SLSL Intro "The 'Theme' of the Story"

[Dave Monroe]

"I happened to read Norbert Wiener's The Human Use of
Human Beings )a rewrite for the interested layman of
his more technical Cybernetics) at about the same time
as The Education of Henry Adams, and the 'theme' of
the story is mostly derivative of what these two men
had to say." (SL, "Intro," p. 13)


>From Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings:
Cybernetics and Society (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1954 [1950]), Preface, "The Idea of a Contingent
Universe," pp. 7-12 ...

"... it is, I am convinced, Gibbs rather than Einstein
or Heisenberg or Planck to whom we must attribute the
first great revolution of twentieth century physics.
   "This revolution has had the effect that physics
now no longer claims to deal with what will always
happen, but rather with what will happen with an
overwhelming probability." (p. 10)

   "This recognition of an element of incomplete
determinism, almost an irrationality in the world, is
in a certain way parallel to Freud's admission of a
deep irrational component in human conduct and
thought.... in their recognition of a fundamental
element of chance in the texture of the universe
itself, these men are close to one another and close
to the tradition of St. Augustine.  For this random
element, this organic incompleteness, is one which
without too violent a figure of speech we may consider
evil ...." (p. 11)

"Gibs' innovation was to consider not one world, but
all the worlds which are possible ....  His central
notion concerned the extent to which answers that we
may give to questions about one set of worlds are
probable among a larger set of worlds....  Gibbs had a
theory that this probability tended naturally to
increase as the universe grows older.  The measure of
this probability is called entropy, and the
chracteristic tendency of entropy is to increase.
   "As entropy increases, the universe, and all closed
systems in the universe, tend naturally to detriorate
and lose their distinctiveness, to move from the least
to the most probable state, from a state of
organization and differentiation in which distinctions
and forms exist, to a state of chaos and sameness.... 
But while the universe as a whole ... tends to run
down, there are local enclaves whose direction seems
opposed to that of the universe at large and in which
there is a limited and temporary tendency for
organization to increase.  Life finds its home in some
of these enclaves." (p. 12)

Ch. I, "Cybernetics in History," pp. 15-27 ...

   "It is the thesis of this book that society can
only be understood through a study of the messages and
the communications facilities which belong to it; and
that in the future development of these messages and
communication facilities, messages between man and
machines, between machines and man, and between
machine and machine, are destined to play an
ever-increasing part." (p. 16)

   "Mesages are themselves a form of pattern and
organization.  Indeed, it is possible to treat sets of
messages as having an entropy just like sets of states
of the external world.  Just as entropy is a measure
of disorganization, the information carried by a set
of messages is a measure of organization.  In fact, it
is possible to interpret the information carried by a
message as essentially the negative of its entropy
....  That is, the more probable the message, the less
information it gives.  Cliches, for example, are less
illuminating than great poems." (p. 21)

Ch. II, "Progress and Entropy," pp. 28-47 ...

   "In a system which is not in equlibrium ... entropy
need not increase.  It may, in fact, decrease locally.
 Perhaps this non-equilibrium of the world about us is
merely a stage in a downhill course which will
ultimately lead to equilibrium.  Sooner or later we
shall die, and it is highly probable that the whole
universe around us will die the heat death, in which
the world shall be reduced to one vast temperature
equilibrium in which nothing really new ever happens."
(pp. 30-1)

"... it is quite conceivable that life belongs to a
limited stretch of time ....
   "In a very real sense we are shipwrecked passengers
on a doomed planet.  Yet even in a shipwreck, human
decencies and human values do not necessarily vanish
...." (p. 40)

See also ...

Galison, Peter.  "The Ontology of the Enemy:
   Norbert Wiener and the Cybernetic Vision,"
   Critical Inquiry 21 (Autumn 1994): 228-66.

Heims, Steve J.  Constructing a Social Science
   for Postwar America: The Cybernetics Group,
   1946-1953.  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993.

As well as ...

http://web.mit.edu/esd.83/www/notebook/Cybernetics.PDF

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~DRBR/hayles.txt


And from Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams: An
Autobiography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918 [1904]),
Ch. XXXIII, "A Dynamic Theory of History" ...

This, then, or something like this, would be a dynamic
formula of history.  Any schoolboy knows enough to
object at once that it is the oldest and most
universal of all theories. Church and State, theology
and philosophy, have always preached it, differing
only in the allotment of energy between nature and
man. Whether the attractive energy has been called God
or Nature, the mechanism has been always the same, and
history is not obliged to decide whether the Ultimate
tends to a purpose or not, or whether ultimate energy
is one or many. Every one admits that the will is a
free force, habitually decided by motives. No one
denies that motives exist adequate to decide the will;
even though it may not always be conscious of them.
Science has proved that forces, sensible and occult,
physical and metaphysical, simple and complex,
surround, traverse, vibrate, rotate, repel, attract,
without stop; that man's senses are conscious of few,
and only in a partial degree; but that, from the
beginning of organic existence, his consciousness has
been induced, expanded, trained in the lines of his
sensitiveness; and that the rise of his faculties from
a lower power to a higher, or from a narrower to a
wider field, may be due to the function of
assimilating and storing outside force or forces.
There is nothing unscientific in the idea that, beyond
the lines of force felt by the senses, the universe
may be--as it has always been--either a supersensuous
chaos or a divine unity, which irresistibly attracts,
and is either life or death to penetrate. Thus far,
religion, philosophy, and science seem to go hand in
hand. The schools begin their vital battle only there.
In the earlier stages of progress, the forces to be
assimilated were simple and easy to absorb, but, as
the mind of man enlarged its range, it enlarged the
field of com- plexity, and must continue to do so,
even into chaos, until the reservoirs of sensuous or
supersensuous energies are exhausted, or cease to
affect him, or until he succumbs to their excess. 

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/hadams/eha33.html

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/hadams/ha_home.html

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