2017年1月3日 星期二

The Cybernetic Humanities

“'Cybernetics' (based on kybernetes, the Greek word for 'steersman,' cognate to English 'governor') was the science, Norbert Wiener announced, of 'communication and control,' or of feedback mechanisms in general. In his improbable 1948 best seller 'Cybernetics,' he would claim that the new science takes up 'the blank spaces on the map' between estranged, overspecialized scientific disciplines. This ambition meant that Wiener needed a language to mediate between those disciplines: information."



Leif Weatherby reviews three recent books on the history of cybernetics.

LAREVIEWOFBOOKS.ORG


An appealing feature of ''The Dream Machine'' is its comprehensiveness. Most of the big names are here, along with brief synopses of their ideas. Using the common trick in popular science writing of humanizing the players, Waldrop gives us not only Alan Turing's account of an abstract computer but his tragic death at 41. John von Neumann's work on computer architecture is sketched, as are tales about his lightning mental calculations. Norbert Wiener's cybernetics (the name didn't stick, but the prefix sure did) is presented as is his proverbial absent-mindedness. The same treatment is accorded Vannevar Bush's anticipations of hypertext, Claude Shannon's information theory and the psychologist George Miller's and the linguist Noam Chomsky's rebuttal of behaviorism.


下引文或許深一點 不過我們主要談這句:
Norbert Wiener's cybernetics (the name didn't stick, but the prefix sure did) is presented as is his proverbial absent-mindedness.
它說數學家Norbert Wiener鑄的 cybernetics 一字,並沒有普遍化, 廣為人所應用。
不過,它的前綴cyber倒是常存了 (譬如說 cyberspace/cybercrime......)。


cybernetics Show phonetics
noun [U]
the scientific study of how information is communicated in machines and electronic devices in comparison with how information is communicated in the brain and nervous system


prefix (GRAMMAR) Show phonetics
noun [C]
a letter or group of letters added to the beginning of a word to make a new word:
In the word 'unimportant', 'un-' is a prefix.
See also affix (WORD PART). Compare suffix.






cybernetics
Origin: 1948
We who spend so much time in the cyberworld owe it all, or at least the cyber-, to the American scientist Norbert Wiener. For his 1948 book Cybernetics he derived the prefix from classical Greek kubernGtGs, meaning "one who steers," and added the suffix -ics to indicate that it was a science like physics or mathematics. Wiener, a mathematician, proposed cybernetics as the study of systems of control and communication, in particular those of the human mind and the computer. The analogy between mind and machine introduced by cybernetics made possible the development of primitive computers into machines that imitate human modes of thinking.
模控學(大陸稱為控制論)是《模控學:或關於在動物和機器中控制和通訊的科學》[1],由諾伯特·維納(Wiener,N.)著,麻省理工學院出版社出版於1948年,維納創造新字「Cybernetics」命名當時新的學科,本書是模控學的奠基之作,是自動控制傳播學電子技術無線電通訊神經生理學心理學醫學數學邏輯電腦技術統計力學等多種學科相互滲透的產物。模控學的奠基人是諾伯特·維納,他於1943年在《行為、目的和目的論》中,首先提出了「模控學」這個概念,第一次把只屬於生物的有目的的行為賦予機器,闡明了模控學的基本思想。1948年諾伯特·維納又發表了《模控學》,為模控學奠定了理論基礎,標著著它的正式誕生。模控學、系統論資訊理論是現代信息技術的理論基礎。。



Nobert Wiener Cybernticsor Control and Communication in the Animal and the MachineMIT Press.1948,1962
Norbert Wiener : Cybernetics池原止戈夫 他訳サイバネティックス 2動物と機械における制御と通信 岩波書店1961
維納N.著﹐《控制論》郝季仁譯,北京:科學出版社﹐19632007年還有北京大學未修正之版本。我們看一些小錯誤:Shikao Ikehara (池原 止戈夫 Ikehara Shikao1904 – 1984) 東京工業大学名誉教授,非「東京工藝研究所」;美國麻省(麻州)理工學院 是歷史的誤譯,不過接下來「麻省省立醫院」就……

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