Concept
Norbert Wiener
Overview
Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 – March 18, 1964) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and philosopher. He became a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and mathematical noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.
Wiener is considered the originator of cybernetics, the science of communication as it relates to living things and machines, with implications for engineering, systems control, computer science, biology, neuroscience, philosophy, and the organization of society. His work heavily influenced computer pioneer John von Neumann, information theorist Claude Shannon, anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, and others.
Wiener is credited as being one of the first to theorize that all intelligent behavior was the result of feedback mechanisms that could possibly be simulated by machines, an important early step towards the development of modern artificial intelligence.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Ants appear to be able to communicate a certain amount of information by means of their antennae. Probably writing itself, which we now regard as merely a way of representing speech, was originally an independent language, as it has remained to this day in China. Writing seems to have consisted originally of pictures, which gradually became conventionalized, coming in time to represent syllables, and finally letters…
Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind
States what Norbert Wiener is; the author is tied to Norbert Wiener in the knowledge graph.
We look here only to the necessity of the connection of events in a time-series as it is developed according to the physical law, whether the subject in which this development takes place is called automaton materiale when the mechanical being is moved by matter, or with Leibnitz spirituale when it is impelled by ideas; and if the freedom of our will were no other than the latter (say the psychological and…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason
States what Norbert Wiener is.
Until symbolic logic had acquired its present development, the principles upon which mathematics depends were always supposed to be philosophical, and discoverable only by the uncertain, unprogressive methods hitherto employed by philosophers. So long as this was thought, mathematics seemed to be not autonomous, but dependent upon a study which had quite other methods than its own. Moreover, since the nature of the…
Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
The author is tied to Norbert Wiener in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Norbert Wiener
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- J. M. E. McTaggart
- Amartya Sen
- Gilbert Simondon
- Giorgio de Santillana
- F. S. C. Northrop
Related ideas
- Artificial intelligence
- German language
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- History of the Jews in Germany
- Philosophy
- India
- Judaism
- Bachelor of Arts
- John von Neumann
- Humanitarianism
- University of Göttingen
- Learning
- Harvard University
- Sociology
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Mathematician
- Medicine
- Moon
- Maimonides
- Mathematical logic
- Velocity
- Cybernetics
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Neuroscience
Place in the tradition
Part of Logicism.