BOOK REVIEW
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, hardcover, xv + 423 pp. plus 16 pages of photographs, ISBN
0738203688, $27.50 (available at $18.15 from Amazon USA at time of writing in March ’05 – see:
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0738203688/qid=1095780219/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/1034248605-7646205?v=glance&s=books or http://darkherooftheinformationage.stillpointpress.net/). The
Basic Books edition is not available for distribution in Britain and at the time of writing no British
publisher has been assigned.
This is an extremely comprehensive and significant biography, based on eight years of research by the
authors. It sheds light on personal and family aspects, and hence on Wiener as a person, to a much
greater extent than does the earlier biography by Masani (1990). In the new work I even found it
slightly disturbing to be able to pry so freely into the immature and formative years of another
individual. On the other hand, the circumstances of the emergence of such a remarkable figure as
Norbert Wiener inevitably and justifiably excite interest, and he encouraged it by writing an
autobiography.
Wiener was much influenced by his father Leo, who imposed a harsh regime of study under which
Norbert was able to enter college at age eleven and to graduate with a Ph.D. from Harvard at age
eighteen. The book gives details of the ancestry in eastern Europe, and of Leo’s own colourful history,
including his crossing of the Atlantic with the intention of founding a commune in Belize. He arrived in
New Orleans without funds to proceed further, but after much hard work he found and put into order a
suitable site in Kansas. He was then let down by the intending commune members he had left behind in
Berlin, of whom none responded to his invitation to follow.
The accounts of Norbert Wiener’s contributions reveal a number of aspects that are not well known.
His interest in biology was aroused long before his wartime work on gun predictors or his contact with
Pitts and McCulloch. He learned about biological homeostasis from Walter Cannon, as a family friend,
and thought about studying zoology. A consideration that ruled this out was his clumsiness in doing
dissections, which could be attributed to his brain working faster than his hands could follow..
His famous contributions that pervaded control and signal theory, combining statistical considerations
with harmonic analysis, were apparently initially inspired by watching ripples in the Charles River, just
across the road from one side of MIT. A remarkable demonstration of his ability was a philosophical
paper written at age ten on a “Theory of Ignorance”. This was revamped later and amounted to an
assertion of the main consequence of Gödel’s famous theorem, but preceding it by two decades.
A scholarship allowed Wiener to spend time in Cambridge, England, and in Göttingen, and in the
former he studied with Bertrand Russell. The new book shows that the exchanges of the two over
mathematics and philosophy were less harmonious than Masani’s account suggests, though after a
period of strained relations each of them admitted to a grudging respect for the other. Wiener was not
satisfied with the intention of Russell and Whitehead’s Principia to reduce everything to logic. Another
claim made in the new work is that Shannon’s Information Theory, more modestly described by him as
Theory of Communication, owes more to Wiener than is generally realised.
Much else is related and discussed, including Wiener’s efforts to serve in the first world war. He
enlisted in the army and was accepted for officer training, but was soon rejected from it when it was
realised how poor his eyesight was. The second world war saw the famous work on prediction for
antiaircraft gunfire, with implications for extrapolation, interpolation and smoothing more generally.
This was followed, a few years after the end of the war, by publication of the book Cybernetics that
gave formal birth to the subject area. The series of conferences sponsored by the Josiah Macy, Jnr.
Foundation, under the heading of Cybernetics, is described in considerable detail, with participation of
Warren McCulloch, Walter Pitts, Heinz von Foerster and others. The ideas were extended to sociology,
particularly by Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson.
The new book makes it clear that, to a greater extent than I had previously realised, the coming together
of Norbert Wiener with Warren McCulloch and the group around him was not fortuitous but part of a
plan to let MIT be what would now be called a “centre of excellence” for the new ideas.
It is also made clear that Norbert Wiener was distinctly “quirky” and unstable. Various examples of
quirky behaviour are recounted, including his rather rude invasions of laboratories and classrooms
where he insisted on making comments. Some people welcomed the interaction, but others tried to hide
when they heard him coming. More seriously, he was subject to fits of depression in which he would
shout in German and could only be calmed by reassurance that he was not losing his intellectual
powers.
The new book is the first to reveal the truth behind the split between Norbert Wiener and the
McCulloch group. The topic is delicate, especially since Warren McCulloch was opposed to
publication of any details that would reflect badly on Wiener. McCulloch’s daughter, Taffy Holland,
has now agreed that it is better to have the story told than to leave it open to speculation, and Wiener’s
daughter Barbara has agreed. The account is mainly based on information provided by Jerry Lettvin,
and is in Chapter Eleven of the new book, headed “Breach and Betrayal”.
The ostensible cause of the disagreement was a letter sent to Norbert Wiener when he was on a visit to
Mexico. The letter was signed by Jerry Lettvin and Walter Pitts and addressed jointly to Norbert
Wiener and his Mexican friend Arturo Rosenblueth. It was couched in a whimsical medieval style that
was meant as a joke, and relations with the recipients were such that it was reasonable to think that they
would be amused and would probably reply in the same style. The letter is reprinted on page 219 of the
book, and it expresses enthusiasm for the work that the group, including Wiener, was by then equipped
to undertake, with the suggestion that Rosenblueth should also participate.
The seemingly innocuous letter produced a furious response from Wiener. He sent a telegram to the
President of MIT complaining about the “impertinent” letter and dissociating himself from all
collaboration with the McCulloch group. In further letters he claimed he had been against their
involvement from the start, and criticised them on various grounds, including that of making free with
government money, a charge that was particularly unfair since the group was in fact drawing very
modest salaries. The President at first put the telegram away in a file of previous resignation letters
from Wiener, on the assumption that in a few weeks the trouble would have blown over without need
for action by him.
In fact, Wiener’s response had nothing to do with scientific projects or with money. He had been given
false information about the experiences of his daughter Barbara when she spent some time with the
McCullochs in Chicago. This was apparently a stratagem by his wife Margaret aimed at provoking a
split with the McCulloch group. It is acknowledged in the new book that there were some grounds for
unease about Norbert’s involvement with the group, which undoubtedly had Bohemian attitudes and
style of living. It was also true that Warren McCulloch was fond of alcohol and had bouts of
overindulgence in it. Interaction with the group, and even absorption into it, did not require conformity,
but given Wiener’s instability there were perhaps grounds for concern.
Wiener’s reaction to the letter was both puzzling and discouraging to the McCulloch group. The person
most affected was Walter Pitts, who was said to have come to regard Wiener as a father figure. Jerry
Lettvin has claimed, particularly in his autobiography (Lettvin 1998) that Walter never recovered from
the blow, even though his tragic death was seventeen years later. Walter was working on a new theory
of nervous functioning, which would presumably have been done in collaboration with Norbert Wiener
if the split had not occurred, and Jerry claims that three or four hundred pages had been written. In the
new book there is speculation about the nature of the theory, with the interesting suggestion that it
combined continuous and discrete processing, but since Walter burned all of it before his death no one
will ever know.
Apart from his mathematical genius, Norbert Wiener was notable for his sense of social justice and his
readiness to speak out. He had, for example, points to raise when he visited the Soviet Union for the
First Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control in 1960, and he was similarly
critical of the military-industrial complexes of the United States and other western powers. His
outspoken comments, as well as his friendship with J.B.S. Haldane, drew special attention from the
security services of the United States, as detailed for the first time in the new book.
In his later years, Wiener was particularly concerned with the social consequences of technical
advances in computing, automation and communication. He pointed out in his book The Human Use of
Human Beings that the technical advances are far from being unmixed blessings and he had a
triumphant lecture tour in India, where technology was still relatively primitive but rapidly advancing.
The new book covers all of this material, and much more, in an admirably readable but authoritative
style. The authors refer to Masani’s work as “scholarly”, but their own is equally deserving of the term,
if in places slightly more chatty. They do not show mathematical formulae, but they refer to
mathematical principles by name, with discussion of the significance, and ample references. This is
certainly an outstanding work.
The photographs that are included show Norbert Wiener at various ages from two upwards, as well as
his parents and family. Several pictures show Walter Pitts, and one is of Warren and Rook McCulloch,
and another shows Jerry Lettvin with a fine black beard that he later removed to comply with MIT rules
(from which Warren McCulloch was excused as an eminent figure).
It is interesting to note that the first version of Cybernetics was in French and published in Paris, where
interest in the topic area also gave rise to a Circle of Cybernetic Studies, mentioned on page 278 of the
new book and founded by Robert Vallée, now President of WOSC. He was later able to visit Norbert
Wiener and his family (Vallée 1994). Also, another active member of the group around McCulloch,
Patrick Wall, does not feature strongly in the accounts in the book. This is reasonable since he was not
available for interview, and he and Jerry Lettvin (as well as the other long-term member Brad
Howland) were generally in agreement. Further details can be found in an obituary in Kybernetes vol.
31, no. 2, pp. 336-8, 2002.
Another interesting point is that this is not the only recent expression of interest in the origins of
Cybernetics. In a message to the CYBCOM Internet discussion list (associated with the American
Society for Cybernetics) on 2nd February 2005, Stuart Umpleby drew attention to a very welcome
publication of the full proceedings of the Josiah Macy series of conferences. It is a two volume book:
Cybernetics - Kybernetik: The Macy Conferences 1946-1953, edited by Claus Pias (Zurich-Berlin:
Diaphanes, 2004).
Alex M. Andrew
APPENDIX
Notes on Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts
Something that is not widely known is that Warren McCulloch hoped to found an international centre
for brain research well before the time at which cybernetics emerged by name. I remember
accompanying him, at a date in the mid-nineteen fifties, on a visit to his birthplace of Orange, New
Jersey. The purpose was to hand over a large house there to a new owner. The house belonged to
Warren and Rook and had been built by them with the help of neighbours. It was on a magnificent
scale, and included a hall for lectures or concerts having the height of two storeys. Behind the stage
there was an enormous window with a view through forest down to a lake.
The house had been built when Warren and Rook expected to inherit wealth that would allow them to
run their own research centre, to which they would invite visitors from anywhere in the world.
However, the finances of both families suffered in the depression of the thirties and the scheme had to
be abandoned. They did not part with the house immediately, and the visit to hand it over was the sad
acceptance of the end of a dream. An intriguing feature, in an area intended to be a laboratory, was
platforms built out from the chimney-stacks (the most stable elements in the timber-framed structure)
to support mirror galvanometers, as the then state-of-the-art means of detecting bioelectric potentials.
The farm in Old Lyme, Connecticut, was a separate matter, originally acquired to provide a country
retreat for deprived children from New York City, where Rook was active in a charitable organisation.
Like Norbert Wiener, Warren was anxious to serve in the first world war and did so in the US Navy. It
was because he disagreed with the pacifism of the Quakers that he left the college in which he had
begun training for the ministry. Also like Wiener, he had concern for social justice and immediate
sympathy for anyone discriminated against on racial or political grounds, often expressed in a cry of:
“Gee, if only I could get that guy over here”. He was outspoken in his condemnation of the McCarthy
Commission, but I am not aware that he was personally targeted by it.
Another worker for whom Warren had high regard from an early date was Donald MacKay, originally
with King’s College, London and later Keele University. He was a strict Scottish Presbyterian and
superficially a surprising associate of the McCulloch group, but at a deeper level there was a valuable
meeting of minds and exploration of issues relevant to what later became known as Artificial
Intelligence, with special attention to the interaction of continuous and discrete processing that is again
receiving attention. An obituary can be found in Kybernetes vol. 16, no. 3, p. 189, 1987.
The mental powers of Walter Pitts were indeed remarkable. In the new book it is related that at age
thirteen he was chased by bullies and took refuge in a public library where he came upon a copy of the
famous Principia Mathematica of Whitehead and Russell and found it fascinating. During the
following week he read it through and sent comments to Bertrand Russell, who was impressed and
invited him for graduate study at Cambridge. His first meeting with Norbert Wiener had a similar
flavour, with Walter immediately contributing to a mathematical topic.
Apart from his mathematical ability, Walter was remarkable for his ability to absorb and store
information, and for his determination to do so. Norbert Wiener was noted for his broad intellectual
background, helped by his travels in Europe, but Heims (1991) represents Walter as taking an even
broader view:
Wiener, who also had great mathematical power and an excellent memory in things
scientific, differed from Pitts in that originality in science and mathematics was for him
a strong suit. In turn, he did not give Pitts's kind of detailed, in a sense, self-effacing,
attention to others' work.
The depth of Walter Pitts’s erudition seldom became apparent, but it could be brought to bear when
needed. There was an occasion where a philosopher (from the rival institution of Harvard) quibbled
with Walter on an obscure point, and when he realised his stance was indefensible tried to save face by
referring to what medieval churchmen would have said on the matter. He assumed that no one would
challenge him in that area, but he had reckoned without Walter who came back with: “What medieval
churchmen?” and proceeded to set him straight. The philosopher then tried the same trick with
references first to the ancient Greeks and then to Sanskrit writings, with similar results, and he finally
exclaimed: “You mean, you actually read Sanskrit?” to which Walter replied that he did, though he
admitted it was slowly and with a dictionary.
In many different fields, including some that were quite down-to-earth such as industrial chemistry,
Walter really was a “walking encyclopaedia”. At a time in the late fifties or early sixties (a few years
after my stay with the group) he gave a series of lectures on the History of Science, and I was told by
someone who attended that they were fascinating. However, Walter aimed at perfection and sometimes
panicked when he believed he was not fully prepared for a talk. On one such occasion the topic was to
be the work of Euler, but Walter reflected that there were seventeen books by or about Euler that he
considered relevant, and he had read only fifteen of them, and rather than face the class he fled to the
library to read the other two. (I may have got the details wrong since my memory is far from
encyclopaedic but I am sure the general picture is correct. Walter’s level of erudition was truly
fantastic.)
REFERENCES
Heims, Steve Joshua (1991) The Cybernetics Group, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., p. 45
Lettvin, J.Y. (1998) “Autobiography”, in: The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography, ed.
Larry R. Squire, Academic Press, New York, vol. 2, pp. 222-243
Masani, P.R. (1990) Norbert Wiener 1894-1964, Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel. (Reviewed in
Kybernetes vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 11-16, and no. 5, p. 41, 1991)
Vallée, R. (1994) “Norbert Wiener in the early 1950s”, Kybernetes vol. 23, no. 6/7, pp. 28-31