Oh wow. I read early Wiener account of McCulloch&Pitts work and even have one of their papers in my copy of 1956 Dartmouth workshop proceedings. It always puzzled me how Wiener and the whole cybernetics thing sort of just faded away. Had no idea that one woman single-handedly killed it.
Jerry Lettwin, one of Conway and Siegelman’s informants, suggests that Margaret’s accusation was a lie. Nevertheless, Wiener reacted strongly and immediately, cutting all ties with McCulloch and his group. His actions were, as the authors argue, the death knell for cybernetics as a unified field of study. McCulloch and his team were devastated by Wiener’s rejection, and they turned away from further exploration and elaboration of his ideas.
Wiener's wife did influence the fallout between him and McCulloch but this hardly killed cybernetics, and is perhaps best interpreted as an MIT turf war.
