Magoroh Maruyama


Magoroh Maruyama was a Japanese/American business educator, consultant and researcher, best known for his contributions to cybernetics.

Biography

Maruyama was born in Tokyo, Japan as son of Shinsaku Maruyama and Toyoko Maruyama in 1929, and moved to the United States in 1950. He received his B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1951. After postgraduate studies at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the University of Heidelberg, he obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Lund in Sweden.
Maruyama started his academic career as assistant professor in human development at the University of California at Berkeley in 1960. Among his many academic appointments he was professor for Systems Science at Portland State University from 1973 to 1976. He was also Professor in the School of International Politics, Economics and Communication at Aoyama Gakuin University in Japan and was on the faculty of Stanford University, Brandeis University, Antioch College, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and the University of Illinois.

Work

Magoroh Maruyama is the author of over hundred publications. The subjects of his research are including cybernetics, systems science, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, sociology, social change, business management, architectural design, and urban planning. He has been consulting companies and institutions such as the NASA, US Department of Commerce, and US Department of Interior in the United States, the OECD, Volvo and Michelin in Europe, MITI of Japan, the City of Baghdad, the Government of Ivory Coast, and Federal Motors of Indonesia.
Highly cited is his paper from 1963 on "The second cybernetics: Deviation-amplifying mutual causal processes", in which he describes a theory of increase of heterogeneity by causal loops.

Publications

Some of Maruyama's best known publications are: