Norbert Wiener
The founder of cybernetics, a field that explores control and communication in animals and machines.
Most quoted
"We are not fighting for a definitive victory in the indefinite future. It is the greatest possible victory to be, to continue to be, and to have been. No defeat can deprive us of the success of having existed for some moment of time in a universe that seems indifferent to us."
— from Cybernetics, 1948
"The future offers very little hope for those who expect that our new mechanical slaves will offer us a world in which we may rest from thinking. Help us they may, but at the cost of supreme demands upon our honesty and our intelligence."
— from God and Golem, Inc., 1964
"It is my thesis that the physical functioning of the living individual and the operation of some of the newer communication machines are precisely parallel in their analogous attempts to control entropy through feedback."
— from Cybernetics, 1948
All quotes by Norbert Wiener (386)
We have decided to call the entire field of control and communication theory, whether in the machine or in the animal, by the name of Cybernetics.
The individual is the only reality.
Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe.
The scientist who discovers a new fact is like a child who finds a new toy.
In the long run, the machine will win.
Communication is the cement of society.
The brain is a computing machine, but not a calculator.
Progress imposes a necessity for continual planning.
The measure of a man's success is the amount of risk he has taken.
Automation is the transfer to machines of mental functions which we ourselves perform.
The machine does not learn of its own accord; it is taught.
In a universe of blind forces, the individual is the only source of meaning.
The joy of discovery is the greatest reward of the scientist.
Mathematics knows no races or geographical boundaries.
The computer is a tool, not a master.
I am a mathematical physicist, not a philosopher.
The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum.
Feedback is the key to control.
Life is a process of communication.
The prodigy is a victim of his own talent.
Contemporaries of Norbert Wiener
Other Mathematicss born within 50 years of Norbert Wiener (1894–1964).