In the 1960s and 1970s West Germany, approaches from Neurophysiology and Cybernetics not only conceptualized analogies between biological and technical pattern recognition but also reinforced these in experimental setups and technological arrangements. The Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 50 of the German Research Foundation (DFG) is an internationally unique example of such cooperative efforts (Aumann 2009).
Within in the SFB 50 researchers such as the physiologist Wolf Singer (Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry, MPIP) or the engineer Gert Hauske (TU Munich, TUM) set out to explicitly utilize the assumed proximity of neurophysiological theory and practice to new technologies of pattern recognition. However, while the translational animal organism (Ankeny and Leonelli 2020), was central to physiological knowledge production on the visual system, and the circuit, not least the computer, was central to engineering work, translating knowledge across these epistemic – that is social, material, theoretical, and practical – boundaries presented a challenge. Over the course of the 1970s, psychophysical experiments on humans were increasingly integrated into the work of the SFB. This tripartite arrangement between animal, human and machine apparently made it possible to shift between different epistemic orders and organize interdisciplinary transfer of knowledge.
The paper analyzes these socio-technical arrangements that relate humans, machines, and organisms to each other and mediate translation processes within and between different experimental systems (Rheinberger 2021). Based on scientific publications and archival sources of the MPIP, TUM and DFG, the paper asks for the role of psychophysics within this endeavor and places it within the larger context of the SFB 50.