This is a new release of the original 1949 edition.

As this book reveals, his vision was much more complex and interesting. He hoped that machines would release people from relentless and repetitive drudgery in order to achieve more creative pursuits.

This essay has two goals. The first is to define the behavioristic study of natural events and to classify behavior. The second is to stress the importance of the concept of purpose.Given any object, relatively abstracted from its surroundings for study, the behavioristic approach consists in the examination of the output of the object and of the relations of this output to the input. By output is meant any change produced in the surroundings by the object. By input, conversely, is (...) meant any event external to the object that modifies this object in any manner. (shrink)

The intention and the result of a scientific inquiry is to obtain an understanding and a control of some part of the universe. This statement implies a dualistic attitude on the part of scientists. Indeed, science does and should proceed from this dualistic basis. But even though the scientist behaves dualistically, his dualism is operational and does not necessarily imply strict dualistic metaphysics.

In a recent essay Professor Taylor criticizes the criteria used by Rosenblueth, Wiener and Bigelow in 1943 to distinguish purposeful from non-purposeful behavior. He also criticizes our definition of behavior, our concept of the vague as opposed to the general, our use of the word correlation, and our statement that a system may reach a final condition. Indeed, there seems to be little, if anything, in our paper to which he does not emphatically object.He maintains that the notions of (...) purpose and teleology are not only useless for the understanding of mechanical behavior, but wholly incongruous when applied to this behavior. He further affirms that our use of the term purpose “bears no similarity whatever to the meaning which is ordinarily attached to it.” He does not state, however, his own notions of purpose and teleology; and the meaning which he considers to be ordinarily attached to the term purpose. This omission weakens his criticism considerably. (shrink)

The distinction between psychology, logic, and epistemology is a commonplace. The first treats of experience as an act, experience in its relation to the individual observer. The second concerns itself with the internal marks by which truth may be distinguished from error, and in so far as it deals with experience, has to do with some sort of validity of the experience as evidence of a truth. The third discusses in a general way all the elements—observer, object, immediate presentation—which enter (...) into the experience. (shrink)

The Norbert Wiener Memorial Gold Medal address delivered by the Nobel Laureate recipient. Considers Norbert Wiener and the idea of contingence. Refers to Wiener's book The Human Use of Human Beings and in particular to the preface entitled "The idea of a contingent universe" and to the epilogue of the book by Rosenblith. This raises the question faced by Wiener: how to reconcile a deterministic world à la Newton with the intrinsically probabilistic universe of (...) Gibbs, the relativistic universe of Einstein and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle? Notes the parallelism among the questions Wiener is asking with the ones to which the Gold Medallist has devoted most of his scientific life. Presents a different point of view, as a tribute to the visionary ideas developed by Wiener. Discusses the "new physics" and the problems facing physics today, at the end of the twentieth century. (shrink)

In 1955, Norbert Wiener suggested a sociological model according to which all forms of culture ultimately depended on the temporal coordination of human activities, in particular their synchronization. The basis for Wiener’s model was provided by his insights into the temporal structures of cerebral processes. This article reconstructs the historical context of Wiener’s ‘brain clock’ hypothesis, largely via his dialogues with John W. Stroud and other scholars working at the intersection of neurophysiology, experimental psychology, and electrical (...) engineering. Since the 19th century, physiologists and psychologists have been conducting experimental investigations into the relation between time and the brain. Using innovative instruments and technologies, Stroud rehearsed these experiments, in part without paying any attention at all to the experimental traditions involved. Against this background, this article argues that the novelty of Wiener’s model relies largely on his productive rephrasing of physiological and psychological findings that had been established long before the Second World War. (shrink)

The present contribution aims at defining the relation between cybernetics and social theory from the perspective of society as order. After an historical framework of the cybernetic movement, a careful reading of the works of Norbert Wiener, in which he introduced the concept of feed-back and the idea of information society, has revealed a keen awareness about the social effects of technological innovation. Among the social scientists who had made use of cybernetic concepts, it has been considered the (...) work of Karl Deutsch, which was one of the first completely cybernetic perspective for the study of political and social phenomena. The main conclusion is that cybernetics, as a meeting point between different disciplines, has produced an image of self-regulated society in line with the image of society as order. (shrink)

Both von Neumann and Wiener were outsiders to biology. Both were inspired by biology and both proposed models and generalizations that proved inspirational for biologists. Around the same time in the 1940s von Neumann developed the notion of self reproducing automata and Wiener suggested an explication of teleology using the notion of negative feedback. These efforts were similar in spirit. Both von Neumann and Wiener used mathematical ideas to attack foundational issues in biology, and the concepts they (...) articulated had lasting effect. But there were significant differences as well. Von Neumann presented a how-possibly model, which sparked interest by mathematicians and computer scientists, while Wiener collaborated more directly with biologists, and his proposal influenced the philosophy of biology. The two cases illustrate different strategies by which mathematicians, the “professional outsiders” of science, can choose to guide their engagement with biological questions and with the biological community, and illustrate different kinds of generalizations that mathematization can contribute to biology. The different strategies employed by von Neumann and Wiener and the types of models they constructed may have affected the fate of von Neumann’s and Wiener’s ideas – as well as the reputation, in biology, of von Neumann and Wiener themselves. (shrink)