Includes bibliographical references (p. [479]-502) and index.

Psychiatry to cybernetics -- Grey Walter: from electroshock to the psychedelic sixties -- The tortoise and the brain -- Tortoise ontology -- Tortoises as not-brains -- The social basis of cybernetics -- Rodney Brooks and robotics -- Cora and machina docilis -- Cybernetics and madness -- Strange performances -- Flicker -- Flicker and the sixties -- Biofeedback and new music -- Ross Ashby: psychiatry, synthetic brains, and cybernetics -- The pathological brain -- Ashby's hobby -- The homeostat -- The homeostat as ontological theater -- The social basis of Ashby's cybernetics -- Design for a brain -- Dams -- Madness revisited -- Adaptation, war, and society -- Cybernetics as a theory of everything -- Cybernetics and epistemology -- A new kind of science: Alexander, Kauffman, and Wolfram -- Gregory Bateson and R. D. Laing: symmetry, psychiatry, and the sixties -- Gregory Bateson -- Schizophrenia and enlightenment -- Therapy -- As nomad -- R. D. Laing -- On therapy -- Kingsley Hall -- Archway -- Coupled becomings, inner voyages, aftermath -- Psychiatry and the sixties -- Ontology, power, and revealing -- Beyond the brain -- Stafford Beer: from the cybernetic factory to tantric yoga -- From operations research to cybernetics -- Toward the cybernetic factory -- Biological computing -- Ontology and design -- The social basis of Beer's cybernetics -- The afterlife of biological computing -- The viable system model -- The VSM as ontology and epistemology -- The VSM in practice -- Chile: project cybersyn -- The politics of the VSM -- The political critique of cybernetics -- On goals -- The politics of interacting systems -- Team syntegrity -- Cybernetics and spirituality -- Hylozoism -- Tantrism -- Brian Eno and new music -- Gordon Pask: from chemical computers to adaptive archictecture -- Musicolour -- The history of musicolour -- Musicolour and ontology -- Ontology and aesthetics -- The social basis of Pask's cybernetics -- Training machines -- Teaching machines -- Chemical computers -- Threads -- New senses -- The epistemology of cybernetic research -- Cas, social science, and F-22s --The arts and the sixties -- Cybernetic theater -- Cybernetic serendipity -- The social basis again --The fun palace -- After the sixties: adaptive architecture -- Sketches of another future -- Themes from the history of cybernetics -- Ontology -- Design -- Power -- The arts -- Selves -- Spirituality -- The sixties -- Altered states -- The social basis -- Sketches of another future.