5:42 AM
Jam Jacobs
1930's is the time when tensions are raising around the world which eventually led to the outbroke of World War II.
So, war was in its apex form, but as we read in "As we may think" ,Vannevar Bush says that "In the 1930s, US military research was relatively small and disorganized. It was performed primarily by military staff and often duplicated
between different branches of the military."
So, as we see, science in war is insignificant, but outside it is seeking for a chance to ravage.And this chance was brought by Vannaver Bush,he was able to create NDRC,and thus came into a position with tremendous influence.
"Bush's work not only helped the Allies win the war, but it changed the way scientific research was done in the U.S. Bush demonstrated that technology was the key to winning a war, and in turn earned a new respect for scientists".Thus opening the gates for development of science in the coat of war, but many civil scientists also got influenced and continued their reseach,developing science.
Also we read in "As we may think" that, "He argued that, after the war, the nation would still need permanent support for research, and he outlined a plan of continued support for research.He wrote, “It is my judgment that
the national interest in scientific research and scientific education can best be promoted by the creation of a National Research Foundation.” the NSF nevertheless secured the marriage between science and government."
And now Norbert Weiner would come to picture, as we read in Peter Galison's work "The Ontology of the enemy: Norbert Weiner and the Cybernetic Vision" -
"Wiener came to see the predictor as a prototype not only of the mind of an inaccessible Axis opponent but of the Allied antiaircraft gunner as well, and then even more widely to include the vast array of human proprioceptive and
electro-physiological feedback systems. The model then expanded to become a new science known after the war as "cybernetics," a science that would embrace intentionality, learning, and much else within the human mind."
Wiener's idea was to use electrical networks to determine, several seconds in advance, where an attacking plane would be and to use that knowledge to direct artillery fire.
A computing machine has features which the nervous system also has …. “It will be seen that I had become engaged in the study of a mechanico-electrical system which was designed to usurp a specifically human function — in the first case,
execution of a complicated patterns of computation, and in the second the forecasting of the future” (Weiner p 6).
As the AA predictor came to fruition, Wiener came to see it as the articulated prototype for a new understanding of the human-machine relation, one that made soldier, calculator, and firepower into a single integrated system.
With the bombing (using guided missile/torpedo built along the same lines as the anitaircraft director) of Japan in 1945 and in the years that followed, Wiener repeatedly stressed the power of cybernetics to save, enslave, or destroy humanity. However, already built into the AA predictor and its progeny was a set of cultural meanings not easily shed.
To understand the specific cultural meaning of the cybernetic devices is necessarily to track them back to the wartime vision of the pilot-as-servomechanism.
Paradoxically, during the war Wiener had extended the cybernetic vision beyond its narrow applications because of the weakness of the AA predictor; now that he associated cybernetics with the power of cataclysmic weapons, he tried to push cybernetics away from the military arena because of its deadly efficacy.
In World War II, the mechanized soldier faced his opponent as a machine, and machines manifested themselves as people.
For Wiener, the essential reality of the world was that the individual lived in isolation, struggling (searching for tactics) to create order out of chaos. Science itself, as it faced nature, was such a battle: "The scientist," he declared late in life, "is always working to discover the order and organization of the universe, and is thus playing a game against the arch enemy, disorganization.”
Cybernetics, that science-as-steersman, made an angel of control and a devil of disorder.
Thus war and science during 1930's, grew hand-in-hand,science helping to win the war and to win the war, developing science.This was how the vision of science and war was.But now, due to the huge success and development in science, it has grown out of war and searching ways to oppose war, and to promote the peace livelihood of human kind.
G.Abhilash Roy,
CS09B012.
So, war was in its apex form, but as we read in "As we may think" ,Vannevar Bush says that "In the 1930s, US military research was relatively small and disorganized. It was performed primarily by military staff and often duplicated
between different branches of the military."
So, as we see, science in war is insignificant, but outside it is seeking for a chance to ravage.And this chance was brought by Vannaver Bush,he was able to create NDRC,and thus came into a position with tremendous influence.
"Bush's work not only helped the Allies win the war, but it changed the way scientific research was done in the U.S. Bush demonstrated that technology was the key to winning a war, and in turn earned a new respect for scientists".Thus opening the gates for development of science in the coat of war, but many civil scientists also got influenced and continued their reseach,developing science.
Also we read in "As we may think" that, "He argued that, after the war, the nation would still need permanent support for research, and he outlined a plan of continued support for research.He wrote, “It is my judgment that
the national interest in scientific research and scientific education can best be promoted by the creation of a National Research Foundation.” the NSF nevertheless secured the marriage between science and government."
And now Norbert Weiner would come to picture, as we read in Peter Galison's work "The Ontology of the enemy: Norbert Weiner and the Cybernetic Vision" -
"Wiener came to see the predictor as a prototype not only of the mind of an inaccessible Axis opponent but of the Allied antiaircraft gunner as well, and then even more widely to include the vast array of human proprioceptive and
electro-physiological feedback systems. The model then expanded to become a new science known after the war as "cybernetics," a science that would embrace intentionality, learning, and much else within the human mind."
Wiener's idea was to use electrical networks to determine, several seconds in advance, where an attacking plane would be and to use that knowledge to direct artillery fire.
A computing machine has features which the nervous system also has …. “It will be seen that I had become engaged in the study of a mechanico-electrical system which was designed to usurp a specifically human function — in the first case,
execution of a complicated patterns of computation, and in the second the forecasting of the future” (Weiner p 6).
As the AA predictor came to fruition, Wiener came to see it as the articulated prototype for a new understanding of the human-machine relation, one that made soldier, calculator, and firepower into a single integrated system.
With the bombing (using guided missile/torpedo built along the same lines as the anitaircraft director) of Japan in 1945 and in the years that followed, Wiener repeatedly stressed the power of cybernetics to save, enslave, or destroy humanity. However, already built into the AA predictor and its progeny was a set of cultural meanings not easily shed.
To understand the specific cultural meaning of the cybernetic devices is necessarily to track them back to the wartime vision of the pilot-as-servomechanism.
Paradoxically, during the war Wiener had extended the cybernetic vision beyond its narrow applications because of the weakness of the AA predictor; now that he associated cybernetics with the power of cataclysmic weapons, he tried to push cybernetics away from the military arena because of its deadly efficacy.
In World War II, the mechanized soldier faced his opponent as a machine, and machines manifested themselves as people.
For Wiener, the essential reality of the world was that the individual lived in isolation, struggling (searching for tactics) to create order out of chaos. Science itself, as it faced nature, was such a battle: "The scientist," he declared late in life, "is always working to discover the order and organization of the universe, and is thus playing a game against the arch enemy, disorganization.”
Cybernetics, that science-as-steersman, made an angel of control and a devil of disorder.
Thus war and science during 1930's, grew hand-in-hand,science helping to win the war and to win the war, developing science.This was how the vision of science and war was.But now, due to the huge success and development in science, it has grown out of war and searching ways to oppose war, and to promote the peace livelihood of human kind.
G.Abhilash Roy,
CS09B012.
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