Norbert Wiener - Cybernetics or Control and Communication in an Animal and a Machine. Who is Norbert Wiener? Who was the "father of cybernetics"? Norbert Wiener inventions

Norbert Wiener, a short biography and interesting facts from the life of an American scientist of Jewish origin, an outstanding mathematician and philosopher, the founder of the theory of artificial intelligence and cybernetics, are presented in this article.

Short biography of Norbert Wiener

Norbert Wiener was born on November 26, 1894 in Missouri into a Jewish family of immigrants from Germany. Being very young, he avidly read books from his parents' library. He was a very gifted person. And at the age of 7 he wrote the first scientific treatise on Darwinism. In fact, Wiener did not really study in high school, since at the age of 11 he entered Taft College, graduating 3 years later with a bachelor of arts degree. When Norbert was 18 years old, he already had a Ph.D. in mathematical logic, which he received after studying at Harvard and Cornell Universities. A year later, he was invited to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Department of Mathematics.

But he does not get tired of comprehending science - in 1913 Wiener travels across Europe and listens to lectures by Hardy and Russell at the University of Cambridge and lectures by Gilbert in Göttingen. In Europe, he tries his hand at journalism, teaching, and even worked in an engineering plant.

After the outbreak of the First World War, he returns to America and tries to get to the front. But he did not pass the medical examination.

In 1919, Norbert worked as a lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Department of Mathematics.

In the 20-30s, he again made a trip to Europe. True, this time he is already giving lectures, since Wiener created, together with Hopf, the theory of radiation equilibrium, called the Wiener-Hopf equation.

Before the outbreak of World War II, Wiener was already a professor at Harvard, Columbia, Göttingen, Cornell and Brown universities. He also took full ownership of the mathematics department at the Massachusetts Institute. He wrote many articles and studies.

During the Second World War, the professor began work on a mathematical apparatus for anti-aircraft fire guidance systems. Wiener is the developer of a new effective probabilistic model for the control of air defense forces. This was a breakthrough in cybernetics. Soon he published the book "Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in an Animal and a Machine", which became the main result of his long-term research and experiments. She laid the foundations for the study of artificial intelligence. That is why the American scientist Norbert Wiener is considered the father of cybernetics. For its development, cybernetics was awarded the Gold Medal of Scientist, America's highest honor for a man of science.

Norbert Wiener interesting facts

• Scientist was a rather clumsy and insecure child, since due to severe myopia he developed many complexes. As a result, the boy had little contact with his peers, distracting himself from everything in the world of science and literature.
• Father of Cybernetics, American scientist Norbert Wiener suffered from extreme forgetfulness.
• In 1926, he combined the knot with Margaret Engerman. The couple had two daughters.
• During his teaching career, Norbert Wienet never announced the topic of the lecture, and never brought a synopsis or plan to the lesson. Entering the lecture hall, blowing his nose loudly, he immediately turned to face the blackboard and began to deduce formulas, muttering something incomprehensible to himself under his breath. Having written the necessary formulas or arguments, he immediately erased and took up the chalk over and over again. Students sometimes did not even have time to copy them onto the blackboards. At the end of the lecture, he left the audience without looking at anyone.
• He created a management model, which, without computers, was able to homing at a target, and showed the effect of artificial intelligence in practice.

Norbert Wiener

Wiener Norbert (1894-1964), American scientist. In the work "Cybernetics" he formulated the main provisions cybernetics ... Transactions on mathematical analysis, probability theory, electrical networks and computer technology.

Wiener Norbert (1894-1964) - American mathematician, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA). Wiener's early work was mainly devoted to the foundations of mathematics. Wiener was also engaged in theoretical physics, received a number of significant results in the field of mathematical analysis and probability theory. The study of the functioning of electronic tracking and computing devices along with research (together with the Mexican physiologist Dr. A. Rosenbluth) on the physiology of nervous activity led Wiener to formulate the ideas and principles of cybernetics (Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in an Animal and a Machine, 1948). Wiener's philosophical views are eclectic; Wiener himself considered himself to be existentialism with his pessimistic views on society. Wiener urged to fight against the war, advocated international cooperation of scientists.

Philosophical Dictionary. Ed. I.T. Frolov. M., 1991, p. 66-67.

Wiener Norbert (11/20/1894, Columbia, Missouri, - 3/18/1964, Stockholm), American mathematician, one of the founders of cybernetics. Studied with J. Santayana , J. Royce , B. Russell , E. Husserl , D. Hilbert ... Wiener's first studies were devoted to logic, in particular, a comparative analysis of the theory of relations by E. Schroeder and B. Russell. Wiener's mathematical creativity was largely determined by the formulation of problems in theoretical physics (Brownian motion, statistical mechanics) and biological sciences (modeling of neurodynamic processes), as well as by problems of electrical and computer technology. Wiener's results in the theory of Fourier transforms, potential theory, the theory of Tauberian theorems, probability theory, communication theory, generalized harmonic analysis, prediction and filtering theory testify to the desire for interdisciplinary synthesis and the linkage of theoretical constructions with practice. This attitude of Wiener found expression in the book "Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in an Animal and a Machine" (1948: Russian translation 19682), in which the status of a new complex scientific research was substantiated. direction and entered its name. Developing statistical information theory, Wiener deepened the interpretation of the principle of negative feedback and showed the analogies that exist between the calculator, the machine and the human brain. Wiener's idea of \u200b\u200bcybernetics is based on the proposition of the unity of control processes and information processing in complex systems.

Proceeding from the fact that "new concepts of communication and control entail a new understanding of man and human knowledge about the universe and society" ("I am a mathematician", M., 1964, p. 312), he developed a cybernetic approach to various fields of science and culture. Wiener defended ideas of a materialistic and dialectical nature. He attached great importance to the analysis of the relationship between necessity and chance (the concept of a "probabilistic universe"), analyzed the relationship between information and thermodynamic laws, studied control and information processes in the context of purposeful behavior, emphasized the role of models in cognition. In recent works, Wiener turned to the problems of learners and self-reproducing machines, the issues of human interaction with information and computing devices. Wiener pointed out the need to study the social aspects of scientific. knowledge, responsibility of scientists in the modern world.

Philosophical Encyclopedic Dictionary. - M .: Soviet encyclopedia. Ch. edited by L. F. Ilyichev, P. N. Fedoseev, S. M. Kovalyov, V. G. Panov. 1983.

Works: Selected papers, Camb. (Mass.) 1964; in Russian per.- Cybernetics and Society, M., 1958; Science and Society, "VF", 1961, no. 7.

Literature: Povarov G. H., H. Viner and his "Cybernetics", in the book: Viner N., Cybernetics ..., M., 19682; Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. 1966, v. 72, no. 1, pt 2 (lit.).

Norbert Wiener was born on November 26, 1894 in Columbia, Missouri, into a Jewish family. At the age of nine, he entered a secondary school, in which children of 15-16 years old began to study, after completing an eight-year preliminary. He graduated from high school when he was eleven. Immediately entered the institution of higher education Tufts College. After graduating, at the age of fourteen, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree. Then he studied at Harvard and Cornell Universities, at the age of 17 at Harvard he became a master of arts, at 18 - a doctor of philosophy with a degree in mathematical logic.

Harvard University awarded Wiener a scholarship to study at Cambridge (England) and Göttingen (Germany) universities.

In the 1915/1916 academic year, Wiener taught mathematics at Harvard University as an assistant.

Wiener spent the next academic year as a self-employed at the University of Maine. After the US entered the war, Wiener worked at the General Electric plant, from where he moved to the editorial office of the Encyclopedia of America in Albany. In 1919, he became an assistant in the Department of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In 1920-1925 he solves physical and technical problems with the help of abstract mathematics and finds new patterns in the theory of Brownian motion, potential theory, harmonic analysis.

At the same time, Wiener met one of the designers of computers, W. Bush, and expressed the idea of \u200b\u200ba new harmonic analyzer that had come to his mind one day. In 1926, D.Ya. came to work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Stroykh. Wiener, together with him, began to apply the ideas of differential geometry to differential equations, including the Schrödinger equation.

In 1929, the Swedish journal Akta Mathematica and the American Annals of Mathematics published two large summarizing articles by Wiener on generalized harmonic analysis. Since 1932, Wiener has been a professor at MIT.

The computers that existed at that time did not have the required speed. This forced Wiener to formulate a number of requirements for such machines. The machine, Wiener believed, must correct its actions by itself; it is necessary to develop the ability to self-study in it. To do this, it must be equipped with a memory block where control signals would be deposited, as well as the information that the machine will receive during operation.

In 1943, an article by Wiener, Rosenbluth, and Byglaw, "Behavior, Purposefulness, and Teleology," was published, which was an outline of the cybernetic method.

In Wiener's head, the idea has long been ripening to write a book and tell in it about the generality of laws operating in the field of automatic regulation, organization of production and in the human nervous system. He managed to persuade the Parisian publisher Feyman to publish this future book.

Immediately there was a difficulty with the title, the content was too unusual. It was required to find a word related to management, regulation. Greek came to mind, similar to "helmsman", which in English sounds like "cybernetics". So Wiener left him.

The book was published in 1948 by the New York publishing house "John Wiley and Suns" and the Parisian "Hermann et Qi". Speaking about control and communication in living organisms and machines, he saw the main thing not just in the words "control" and "communication", but in their combination. Cybernetics is the science of information management, and Wiener can rightfully be considered the creator of this science.

All the years after the release of "Cybernetics" Wiener promoted her ideas. In 1950, a sequel was published - "Human Use of Human Beings", in 1958 - "Nonlinear Problems in the Theory of Random Processes", in 1961 - the second edition of "Cybernetics", in 1963 - a kind of cybernetic essay "Joint Stock Company God and Golem" ...

Reprinted from the site http://100top.ru/encyclopedia/

One of the founders of cybernetics

Wiener Norbert (November 26, 1894, Columbia, Missouri - March 18, 1964, Stockholm) - American mathematician, one of the founders of cybernetics. After completing his postgraduate studies at Harvard University, at the age of eighteen he became a Ph.D. in mathematical logic; prepared himself for a philosophical career, but later gave preference to mathematics. Among his teachers are J. Santayana, J. Royce, B. Russell, E. Husserl, D. Hilbert.

Wiener's early work was devoted to logic, statistical mechanics, modeling of neurodynamic processes, as well as problems of electrical engineering, radar and computing.

In 1948, Wiener's main work, Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in an Animal and a Machine, was published. There are two theses in this work. The first is the similarity of control and communication processes in machines, living organisms and biological communities. These processes are primarily the processes of transmission, storage and processing of information. The second thesis: the amount of information is identified by Wiener with negative entropy and becomes, like the amount of matter or energy, one of the fundamental characteristics of nature. Hence the interpretation of cybernetics as a theory of organization, as a theory of struggle against world chaos, with a fatal increase in entropy. The human mind is one of the links in this struggle. “We are floating upstream,” he wrote, “fighting a huge stream of disorganization, which, in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics, seeks to reduce everything to heat death - universal equilibrium and identity. What Maxwell, Boltzmann, and Gibbs called heat death in their physical works found its counterpart in the ethics of Kierkegaard, who argued that we live in a world of chaotic morality. In this world, our first duty is to arrange arbitrary islands of order and systems ”(N. Wiener - mathematician, p. 311).

However, the cosmic perspectives of this struggle, according to the founder of cybernetics, are inevitably tragic. “The best we can hope for in speaking of the role of progress in a universe as a whole going to its death is that the spectacle of our aspirations to progress in the face of oppressive necessity can make sense of the cleansing horror of Greek tragedy.” (Wiener N. Cybernetics and Society, p. 53).

In recent works, Wiener developed a cybernetic approach to various fields of science and technology, investigated the problems of learning and self-reproducing machines and their interaction with humans. The scientist's humanistic views were reflected both in his philosophical reflections on the contradictory nature of the use of cybernetic technology (for good or bad for a person) and on the scientist's social responsibility, as well as in his social and educational activities.

Yu. Yu. Petrunin

New Philosophical Encyclopedia. In four volumes. / Institute of Philosophy RAS. Scientific ed. advice: V.S. Stepin, A.A. Guseinov, G.Yu. Semigin. M., Mysl, 2010, vol. I, A - D, p. 402-403.

Read on:

Philosophers, Lovers of Wisdom (Biographical Index).

Compositions:

Selected papers. Cambr. (Mass.) 1964;

I am a mathematician. M., 1964;

Cybernetics and Society. M., 1958;

Creator and robot. Discussion of some of the problems in which cybernetics collides with religion. M., 1966;

Cybernetics, or control and communication in an animal and a machine. M., 1983.

Literature:

Povarov GN Norbert Wiener and his "Cybernetics". - In the book: Wiener N. Cybernetics, or control and communication in an animal and a machine. M., 1968;

Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 1966, v. 72, No. I, pt 2 (lit.).

Management classics. Wiener Norbert

Publishing information courtesy ofand publishing house Peter

Wiener Norbert (1894-1964), Wiener, Norbert

1. Introduction
2. Main contribution
3. Practical application of key ideas

Brief biographical information

Main works

(1948)
The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (1950)
Ex-prodigy (1952)
I am a Mathematician (1956)
God and Golem, Inc. (1964)
Invention: The Care and Feeding of Ideas (1993)

Summary

Norbert Wiener was the father of cybernetics, a new science that emerged at the intersection of several scientific disciplines shortly after the end of World War II. Cybernetics established links between wartime science and post-war social science through the development of a non-causal and ecological vision of both physical and biological systems. In his works devoted to cybernetics, N. Wiener demonstrated the presence of an invariant in the mechanisms of control and information transfer of living beings and machines. Cybernetic principles provided, on the one hand, the foundations for the creation of many technical devices, for example, radars, information networks, computers and artificial limbs, and on the other hand, they helped to develop fundamental approaches to the study of such phenomena of the living world as learning, memory and intelligence. Cybernetic ideas have found application and were further developed in management sciences, as well as in a broader sociological context.

1. Introduction

Norbert Wiener possessed extraordinary mathematical abilities and, at the age of 19, managed to obtain a Ph.D. from Harvard University (Harvard University). The bulk of his scientific career was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he, as professor of mathematics, wrote 11 books and over 200 articles for various scientific journals. From the first early ones devoted to the creation of the mathematical theory of Brownian motion and mathematical models for quantum mechanics of works (in the 1920s - the most important problems of theoretical physics), N. Wiener showed himself as a remarkable mathematician, having managed to supplement the natural-scientific content of his works with an original personal philosophy. For N. Wiener, mathematical theories were special conditions in which general philosophical ideas were concretized. His philosophical approach implied a unified view of the world, including the people existing in it, a world in which everything is interconnected, but in which the most general principles have elements of uncertainty (Heims, 1980: 140, 156). Such a holistic (or ecological) vision of nature, proposed by a scientist who worked in the first half of the 20th century, was far ahead of its time.

2. Main contribution

During World War II, the US Research and Development Administration prioritized work on the long-term atomic bomb project, as well as the more urgent task of finding ways to destroy German bombers. While the main work on the creation of the atomic bomb was carried out at Los Alamos, research on methods for detecting, tracking and destroying aircraft was carried out mainly inMIT, where N. Wiener was responsible for the development of the mathematical apparatus necessary for solving this problem. In collaboration with the young engineer Julian Bigelow, N. Wiener developed a fairly general mathematical theory of predicting the best options for the future based on incomplete information about the past. This theory contributed to a revolutionary revolution in the practice of creating communications and laid the foundations for the modern statistical theory of communications and information (Heims, 1980: 184). At the time (1940s), this theory immediately led to a significant improvement in aircraft tracking using radars and was successfully applied to the creation of noise filtering devices for radios, telephones and many other general-purpose devices (Wiener, 1993). This work was carried out by N. Wiener at about the same time when, independently of him, Claude Shannon was creating his “mathematical theory of information transmission” (Shannon and Weaver, 1949).
One of the most interesting aspects of the air defense problem was associated with the creation of a feedback loop: information from the radar screen was used to calculate the corrections necessary for controlling the weapon of destruction to improve the guidance accuracy, and then the effectiveness of these adjustments was tracked and displayed using the radar, then this new the information was again used to clarify the aiming of the weapon at the target, etc. If the calculations in this process were carried out automatically, then such a system worked as self-governing; if the calculations were not automated, then the entire system as a whole, including the people acting in it, was also self-governing. N. Wiener's most important guess was precisely that similar feedback mechanisms are used in all types of purposeful activity, for example, when we take an ordinary pencil from the table. Here information, perceived mainly through observation, is continuously used to control our arm muscles until the moment the task is successfully completed. N. Wiener discussed his ideas in this area with the Mexican physiologist Arturo Rosenbluet, who suggested that some common disorders of the nervous system, known as ataxia (impaired coordination of movements), can be explained in terms of the inaccuracy of the feedback system. If you offer a cigarette to someone with ataxia, they will reach out further than it takes to take it off the table. Further, he will make useless movements in the opposite direction, and then again in the original, so that his actions will resemble an oscillatory process that does not lead to the set goal.
The idea that some parallels between mechanical devices and living organisms can be found with the help of mathematical formulas has received support from many representatives of various sciences. On March 8, 1946, twenty-one prominent scientists gathered in a New York hotel to discuss such ideas. This meeting was the first in a series of scientific conferences sponsored byMacy Foundation - during which the basic principles of the new science of cybernetics were formulated. A group of scientists who regularly participated in these meetings in 1946-1953. received the name "cybernetic group" (Heims, 1991). It included such scientists as the eminent mathematician John von Neumann, the neuropsychiatrist Warren McCullah, the social scientist Gregory Bateson, as well as Arturo Rosenbluet and Norbert Wiener himself.

In his classic bookCybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (“Cybernetics or Control and Communication in Animals and Machines”) (1948) N. Wiener outlined and described the foundations of cybernetics, one of the youngest scientific disciplines of the 20th century. The name of science used by N. Wiener goes back to the ancient Greeks and literally means “the art of management”. When choosing him, N. Wiener wanted to emphasize the recognition of the fact that the first significant work devoted to the operation of the feedback mechanism was the article on Clark Maxwell's regulators (1868) and that the term "regulator" (governor) comes from a distorted Latin wordgubernatur... Plato used this term to refer to the science of ship control while in the 19th century. the French scientist André Ampere borrowed it to define the science of management.
By demonstrating the existence of a fundamental similarity between the control mechanisms used in various sciences, cybernetics was able to eliminate the long-standing philosophical contradiction between vitalism and the mechanism according to which biological and mechanical systems had a fundamentally different nature. In fact, cybernetics, in accordance with the philosophical position of N. Wiener, allowed for a much broader classification of systems, and thus manifested its interdisciplinary nature (Wiener, 1993: 84). A useful criterion for carrying out this classification is the concept of complexity, according to which the main interest of cybernetics lies in the study of complex (that is, so complex that they cannot be described in a detailed and detailed form) and stochastic (as opposed to deterministic) systems (Beer, 1959: 18). Typical examples of such systems are economics, the human brain, and the commercial company.
To study the mechanism of control and transmission of information in such systems, N. Wiener and his colleagues developed the concepts of feedback, homeostasis and “black box”. Although the feedback mechanism was discussed earlier, it is useful to analyze its main characteristics in more detail. Each feedback loop involves the use of input information (eg temperature measurements) and output (eg heater operation data); in addition - and this is of the utmost importance - the information at the input is influenced by the output, for example, the power of the heater will determine the readings taken from the thermometer, which, in turn, will affect the signal to turn on or off the heater. Thus, there is a continuous monitoring of the discrepancy between the desired and real situation. If the control mechanism acts in the direction of reducing this discrepancy, then such a feedback is called negative (as in the case of a thermostat); if the feedback contributes to an increase in the discrepancy, then it is called positive (as in the case of a mechanical brake, which captures the initial movements of the driver's hand and then amplifies them until it can stop a moving car).

In his book Cybernetics (“Cybernetics”) (1948) N. Wiener showed that feedback mechanisms are present in many systems of fundamentally different nature - from mechanical to economic and from sociological to biological. A special type of feedback that is essential for maintaining life is present in the so-called phenomenon of homeostasis. A classic biological example is blood temperature homeostasis, which allows the body temperature to remain practically unchanged, despite the movement of the body from a cold room to a warm one. Thus, a homeostat is called a regulating device to maintain certain variables within specified limits. So, a typical example of a homeostat is the steam pressure regulator in a steam locomotive created by J. Watt, designed to control its speed at various load values. It is extremely important to understand here that a controlled variable going beyond the desired range (when the speed of the locomotive is too fast or too slow) itself acts as a feedback (when the corresponding closing or opening of the valves in the Watt regulator). In other words, as long as the mechanism itself functions, its feedback will also work properly. This conclusion is of great importance, since it implies that the feedback of the controller will always be guaranteed to compensate not only this type of disturbance, but also disturbances of any type (Beer, 1959: 29). This special property of control systems is usually called ultrastability (Ashby, 1956).
Now it should be clear to us that the concept of “control” in cybernetics is not reduced to a naive notion of the process of coercion, but implies the implementation of self-regulation.
Another important concept of cybernetics, which has become widespread in many other sciences, is the “black box”. Cybernetics, as noted above, is mainly concerned with the study of control mechanisms and information transfer in complex stochastic systems. To study the control process, cybernetics use the concepts of feedback and homeostasis; they use statistical information theory to analyze the probabilistic characteristics of systems; finally, they study the complexity of systems using the concept of a black box. By presenting the system as a black box, cybernetics by default agree with the cognitive limitations of their understanding of the vast number of possible states available to a complex system at any given time. However, in doing so, they recognize the possibility of manipulating some of the input signals and observing some of the results of the system's operation at the output. If the outputs are continuously compared to specific desired values, then some of the system responses can be determined in terms of their effect on the black box inputs in order to keep the system “in control”.
When modeling a system in the form of a black box, four sets of variables are identified: a set of possible states of the system (S); a set of perturbations that can affect its current state (R); a set of reactions to these perturbations (R); a set of goals defining acceptable states in accordance with established criteria (T). It is considered that the system is in a “controlled state” if at any moment of time its state corresponds to the state from the setT... With the help of this model, an extremely important cybernetic principle is established: if the system is in a controllable state, then it is necessary that for any disturbance that seeks to bring the system out of admissible states, there should be such a reaction, which, after its implementation, would bring the system into one of the states from the setT... This principle was developed by the English cyberneticist Ross Ashby and was called the “law of necessary diversity”, usually formulated as follows: “only diversity can absorb diversity” (Ashby, 1956).
N. Wiener gained experience with computing devices at the very beginning of his scientific career (Wiener, 1993). Back in the 1920s, long before the creation of the first computers, he developed a method for calculating a certain group of integrals by passing a beam through special filters and then measuring the intensity of the received light flux. This new device was, in fact, an analog computer, and was called the "Wiener integraf". About twenty years later, in 1940, N. Wiener sent a memorandum to the American government in which he described five characteristics that a future computer should have: it should be digital, not analog; use a binary number system; be created on the basis of electronic elements; its logical scheme had to correspond to the principles on which the Turing machine was created; the computer should have used magnetic tape to store information. Although this memorandum was ignored by government officials for many years, some of its ideas, put forward by other scientists independently of N. Wiener, formed the basis for the creation of modern high-speed computers.

3. Practical application of key ideas

Much of the early research currently associated with the creation of cybernetics focused on the design and construction of various devices. Electronic models of turtles, created by British neuropathologist Gray Walter, clearly demonstrated that the combination of several simple mechanisms using the right feedback allows you to implement almost the same complex behaviors as in living systems. Around the same time, the English cyberneticist Gordon Pask developed the learning machine, initiating the process that eventually led to the writing and publication of his famousConversational Theory (“Conversion (colloquial) theory”) (1975). G. Pask's machine displayed information that had to be assimilated, received an answer to the question asked from a trained person and used it as a feedback signal to improve the learning process. Thus, this machine, continuously adapting to the capabilities of the student, could be used for teaching. N. Wiener himself in the 1950s and early 1960s. paid much attention to the creation of devices for replacing amputated limbs, trying also to reproduce their tactile sensitivity. His collaboration with a group of orthopedic surgeons, neurologists and engineers (albeit unsuccessful in those years) charted the way for the subsequent creation of the prosthesis, called the Boston arm.
This work with various devices had a dual purpose: (1) to demonstrate the possibility of practical application of cybernetic ideas and (2) to promote the study of complex systems similar to the human nervous system, as well as a better understanding of such properties of living things as learning, memory and intelligence. As an example of the study of intelligence, N. Wiener in the second edition of his book on cybernetics (Wiener, 1961) explained in detail how you can create a machine that can play chess at an acceptably high level. Nowadays, almost any PC can beat almost any amateur chess player. Unfortunately, as a result of, among other things, the initial attempts at the practical application of cybernetic ideas, the entire new scientific discipline as a whole became associated with real equipment, especially computers, despite the fact that its principles were still used in other disciplines.
In the field of management theory, the most significant development of N. Wiener's ideas was carried out by Stafford Beer, who, modeling a company in the form of a set of interconnected homeostats and using Ashby's law of the required diversity, created a model of a viable system - IMS (Beer, 1979, 1981, 1985). The ILC, which has become an important achievement in the area of \u200b\u200bcybernetics, called management cybernetics, has proven to be a useful tool for diagnosing and even designing complex systems - from small firms to large international companies and from local self-government bodies to the state economy as a whole (Espejo and Harnden, 1989).
In the late 1970s. some social scientists have tried to develop and enrich cybernetics by combining it with sociology and creating the so-called “sociocybernetics”. However, along the way, they encountered some problems, the solution of which turned out to be, apparently, extremely difficult for them (Geyer and Zouwen, 1986). Only subsequent work in the field of research on the biological aspects of the cognitive process (see, for example,Maturana and Varela, 1987; Foerster, 1984) laid the foundations for the successful development of social cybernetics. This science, known as "second order cybernetics" (Foerster, 1979) is an example of a biased approach to scientific research that emphasizes the role of the observer in social systems.
Thus, cybernetics of the second order, emphasizing the importance of the independence of individuals and studying the continuous processes by which they create a common reality, indicates the possibility of a new paradigm in social research, which could provide - referring to the title of one of N. Wiener's books - more " humane use of human beings ”.

Anatoly Ushakov, Doctor of Technical Sciences, prof. department control systems and informatics, ITMO University - [email protected]

The historical experience of the development of scientific thought shows that if its bearer is deeply engaged in scientific work, then over time he becomes a natural systems analyst, which usually leads to breakthrough scientific results. One example of this in the XX century. cybernetics, or the science of control and communication in machines and living organisms, appeared as the basis of the materialistic cybernetic philosophy created by the American scientist with Russian roots Norbert Wiener.

Fig. 1. Norbert Wiener at the blackboard

According to biographers, Norbert Wiener (Fig. 1) is a classic example of a child prodigy. He was born in Columbia (Missouri, USA) on November 26, 1894. His parents emigrated to the United States at the end of the 19th century. His father was a native of the city of Bialystok, Grodno province of the Russian Empire, who later became a professor and head of the department of Slavic languages \u200b\u200band literature at Harvard University, the oldest in the United States.

Fig. 2. Norbert Wiener in his youth

The boy grew up in a large family, where his father consciously prepared him for a scientific career. As a result, Norbert entered high school at the age of nine and graduated from college at the age of 14, then continued his education at Harvard and Cornell Universities and became a Ph.D. in mathematical logic. He independently masters five foreign languages, including Chinese, and plunges headlong into mental activity, moving away from his peers, which is aggravated by acute myopia and natural clumsiness (Fig. 2). Therefore, he was perceived by fellow practitioners as an unbalanced child prodigy, which over the years did not prevent him from becoming a friendly and warm person in communication.

Fig. 3. Wiener in the MIT auditorium with a tricycle model

Norbert continued his education at the best European universities in Cambridge and Göttingen, attending lectures and seminars by Bertrand Russell, Godfrey Hardy, Edmund Landau and David Hilbert. With the outbreak of the First World War, he returned to the United States, worked at several universities, in the editorial offices of newspapers and even at a military plant, was enlisted in the army, from where he was soon dismissed due to myopia. He did not stop doing science and, finally, in 1919, he was accepted as an assistant in the Department of Mathematics (where he later became a professor) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with which his entire subsequent life was connected (Fig. 3). In his book I Am a Mathematician, Wiener wrote that he owed "... MIT the opportunity to work and reflect on everything that interests me."

Wiener's main works in the twenties were related to statistical mechanics, vector spaces (Banach-Wiener spaces), differential geometry, the problem of the distribution of prime numbers, potential theory, harmonic analysis with applications to problems of electrical engineering and quantum theory. At the same time, Norbert Wiener defined the so-called Wiener process. Somewhat later, he began to collaborate with one of the designers of analog computers, Vannevar Bush, which later helped him a lot in working on digital machines. Wiener proposed the idea of \u200b\u200ba new harmonic analyzer, which Bush later put into practice.

Fig. 4. Viner with his wife in India (1955)

In 1926, Wiener married Margaret Engemann of a German family, and they embarked on a honeymoon in Europe, where Wiener met many prominent European mathematicians. Norbert Wiener was convinced that mental work "wears out a person to the limit," therefore, it should alternate with physical rest. He always used every opportunity to take walks, swam, played various games, enjoyed communicating with non-mathematicians, and studied with his two children (Fig. 4).

With the onset of the Great Depression in the United States, Viner did not stop scientific work, educating students, among whom the most famous were the Chinese Yuk-Wing Lee and the Japanese Shikao Ikehara, with whom he later worked closely (Fig. 5 ).

Fig. 5. Wiener with his student Yu. V. Lee (left) and colleague on MTIS A. G. Bose (A. G. Bose)

Thanks to the support of G. Hardy and the prominent mathematician Yakov Davidovich Tamarkin, who emigrated from the USSR, Wiener's work became well known in America. He was elected vice president of the American Mathematical Society. In the pre-war years, the joint work with the German mathematician Eberhard Hopf (Wiener-Hopf equations), which was important for forecasting problems, turned out to be especially significant; articles on generalized harmonic analysis; participation in the seminar of physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth, who played an important role in the formation of Norbert Wiener's ideas of cybernetics, lecturing at Beijing Tsinghua University.

During World War II, Norbert Wiener works at the MIT radiation laboratory, where the first anti-aircraft radar systems were created. He investigates the problem of aircraft movement during anti-aircraft fire and develops problems of automatic control of anti-aircraft artillery fire, taking into account forecasting, which convinced Wiener of the important role of feedback (which plays an essential role in the human body), as well as the need to design a control computer. In his opinion, such machines “should consist of vacuum tubes, not gears or electromechanical relays. This is necessary to ensure fast enough action. " In addition, they "should use a more economical binary rather than decimal numbering system." The machine, Norbert Wiener believed, needs to be endowed with a certain independence in order to correct its actions and self-learning, it must become "thinking".

In Wiener's head, the idea has long been ripening to write a book and tell in it about the generality of laws operating in the field of automatic regulation, organization of production and in the human nervous system. The first outline of the cybernetic method was an article in 1943, and from 1946 he began to closely study the book. Immediately there was a difficulty with the title, the content was too unusual. It was required to find a word related to management, regulation. Greek came to mind, similar to the "helmsman" of a ship, which in English sounds like "cybernetics." So Norbert Wiener left him.

Wiener's famous book was published in 1948 in New York, and then in a French publishing house. At this time, he already suffered from cataracts, clouding of the lens of the eye, and had poor vision. Hence, numerous errors and misprints in the text of the publication. With the publication of this book, Norbert Wiener, as they say, "woke up famous." The book was immediately translated into many languages, which contributed to the development of intensive research on the problems formulated in this work.

In Russian, the book was published in the USSR only in 1958 and was received rather ambiguously. Thus, in the book, Professor M. A. Bykhovsky recalls that in 1952 one of the major Soviet scientists in the field of communications wrote: “Viner and others, proceeding from external, superficial analogy and speculating on the vagueness and ambiguity of some terms and concepts, are trying to transfer the laws of radio communication to biological and psychological phenomena, they speak of the "carrying capacity" of the human brain, etc. Naturally, all these attempts to give cybernetics a scientific character with the help of terms and concepts borrowed from other fields by no means make cybernetics a science, it remains a pseudo-theory, created by reactionaries from science and philosophizing ignoramuses who are in captivity of idealism and metaphysics ... ".

In turn, at the same time, one of the Soviet authors, who wrote the thickest books on the theory of automatic regulation, wrote in the preface to his next work: "The attempt of bourgeois scientists to identify a man and a machine can cause nothing but indignation in the hearts of Soviet people." ... Nevertheless, the bulk of real Soviet scientists understood everything, continued to conduct scientific work, waiting for better times. They came after the launch of the first Soviet Earth satellite in 1957 and the subsequent publication of the Russian-language version of Norbert Wiener's book. The word "cybernetics" sounded in the institute classrooms, the disciplines "Fundamentals of Cybernetics", "Technical Cybernetics", etc. appeared in the curricula for training engineers in specialties related to automation and telemechanics. Faculties and departments with "cybernetic" names were organized. The USSR Academy of Sciences began to publish the "Cybernetic Collection", the Council on Cybernetics was organized under its presidium, public discussions were held on television "Can a machine think?"

Fig. 6. Wiener with A. A. Lyapunov (left) and G. M. Frank in Moscow (1960.)

Moreover, the contribution of Soviet scientists A.N. Kolmogorov, V.A.Kotelnikov, V.I.Siforov, R.L.Stratonovich, A. Ya.Khinchin in the development of communication theory and stochastic processes, as well as A.A. Andronov , V. S. Kulebakin, A. A. Krasovsky, N. N. Krasovsky, A. M. Letova, A. I. Lurie, M. V. Meerova, B. N. Petrova, E. P. Popova, A. A. Pervozvansky, L. S. Pontryagin, A. A. Feldbaum, Ya. Z. Tsypkin, V. A. Yakubovich in the development of control theory was noticed by the world scientific community, engaged in problems of cybernetics. The first congress of the International Federation for Automatic Control (IFAC) was held in Moscow, in 1960, with A.M. Letov as its president at that time. Norbert Wiener was also invited to this congress, who was greeted with interest by prominent Soviet scientists and public figures. He was invited to give lectures, reports, published articles, and noted his merits (Fig. 6).
Looking back at that already distant post-war period, one involuntarily wonders what factors then determined the appearance of this “revolutionary book”?

The first factor was time. The bloody Second World War ended. Its participants healed the wounds inflicted. Scientific thought entered a peaceful, creative channel. Scientists of the world, engaged in the theory and practice of control and communication, were ready for a breakthrough step.

The second factor was the emergence in the scientific community of an individual with unique knowledge, extraordinary efficiency, breadth of scientific views and interests, experience in applying their knowledge in such areas as the theory of stochastic processes, forecasting theory, spectral analysis, communication theory, theory of computing systems, theory and practice of artillery fire control at moving targets, neurophysiology. Norbert Wiener was such an individual.

The third factor was the state of development of the theory and practice of automatic control achieved by that time. The founders of modern control theory were considered by the scientists of the world and Norbert Wiener himself to be the English physicist, the creator of classical electrodynamics D.K. Maxwell, the Russian scientists I.A.Vyshnegradskiy and A.M. Lyapunov, the heat engineer A. B. Stodola, mathematicians E. EJ Routh and A. Hurwitz, electrical circuit specialists HW Bode and HT Nyqvist. A powerful contribution to the toolkit of control theory was a book by American engineers H. M. James, N.B. Nichols, and R. S. Phillips.

The fourth factor was the state of development of stochastic communication theory, information theory and information transfer theory achieved by that time. Here a large contribution belongs to Norbert Wiener himself and Claude Shannon, who published in 1948 his fundamental work on information theory and its transmission.

The fifth factor was a fairly successful solution by that time of the problem of optimal linear filtering and stochastic forecasting, independently solved by A.N. Kolmogorov and Norbert Wiener. Speaking about this systemic factor, one should touch upon the ethical side of the scientific process, which positively characterizes the creator of cybernetics. In his book, Wiener admitted: “When I wrote my first work on forecasting theory, I did not assume that some of the basic mathematical ideas of this article had already been published before me.<…> Kolmogorov not only independently analyzed all the main issues in this area, but was also the first to publish his results. "

The main merit of Norbert Wiener, as the author of the famous book, is that he linked information and the management process into a single meaningful module. There can be no high-quality results of management when using low-quality information in its organization, this should be remembered by everyone who has the lot to control machines, living organisms or social structures.

Every talented person is usually talented in many ways. This also applies to Norbert Wiener. In addition to scientific works, he also wrote works of art. The list of his fiction includes about a dozen works, and they are all with solid cybernetic overtones, they require a lot of attention from the reader when reading.

In 1964, Norbert Wiener was awarded the US National Science Medal, the highest government award for US scientists. The then US President Lyndon Johnson, presenting the award, said: "Your contribution to science is surprisingly universal, your view has always been absolutely original, you are an amazing embodiment of the symbiosis of a pure mathematician and an applied scientist." However, Norbert Wiener blew his nose loudly and did not hear what the president said about him. In the same year, on March 18, Norbert Wiener died, a little before his seventieth birthday.

The name of Norbert Wiener will always be remembered in the scientific community, but he will also be remembered by ordinary citizens with the word “cybernetics”, because whenever it is necessary to enhance the characteristics of any new anthropogenic development, its authors will strive to ascribe a part of “cyber” to it.

In contact with

Literature

1. Viner N. I am a mathematician. M .: Science.
2. Rosenbluelh A., Wiener N., Bigelow J. Behavior, Purpose and Teleology // Philosophy of Science. Baltimore, 1943, vol. 10, No 1.
3. Wiener N. Cybernetics: Or control and communication in the animal and the machine. Paris: Hermann & Cie & Camb. Mass .: MIT Press. 1948.
4. Wiener N. Cybernetics, or control and communication in an animal and a machine. M .: Soviet radio. 1958.
5. Bykhovsky M.A., Pioneers of the Information Age. The history of the development of communication. M .: Technosphere. 2006.
6. Theory of Servomechansms / ed. H. M. James, N. B. Nichols, R. S. Phillips. New York, Toronto, London: McGrow-Hill. 1947.
7. Shannon C. E. A Mathematical Theory of Communication // Bell System Technical Journal. 1948. vol. 27.

ARTURO ROSENBLUT,

TO MY FRIEND IN SCIENCE

FOR MANY YEARS.

Norbert Wiener and his "Cybernetics"

(from translation editor)

The history of the century is being made before our eyes. We look in amazement at the strange masses that have grown on the recent wastelands, and then quickly get used to them, settle them down and hurry on to the new one-hundred-story skyscrapers.

The history of cybernetics is 19 years old, the official history of which was laid by Norbert Wiener, professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, when he published his famous book "Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in an Animal and a Machine" in 1948. Of course, this story had its own prehistory, traced by later authors to Plato himself, but they started talking about cybernetics everywhere only after the Wiener sensation. Seeming at first only a sensation, cybernetics has now become a vast and influential branch of world science.

Norbert Wiener has already completed his earthly labors. He was one of the most brilliant and paradoxical minds of the capitalist West, deeply disturbed by the contradictions of the atomic age, intensely reflecting on the fate of man in the era of the unprecedented power of science and technology. Human Uses of Human Beings is the title of his second cybernetic book. He felt the collapse of the old liberal humanism, but, like Einstein and a number of other representatives of Western thought, did not find the path to new values. Hence his pessimism, clothed in the robes of stoicism; he dreaded the role of Cassandra.

He left behind him a large scientific legacy, complex and contradictory, in many ways controversial, in many ways interesting and stimulating. This legacy requires a thoughtful, critical, philosophical approach, far from the extremes of denial and exaggeration that have so often been heard. And in this legacy the first place is occupied by "Cybernetics" - a book that proclaimed the birth of a new science.

This is Wiener's main book, the summary of all his scientific activities. Wiener called it "an inventory of his scientific baggage." It is the most important material for the characterization of a scientist and at the same time a monument to the early, romantic era of cybernetics, "the period of storm and onslaught." But she has not lost her scientific values \u200b\u200band may turn out to be useful for an inquisitive researcher in the new conditions, when cybernetics, having won a place under the sun, is concerned about the rational organization of what it has conquered.

The first English edition of Cybernetics was published in the USA and France in 1948. A modest red-bound book, replete with misprints and misprints, soon became a scientific bestseller, one of the “books of the century”. In 1958 it was translated into Russian by the publishing house "Soviet Radio". In 1961, the second edition of Cybernetics was published in the USA with a new author's preface and new chapters that made up the second part of the book; its previous text, reprinted without changes, only with corrections of errors, was made in the first part. In 1963, the publishing house "Soviet Radio" published the book "New Chapters of Cybernetics" containing a translation of the preface and the second part from the second edition. A complete revised translation of the edition with some additional articles and Wiener's talks attached is now offered to the readers' attention.

Prof. Wiener greatly facilitated the task of his biographers by writing two books of memoirs in his declining years: one of them is devoted to childhood and years of study ("Former prodigy"); the other - to a professional career and creativity ("I am a mathematician").

Norbert Wiener was born on November 26, 1894 in Columbia, Missouri, to a Jewish immigrant family. His father, Leo Wiener (1862-1939), a native of Bialystok, then belonging to Russia, studied in Germany in his youth and then moved overseas to the United States. There, after various adventures, he eventually became a prominent philologist. In Columbia, he was already a professor of modern languages \u200b\u200bat the University of Missouri, later was a professor of Slavic languages \u200b\u200bat the oldest in the United States, Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Boston. In the same American Cambridge in 1915, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) settled, one of the main higher technical schools in the country, in which later the son also worked. Leo Wiener was a follower of Tolstoy and his translator into English. As a scientist, he showed very broad interests and did not retreat to risky hypotheses. These qualities were inherited by Norbert Wiener, who was, however, apparently distinguished by greater methodology and depth.

According to family tradition, the Wieners descended from the famous Jewish scientist and theologian Moses Maimonides of Cordoba (1135-1204), a physician at the court of the Sultan Saladin of Egypt. Norbert Wiener spoke with pride of this legend, without vouching, however, for its authenticity. Maimonides especially admired his versatility.

The future founder of cybernetics was a child prodigy, a child with early awakened abilities. This was largely facilitated by his father, who worked with him according to his own program. Young Norbert was seven years reading Darwin and Dante, eleven - graduated from high school, fourteen - higher education institution, Tufts College. Here he received his first academic degree - a bachelor of arts.

Then he studied at Harvard University already as a graduate student (graduate student) and at the age of seventeen became a master of arts, and at eighteen, in 1913, a Ph.D. in mathematical logic. The title of Doctor of Philosophy in this case is not only a tribute to tradition, since Wiener first prepared himself for a philosophical career and only later gave preference to mathematics. At Harvard, he studied philosophy under the guidance of J. Santayana and J. Royce (whose name the reader will find in Cybernetics). Wiener's philosophical education was reflected later in the development of a project for a new science and in the books that he wrote about it.

Harvard University awarded the young doctor a scholarship to travel to Europe. In 1913-1915. Wiener attends the University of Cambridge in England and Göttingen in Germany, but in connection with the war he returns to America and ends his educational journey at Columbia University in New York. In Cambridge, England, Wiener studied with the famous B. Russell, who at the beginning of the century was a leading authority in the field of mathematical logic, and with J. H. Hardy, a well-known mathematician, a specialist in number theory. Subsequently Wiener wrote: "Russell instilled in me a very reasonable idea that a person intending to specialize in mathematical logic and philosophy of mathematics might know something from mathematics itself." In Göttingen, Wiener studied with the outstanding German mathematician D. Hilbert, listened to lectures by the philosopher E. Husserl.

In 1915, the service began. Wiener got an assistant position in the philosophy department at Harvard, but only for a year. In search of happiness, he changed a number of jobs, was a journalist, wanted to go to the soldier. However, he, apparently, was sufficiently wealthy and did not feel the need. Finally, with the assistance of the mathematician F.V. Osgood, a friend of his father, Winer got a job at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1919, Wiener was appointed instructor (instructor) at the Department of Mathematics at MIT, and since then he has remained an employee of the institute all his life. In 1926, Wiener married Margarita Engemann, an American of German descent.

Wiener considered the years 1920-1925 to be the years of his formation in mathematics. He reveals a desire to solve complex physical and technical problems using the methods of modern abstract mathematics. He is engaged in the theory of Brownian motion, tries his hand at potential theory, develops generalized harmonic analysis for the needs of communication theory. His academic career is slow but successful.

In 1932 Wiener became a full professor. He is gaining a name in the academic circles of America and Europe. Theses are written under his supervision. He publishes a number of books and large memoirs on mathematics: "Generalized Harmonic Analysis", "Tauberian Theorems", "The Fourier Integral and Some of Its Applications", etc. Joint research with the German mathematician E. Hopf (or Hopf) on the radiation equilibrium of stars introduces the science of the "Wiener - Hopf equation". Another joint work, the monograph "Fourier Transform in the Complex Domain", was written in collaboration with the English mathematician R. Paley. This book was published under tragic circumstances: even before its completion, an Englishman died in the Canadian Rockies while skiing. Wiener pays tribute to technical creativity, in company with the Chinese scientist Yu.V. Lee and W. Bush, a famous designer of analog computers. In 1935-1936. Wiener was vice president of the American Mathematical Society.