplinary science, we could even say several times interdisciplinary, which was created through interdisciplinary multiple marriages, binary but also successive ones. It is not the first emerging interdisciplinary science but, unlike others, it understood its formation mechanism, analyzed it and established it as a method. It joined very distant sciences -concrete evidence that the combinations generating interdisciplinary sciences are not conditioned by neighborhood and contiguity. By the way it conceived knowledge, the consonantist psychology contributed to the emergence of interdisciplinary sciences. It contributed directly, without the need of mediation and interpretations of those who took over, with considerable deformation, this idea10.

Establishing the consonant relationships between sciences, multiple consonance (spatial, physical, logical and psychological), Odobleja postulates the possibility of mechanizing thinking, conceived as a creative act. Everything relies on the consonance of the psychological processes with the physical ones, on the possibility of materialization and mechanization of these processes. In other words, by a geometrical, physical and mechanical moulding of thought. Instead of a thinking "instilled in us by someone else (a Deus ex machinna) I saw a thinking accomplished by itself - through natural determinism. Thinking is not a barrel organ that a person can spin, even if it is an inner person or even if it is called 'consciousness', but thinking is a physiological activity, as the other automatic functions of the body"11. Odobleja speaks about the mechanization of sensory processes, the materialization of memory by storing information; the mechanization of driving forces by means of various machines, the substituting of organic secretions with prefabricated products. He believes that computing machines represent a start in this respect. But he forsees this for the future. Actual, creative thinking machines, machines for philosophizing and, according to his classical logical conception, machines defining, to dividing, to classifying. He also enumerates the advantages of mechanization of the creative act, of thinking and imagination; a great intellectual economization, a great progress in the cerebral hygiene of intellectual workers, a considerable increase in the yield of thought.

This is, obviously, a consequence of technico-cybernetic type of the logical and psychological substantiation of sciences, a consequence of the fundamentalist theory of consonantist type. It is considered to be a "generalized cybernetic vision". The discussions about its appreciation and capitalization still continue. Naturally, the similarities between the "current cybernetic vision and the generalized one" are taken into account. The similarities refer, certainly, only to this consequence, the current cybernetic, no matter the variant in which we accept it, cannot constitute a theory underlying sciences.12.

From the consonantist psychology to cybernetics

St. Odobleja's main work, 'The Consonantist Psychology', appeared about 10 years before the 'Cybernetics'13 of the American Norbert Wiener 14, about which Odobleja would find out later, both due to the war events and, subsequently (after his disbadment), due to his long isolation in his native village from Mehedinti, the former village Izvorul Anestilor (that now bears his name), deprived of the possibility of keeping abreast of the news from the scientific world.

The more detailed explanation of the exceptional value and significance of 'The Consonantist Psychology', as well as the demonstration and argumentation of its priority in the birth of cybernetics were the reasons that led him, in the last years of his life, to write the book 'The Consonantist Psychology and Cybernetics' (published at Scrisul Românesc Publishing House from Craiova), which he managed to see only in the final form for printing (but not printed) due to the rapid worsening of his disease, and death. In the context of our argumentation we intend to present some assessments, explanations and the most significant motivations invoked by Stephen Odobleja in the above mentioned volume, perhaps less known even by those interested, because of the relatively modest and quickly exhausted edition at the date of publication, in 1978. The author is particularly explicit in the Introduction he signs, considering that "establishing equivalence between cybernetics and consonantist psychology, we indicate the latter as the originary cybernetics - the first fundamental theoretical cybernetics. Supported on ample evidence, we prove that cybernetics was born between 1925 and 1938 in Romania and that it is contained, under all its aspects, in The Consonatist Psychology, which has a categorical priority on the subsequent cybernetics, whose long series began only in 1948, when even the practical applications of the initial cybernetics had already begun to appear, with the first machines designed by it"15. As for four decades no one thought to highlight the cyberneticism of his psychology and the psychologism of cybernetics, the author himself intended to address this shortcoming, as he knew best his own ideas, being the most appropriate person to eliminate the confusion with the ideas of others and the undifferentiated mixture between the ideas of his precursors and successors.

For a fair and honest understanding of the problem analyzed, we would like to show, based on genuine arguments, that Stefan Odobleja recognized the exceptional performances recorded by the American researchers in the fields of technical and private cybernetics, which cannot, however, eclipse the "general cybernetics" that generated them", previously, having Romanian origin. 'Cybernetics' - he continued, will be cybernetics, as Norbert Wiener called it, just as America will be America, after the name of its vulgarizer. Still, it's good to know who discovered America, actually, and who established and developed, in fact, cybernetics"16. It is essential to prove paternity of cybernetics and "not the midwives who did the midwifery, the godparents who baptized it or the nannies who breasted it, after its birth, as a fully constituted science, general and complete, ever since 193817.It is necessary to achieve a categorical discrimination between the cybernetics fully constituted of the year 1938 and its precursors - between the integral, totalized cybernetics, on the one hand, and its components on the other hand. The Consonantiste Psychology emerged in 1938 as a complete general cybernetics - the first cybernetics established, that detached itself significantly from the compact group of its precursors. This was, in fact, the year when the string of precursors ended and the string of specialists in cybernetics emerged, and the Consonantist Psychology thus inaugurated Cybernetics. "As a theoretician - Odobleja stated, developing a theory that proved to be accurate and effective, I think I have fulfilled my mission. It was the others' job to check it experimentally. And the fact that the theory verification was accomplished by others, it is an additional guarantee of the objectivity and validity of this verification"18.

The Consonantist Psychology was preceded by many valuable works, but the author s remark "none showed so many cybernetic type trends and at such a high level, none offered a synthesis so typically cybernetic, none joined together so many defining attributes of it - psychological mechanization with the mechanization of thought, with binary and dichotomy, with the cyclic process, with the cybernetic methodology, etc. None presented, analyzed, summarized and generalized them at the cybernetic level, which was also the level of consonantist psychology."19

As to its successors, by comparison, Norbert Wiener's 'Cybernetics' (rich in information but with less genuine material, few cybernetic ideas and questionable rigor, clarity in approach) can represent only as denomination the moment of its birth, of achieving the new science, only announcing and drawing attention to it, the moment of continuing it and treating it from a certain perspective ... And this is because "not the novelty of its denomination - emphasizes Odobleja - is that which gives cybernetics its value of originality, but the novelty of the content of ideas20.

But what is cybernetics? Analyzing and synthesizing the opinions, the viewpoints, the different and numerous definitions after 1948 (incomplete, but partially true, completing each other) we can draw some meaningful conclusions, each one of them envisaging certain important, essential elements of that term.21 Therefore, cybernetics is both a theory of tuning, of dynamic systems with self-regulation, of a unified and generalized adjustment, based on reverse action (cyclic process, feedback), both a technique of artificial thinking and of robots (whose ideas lie at the basis of modern computers) and a method of analogies, models and modeling, of links and proximity between sciences / it is the method of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches, generalizations, unifications and syntheses, of common laws, a psychology with multiple and varied meanings, science of management (natural and artificial management) or ordering. It is not only a mere discipline, confined to a narrow and strictly delimited field - states Odobleja, but a complex of disciplines born from psychology and focused around it, emerging from it like the branches of a tree from its stem. It is a staged synthesis, a string of multiple modelings, often mutual, syntheses and modelings in which prevail, both as a priority and special significance, the modeling of psychology on technique and then modeling of technique on psychology ... Cybernetics is an intellectual symphony, a symphony of ideas and sciences22.

Conclusions

There are many viewpoints on Odobleja's work 23, his vision gaining sustainability along with the contemporary trend of interpreting cybernetics, more specifically the psychology of cybernetics facing difficulties in explaining fully the psychological area. It is known that after the publication of Norbert Wiener's 'Cybernetics' in 1948, which had the strongest impact on the whole scientific and philosophical thinking in the second half of the 20th century, cybernetics was applied in technique, biology, economics and sociology. The years '50s and '60s of 20th century were periods of emergence of biocybernetics, neurocybernetics, economic cybernetics and a cybernetic vision of society, along with the continuous development of technical cybernetics. In the '70s and even before, the cybernetic psychology developed. Is Odobleja only a precursor or founder of cyber psychology, given the title of his work 'The Consonantist Psychology'?

We also ask ourselves: was cybernetics born twice, in two different places, through the independent and absolutely isolated efforts of two authors?

We appreciate that cybernetics was not born twice, but only once.

Stefan Odobleja cannot be considered the founder of cybernetics, this is undoubtedly the merit of the American mathematician Norbert Wiener who considers that cybernetics was born in Princeton in late winter 1943-1944, on the occasion of a meeting initiated there by himself and by the mathematician Dr. Joseph Neumann "I consider this conference as the birthplace of a new science - cybernetics, or the theory of order and communication in machines and living organism. The American scientist assumes that "feed-back was born at Princeton, cybernetics was born at Princeton", which is not reducible only to feed-back, fact which was further demonstrated by his research at MIT.

Stefan Odobleja remains indisputably in the history of cybernetics not only as a precursor of cybernetics, but also because he has the world priority of the idea of a generalized cybernetics, being the first thinker who considers the phenomenon of closed loop with reverse connection as a universal law. No one before him had such a vision of the role of general feed-back in nature and society. Odobleja is the first who tried to apply the feed-back law (the law of reversibility) to as many areas as possible, mainly to all fields. In this way he delimitates all the particular cases where the reverse connection was highlighted.

As far as the Consonantist Psychology is concerned, we consider that this work is not only a cyber work or a "theory of reversibility". It is a new theory of thought, a philosophy of mental processes and science, the author searching a number of general laws that apply to all areas, to all living and inert natural sciences, to psychology and socio-economic life. Even if he did not have the chance of international recognition of its valuable scientific contributions, Stefan Odobleja is undoubtedly a genuine landmark of Romanian and universal thinking, science and culture.

Footnote

1 Information concerning Stefan Odobleja's life, work and personality were selected from the Personal Archive, "Dr. §tefan Odobleja" within the Romanian National Archives, SJAN Mehedinti, 1978.

2 C. Atanasiu, review, in The Modern Military Spirit, Januarie- February 1939, p.60.

3 S.M. Strong, abstract in Psychological Abstracts, 1941, January, p.59-60.

4 I. Oancea-Stroe, V. Pîrvânescu, Small Encyclopedia of Severin, Viitorul (The Future), Mehedinti, 12 Mai 1972, p.1.

5 Al. Olaru, The Consonantist Psychology, communication at the Conference for the history of Medicine, Bucharest, 30 April, 1973, apud. Mihai Drägänescu and Pantelimon Golu in Introduction to The Consonantist Psychology, Bucharest, The Scientific and Encylopaedic Publishing House, 1982, p.6.

6 St. Odobleja, The Consonantist Psychology and Cybernetics, Craiova, Scrisul románese (The Romanian Writing), Publishing House, 1978, p. 126.

7 St.Odobleja, The Consonantist Psychology, Maloine, Paris, 1938, 1st vol., p.144, 188.

8 Ibidem, p.429.

9 Mihai Golu, Forward to St. Odobleja, The Consonantist Psychology and Cybernetics, cited works, p. 12.

10 Ibidem, p.129.

11 Ibidem, p.123.

12 Al. Surdu, Introductary Study la St.Odobleja, Introduction to the Logic of Resonance, Forward by Constantin Noica, Craiova, Scrisul Românesc Publishing House, 1984, p.13.

13 N.Wiener, Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, translated by Al. Giuculescu, Bucharest, The Scientific Publishing House, 1966.

14 Norbert Wiener (1894-1964), Prof. of Mathematics at Massachusetts Institute of Techonology, USA, considered to the founder of cybernetics.

15 St.Odobleja, The Consonatist Psychology and Cybernetics, cited works, p.17.

16 Ibidem, p.18.

17 Ibidem, p.19.

18 Ibidem, p.20.

19 Ibidem, 260.

20 Ibidem, 262.

21 www.observatorul. com/articles_main.asp? action...ID 8852, mai1, 2010.

22 Ibidem, 210-260

23 M. Drägänescu, Romanian Precursors of Cybernetics, Contemporanul, 16 June, 1978, p.8.

References

REFERENCES

Atanasiu, C., (1939), Review, in The Modern Military Spirit, Januarie-February.

Drägänescu, M., (1978), Romanian Precursors of Cybernetics, Contemporanul (The Contemporary), 16 June.

Oancea-Stroe, I., Pîrvânescu, V., (1972), Small Encyclopedia of Severin, Viitorul (The Future), Mehedinti, 12 May.

Odobleja, St. (1938), The Consonantist Psychology, Maloine, Paris, 1st vol.

Odobleja, St., (1978), The Consonantist Psychology and Cybernetics, Craiova, Scrisul românesc (The Romanian Writing), Publishing House.

Olaru, Al., (1973), The Consonantist Psychology, communication at the Conference for the history of Medicine, Bucharest, 30 April, 1973, apud. Mihai Drägänescu and Pantelimon Golu, (1982), in Introduction to The Consonantist Psychology, Bucharest, The Scientific and Encylopaedic Publishing House.

Strong, S.M., (1941), Abstract in Psychological Abstracts, January.

Surdu, Al., (1984), Introductory Study to St.Odobleja, Introduction to the Logic of Resonance, Forward by Constantin Noica, Craiova, Scrisul Românesc (The Romanian Writing), Publishing House.

Wiener, N., (1966), Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, translated by Al.Giuculescu, Bucharest, The Scientific Publishing House. www.observatorul (2010) com/articles_main.asp? action...ID 8852.