The founding work of cybernetics

Wiener, Norbert. Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine.

€ 2,000.00

First edition of the founding work of cybernetics, a concept popularized by the American mathematician Norbert Wiener (1894-1964) to designate the science that studies the processes of control, feedback and communication in biological and electromechanical systems.

By giving rise to computer science, cybernetics has revolutionized modern society (cf. Jeremy M. Norman, From Gutenberg to the Internet, 2005, pp. 309-318). The book "contributed to popularizing a way of thinking in communication theory terms, such as feedback, information, control, input, output, stability, homeostasis, prediction, and filtering" and "earned Wiener the greater part of his public renown" (DSB). It is the first conventionally published book (rather than a technical report) to include any serious discussion of electronic computing. It also contains one of the earliest discussions since the invention of the digital computer of whether it is possible to create a chess-playing machine.

Issued as No. 1053 from the collection of "Hermann's Science and Industry News", this is the very first print run, prior to those made for the New York edition.