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Norbert Wiener Biography

Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 – March 18, 1964) was an American mathematician and philosopher. He was a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and mathematical noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.

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Norbert Wiener Quotes

Am I really a good mathematician?

Mathematician, Good

The sense of tragedy is that the world is not a pleasant little nest made for our protection, but a vast and largely hostile environment, in which we can achieve great things only by defying the gods; and that this defiance inevitably brings its own punishment.

Punishment, Tragedy, World, Things, Vast, Sense

We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves. A pattern is a message, and may be transmitted as a message.

May, Message, Perpetuate, Rivers, Stuff, Water

There are fields of scientific work. . . which have been explored from the different sides of pure mathematics, statistics, electrical engineering, and neurophysiology. . . in which every single notion receives a separate and different name from each group, and in which important work has been triplicated or quadruplicated, while still other important work is delayed by the unavailability in one field of results that may have already become classical in the next field.

Engineering, Names, Important, Results, Different, Name

the science of control and communication in the animal and the machine

Animal, Communication, Machine, Machines, Science

A faith which we follow upon orders imposed from outside is no faith, and a community which puts its dependence upon such a pseudo-faith is ultimately bound to ruin itself because of the paralysis which the lack of a healthy growing science imposes upon it.

Community, Healthy, Order, Orders, Paralysis, Ultimately

The advantage is that mathematics is a field in which one's blunders tend to show very clearly and can be corrected or erased with a stroke of the pencil.

Blunders, Fields, Logic, Math, Show, Stroke

What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their experiments lead.

Interesting, Granted, Results, Lead

There are no answers, only cross references

Answers, Cross, Crosses, Murphys Law, References

It is possible to believe in progress as a fact without believing in progress as an ethical principle; but in the catechism of many Americans, the one goes with the other.

Believe, Ethical Principles, Possible, Progress

The idea that information can be stored in a changing world without an overwhelming depreciation of its value is false. It is scarcely less false than the more plausible claim that after a war we may take our existing weapons, fill their barrels with information.

War, Ideas, World, Plausible, Take, Overwhelming

The Advantage is that mathematics is a field in which one's blunders tend to show very clearly and can be corrected or erased with a stroke of the pencil. It is a field which has often been compared with chess, but differs from the latter in that it is only one's best moments that count and not one's worst. A single inattention may lose a chess game, whereas a single successful approach to a problem, among many which have been relegated to the wastebasket, will make a mathematician's reputation.

Among, Clearly, Games, Math, Pencil, Success

Any use of a human being in which less is demanded of him and less is attributed to him than his full status is a degradation and a waste.

Degradation, Full, Use, Waste

A professor is one who can speak on any subject - for precisely fifty minutes.

Engineering, Fifty, Math, Professor, Science, Speak

Our tissues change as we live: the food we eat and the air we breathe become flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, and the momentary elements of our flesh and bone pass out of our body every day with our excreta. We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves

Air, Bone, Excreta, Flesh, Rivers, Water

Information is information; it is neither matter nor energy.

Energy, Information, Matter

The modern physicist is a quantum theorist on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and a student of gravitational relativity on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. On Sunday, he is praying. . . that someone will find the reconciliation between the two views.

Friday, Monday, Sunday, Praying, Relativity, Wednesday

Any useful logic must concern itself with Ideas with a fringe of vagueness and a Truth that is a matter of degree.

Concern, Degrees, Ideas, Logic, Vagueness

A significant idea of organization cannot be obtained in a world in which everything is necessary and nothing is contingent

Organization, Ideas, World, Contingent, Idea, Everything

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, and the negative logarithm of its probability. That is, the more probable the message, the less information it gives. Cliches, for example, are less illuminating than great poems.

Carried, Example, Gives, Giving, Message, Organization

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