Norbert Wiener

MIT mathematician, child prodigy, and founder of cybernetics — the study of control and communication in animals and machines. His anti-aircraft predictor work in the war led him to the feedback loop as a general principle of mind and mechanism.

Cybernetics is the water Bateson swam in. Feedback, circular causality, and the idea that purpose can be described mechanically all enter this corpus through Wiener and the Macy Conferences.