What We Are Reading

As we stated in the last issue of HSM we will review in these columns recent books that have come to our attention. Readers can easily contribute to this dialogue by sending us a few lines on each book that they have read specifying clearly (a) The name of the book (b) The name of the author (c) The name of the publisher (d) The location of the publisher (e) The number of pages in the book (f) The price if available (g) The ISBN Number. Send the reviews to John P. van Gigch, at vang@sonic.net. I was very stimulated to read Karl Wolf’s commentary in HSM (Vol. 24, Number 1, 2005) about Charles Francois’s Second Edition of International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (K.G. Saur Publishers, Munich, 2 volumes. 741 pp., Euro 350, 2004). I reviewed this work for Systems Research and Behavioral Science (Vol. 22(3): 273–276, May–June 2005) and concur in Wolf’s assessment. It is a very big contribution to the systems literature which should be considered by all libraries and by every serious systemicist or cybernetician. I encourage our readers to find a copy and study this work carefully and in detail. As to Karl Wolf’s comments I thought that they were relevant and provide an independent view of Francois’s text. My assessment is biased in that I consider myself a close friend and colleague of the author when we both lived in 1980’s in Argentina. I was interested in Wolf’s comments about how the Encyclopedia could be used. As he stated it is really a “hybrid of encyclopedia-dictionary-glossary-handbook – reference-source book and even a thesaurus”. Today I also want to comment on a bibliography of Norbert Wiener. It is entitled: Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener The Father of Cybernetics by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, Basic Books, New York, 2005, 424 pp., Price $27.50 US, ISBN 0-7382-0368-8. It is a book that took many years in the making and it contains a detailed history of the systems movement in the last decades. As this book reveals, Wiener had an eventful life. Wiener was an important personality and cybernetician. As we all know, he invented the field and the name of the field of Cybernetics. His life is intertwined with that of other famous scientists of his generation such as McCulloch, Von Neumann, Stafford Beer, Margaret Mead, Turing to name a few. When The New York Review of Books devotes a review to a book it is because they consider the author of importance to the general public. And indeed they reviewed this book in New York Review of Books (The Tragic Tale of A Genius by Freeman Dyson, Vol. LII (12), July 14, 2005, pp. 10–13). There is little that we can add to this thorough review except to recommend that our readers read the book. Norbert Wiener was controversial in his private life as well as his scientific career. He remains a stellar figure among the scientists who started System Science and Cybernetics, of course. There is still much to learn from this account of his achievements as well as his failures and disappointments. As the cover of the text points out: “Conway and Siegelman set out to explore the many ways in which his revolutionary ideas continue to shape our lives”. The authors also state that “what Norbert Wiener invented has only grown in significance”. He popularized the notion of feedback and was a precursor for what we call nowadays “smart” technology and the Information Age. He warned us of the dangers inherent in new electronic and biological technologies that could exceed human control. “The story of this brilliant, multitalented man is fundamental to an understanding of the intersection of technology and culture in the twenty-first century”. We agree. Finally, for this issue of HSM, I would like to bring to the attention of readers books by Michael Ruse. Each of us have an opinion of the EvolutionCreationism controversy. It pits those of us who believe Darwin’s theory is still the best scientific explanation of the beginning of the world as we know it, and the so-called creationists who adhere to a biblical