June 26, 2005
Freeman Dyson on Norbert Wiener
Dyson reviews Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener, the Father of Cybernetics by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, in the New York Review of Books:
At age eleven, Leo enrolled Norbert as a student at Tufts University, where he graduated with a degree in mathematics at age fourteen. Norbert then moved to Harvard as a graduate student and emerged with a Ph.D. in mathematical logic at age eighteen. While he was growing up and trying to escape from his notoriety as a prodigy at Tufts and Harvard, Leo was making matters worse by trumpeting Norbert's accomplishments in newspapers and popular magazines. Leo was emphatic in claiming that his son was not unusually gifted, that any advantage that Norbert had gained over other children was due to his better training. "When this was written down in ineffaceable printer's ink," said Norbert in his autobiography, Ex-prodigy, "it declared to the public that my failures were my own but my successes were my father's."
More here.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 02:57 AM | Permalink
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Almost all the sciences, including physics, study various aspects of that science in isolation, apart from the whole. For example, in physics, one studies the mechanical motions of bodies, the pressure-volume relationship of the gas laws, the harmonic motion of a spring, the changes in phase of liquids as heat is added and temperature rises, the damped oscillations of certain electrical circuits, the laws of optics for visible wavelengths, etc. But rarely in nature, does one find any of these separate components acting alone; they almost always act in a complicated, interacting system, usually non linear, which immediately leads to the question: Do the laws discovered by studying the various phenomena in isolation, also apply when these are interacting systems? Fortunately, for man, the answer is usually "yes". However, when one attempts to understand complex interacting systems, like the weather, or like the motions of planets around the Sun, or like the oceans, or like the space shuttle, or the human body, or any living organism, or like the Rho meson, the laws discovered by Professor Weiner come into play, because one is dealing not just with individual laws of physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, etc., but with complex interactions of multi components systems involving the basic laws, studied and understood, for the most part, in isolation only. Electrical engineers used to refer to this subject as "non linear control theory", and it is one of the most complex areas of study in engineering because it involves interactions of multi component systems, which usually, can only be studied from a statistical point of view.
I cannot claim to have read alot of medical textbooks, but I doubt of many of them quote Professor Weiner. Yet there is a medical book on cancer, not published by the orthodoxy or an "academic" press, but written by a distinguished medical doctor from Germany, who even testified before the United States Congress in 1946, just before the medical orthodoxy of the United States basically ran him out of town in New York, cancelling his hospital priviledges, cancelling his liability insurance, with basically no scientifically valid arguments or proof that he had done anything wrong at all, other than their prejudiced views against this remarkable medical doctor from Germany.
Max Gerson, M.D., born in 1881 in Wongrowitz, Germany, died in 1959 in the United States. His daughters published the remarkable book he was writing before his death "A Cancer Therapy Results of Fifty Cases", The Gerson Institute, 1958, which has gone through at least 5 printings through 1990. After discussing and acknowledging the seminal discoveries in cancer cells of Otto Warburg, M.D., Ph.D. in Chapter I, Dr. Gerson discusses in Chapter II the human body as a multi component system. This chapter is entitled "The Concept of Totality-Decisive in Cancer and Other Degenerative Diseases".
He begins this chapter with this statement:
"Cancer is a chronic, degenerative disease, where almost all essential organs are involved in the more advanced cancer. The entire metabolism with the intestinal tract and its adnexa, the liver and pancreas, the circulatory apparatus (the cellular exchange supporter), the kidneys and the bile system (as the main elimination organs), the reticulo-endothelial and lymphatic system (as defense apparatus), the central nervous system and especially the visceral nervous system for most metabolic and motoric purposes.
Dr. Nichols was probably one of the first in our time who recognized the 'concept of totality' as applied to disease. He combined the following clinical appearences: Emotional, nutritional, poisons, infections, accidents and inheritance as underlying causes for diseases: 'No wonder we are all sick...and science is no longer science when it attempts to violate God's natural law.'(13)...
It has been emphasized before that cancer develops in a body which more or less has lost the normal functions of the metabolism as a consequence of a chronic daily poisoning accumulated especially in the liver.(14). It is important to realize that in our body all the innermost processes work together, depend on each other, and will be deranged with each other in diseases. That is the reason why all of them together have to be attacked for healing purposes at the base and in combination. My clinical experiences revealed that this is the surest way to the success of a therapy. Most parts of the general metabolism can be found concentrated in the liver. The biological function of the liver itself, however, depends on the proper activity and correct cooperation of many other essential organs.
I found the ideas of totality more profoundly developed by the ancient work of Paracelsus, and many other physicians long ago.
It is not only in biology where the idea of totality is to be regarded as an entity of the natural processes; it is also the rule in art, in philosophy, in music, in physics, where the most learned scholars found the concept of totality alive in their fields of research and work. As a few samples, I would like to mention first Henry Drummond's philosophical work Natural Law in the Spiritual World (1883). The basis of it is expressed in his workds: 'The continuity of the physical world to the spiritual.' This means the coherence of the physical inorganic powers as they are transformed basically into the organic world of plants and animals. In man, there are electric potentials outstanding in the life of cells. They are especially accumulated in the nervous system, which is ultimately our 'spiritual organ' capable of creating progress and great accomplishments.
In physics, Albert Einstein's first great work was Relativity of Space and Time. At first the theory was considered fantastic. Later it was generally accepted. Einstein's advanced studies dealt with a transformation of light and the photoelectric effect. Finally, his 'transformation theory' attempted to included gravity, magnetism, and elctricity into one basic physical system, which he called the Unified Field View-most difficult to prove.
In art, as an example of this concept,is the work of Schaefer-Simmern, who took the explanation of art out of the narrow limitations of the old rational principles and demonstrated that art is a 'creative power', inherent in our brain functions, developing according to the body's growth, mental, emotional and intellectual maturity. Schaefer-Simmern said that 'The creative potentialities in men and in women, in business and the professions, are always present as an entity.' united with all other powers of the body. Schaefer-Simmern used art to 'unfold the inherent artistic ability in the education of children,' since it may become the decisive factor in the groundwork of a culture that rests on the creative nature of man.(15)
Norbert Wiener, Professor of Mathematics at M.I.T., writes: 'There are fields of scientific work which have been explored from the different sides of pure mathematics, statistics, electrical engineering and neurophysiology, in which each single notion receives a separate name from each group, and in which important work as been triplicated or quadruplicated, while still other important work has been delayed by the unavailability in one field of results that may have already become classical in the next field.'(16)
Medical science has eliminated the totality of the natural biological rules in the human body, mostly by dividing research and practice into many specialities. Doing intensive, masterly specialized work, it was forgotten that every part is still only a piece of the entire body.
In all textbooks, we find that single biological processes havge been studied and overestimated statements made about them. the symptoms of a disease have become the main problem for research, clinical work and therapy. The old methods which sought to combine all functional parts in a body into a viological entity, have beeen pushed aside almost involuntarily, in the clinic, and especially in institutions of physiology and pathology....
In the nutritional field, observations for centuries have shown that people who live according to natural methods in which plants, animals and human beings are only fragments of the eternal cycle of Nature do not get cancer. On the contrary, people who accept methods of modern nutrition on an increasing scale, become involved in degenerative disease, including cancer, in a relatively short time..."
Even in physics, much greater effort should be made to teach the laws of physics as they exist in nature as a complex interacting system, and not as isolated non interacting parts of a system.
Posted by: Winfield J. Abbe | Jun 26, 2005 6:21:27 AM
Crumbs. The first comment leaves me at a loss. To inject some levity, here's a Norbert Weiner joke (from Foolproof: A sampling of mathematical folk humor):
Posted by: Michael Williams | Jun 26, 2005 11:07:30 AM
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