On Norbert Wiener
When I was an undergraduate student, I often sneak into the library of the math department when the library attendant was not at the desk. Only seniors were allowed to sign into the library. My favorite book was Wiener’s Cybernetics. Cybernetics roughly means control theory. But in his book, he mostly talked about statistical mechanics. Most things around us, such as our own bodies and our own societies, contain many particles. Statistical mechanics, a theory of many particle problems, should guide our study on most things. The book was beautifully written. It left a deep mark in my impressionable years. All my life, I have been thinking from the perspective of statistical mechanics. That is largely due to his influence.
Wiener is much greater than most Nobel prize winners. There is no need to link him to Nobel laureates. There are some connections between Wiener and some laureates, such as Max Born, Heisenberg, Watson and Crick. But these connections may not be instrumental in their research.
As for information theory, Shannon gave the formula, he also derived the crucial equation, R(Y) = H(X) - H(X|Y). Shannon really laid the analytical foundation of information theory. Wiener did talk about information as entropy in Cybernetics. But he was more philosophical.
Wiener’s Cybernetics was published in 1948. In the same year, Shannon’s paper on information theory and Feynman’s paper on path integral were published. That was the harvest season from the fertile intellectual fields during World War II.
Wiener’s contributions are under-appreciated. This is because today’s scientific research is highly specialized. Specialists today can’t appreciate the broad view offered by Wiener. But Wiener is much luckier than today’s polymath. While Wiener moaned about specialization in his day, today’s scientific research is much more specialized. Wiener was a prominent figure in the academic community. When he loudly complained that he was undervalued, he got many sympathetic ears. Today’s Wiener would be lucky to hold on any academic job anywhere.
