La cybernétique « américaine » au sein du structuralisme « français »

Abstract

Through an examination of archival correspondences, institutional records, and published research, this paper reconstructs a convergence of the interests of the Rockefeller Foundation, Roman Jakobson, and Claude Lévi-Strauss around cybernetics during the 1940s and 1950s. Foundation support for both men contributed towards their partial synthesis of cybernetics within their postwar conceptions of structural research, as well as the transfer of American- and engineering-derived cybernetic formulas into the European human sciences. However such a synthesis and transfer was both partial and contested; during the course of the 1950s Jakobson’s and Lévi-Strauss’ employment of cybernetics and structuralism diverged not only from that of the Rockefeller Foundation, but also from one another.

Keywords

• history of science
• structuralism
• Lévi-Strauss
• Jakobson
• computer sciences
• cold war