Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Norbert Wiener was no ordinary mathematician. With the ability to understand how things worked or might work at a very deep level, he linked his own mathematics to engineering and provided basic ideas for the design of all sorts of inventions, from radar to communications networks to computers to artificial limbs.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Introduced by science historian Steve Heims, this manuscript--written by a noted mathematician in the 1950s, with the latest revision dated June 1954--was discovered among Wiener's papers in the Institute Archives of the MIT Libraries. It was originally commissioned by Doubleday, but Wiener returned their $500 advance and subsequently turned his attention to other works. Although Invention has interesting sections, it rambles in parts and has a preachy tone in others. The first few chapters on the history of technology are interesting, primarily for the breadth of the author's understanding, but his views of research styles and his criticism of ``big science'' seem outdated and unduly negative. This book will appeal to a limited audience.-- Hilary D. Burton, Lawrence Livermore National Lab., Livermore, Cal. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

Wiener considers the historical, political, and social climates that affect invention and discusses them as they pertain to invention, its relation to science, and the effect they have on the individual element in invention and discovery. He shows how these climates produce deterrents to further scientific discovery and contends that there are four important moments that arise in the process of invention: (1) the need for a proper original mind at the beginning and the need for preservation of ideas in accessible records--the intellectual climate; (2) the need for proper materials or techniques--technical climate; (3) communications between artisan and philosopher--social climate; and (4) the necessity of having a way to promote the invention--economic climate. Actual cases of invention are used; these, together with the examples of political and social climates, are, of necessity, dated, but the discussions of problems and conclusions drawn apply with equal legitimacy to those existing today, such as the subordination of scholarship to other interests--social, political, or economic. The book is very clearly written and can be read with little effort by anyone interested in scientific and technological development. It should be required reading for business excutives and politicians. All levels. P. R. Douville; emeritus, Central Connecticut State University

Author notes provided by Syndetics

American mathematical logician Norbert Wiener was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An intellectually gifted child whose father taught at Harvard University, he graduated from Tufts University at the age of 14 and received his M.A. and his Ph.D. in mathematical logic from Harvard in 1914. The following year he studied at Cambridge University under Bertrand Russell (see also Vol. 4) and Godfrey Hardy and at Gottingen University, Europe's leading centers in mathematical and physical science. During World War I, Wiener taught at the University of Maine, worked as a writer and reporter, and served as a mathematician in Aberdeen, Maryland. In 1919 Wiener joined the faculty of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he remained for the rest of his long, notable career. While at MIT, he was influenced by the research on statistical mechanics of chemist Josiah Willard Gibbs. Adapting Gibbs's findings, he produced major research contributions on the problem of Brownian motion. He also used Tauberian theorems in his work on harmonic analysis and produced simple proofs of the prime-number theorem. Wiener also began to study electrical circuits, especially the field of feedback control. During World War II, Wiener went to work for the U.S. government on the construction of predictors and in research on guided missiles. Despite his wartime contributions, he resolutely opposed the use of weapons of mass destruction. However, a major outgrowth of his wartime research was his renewed study of the handling of information by complex machines like automatic computers, radar devices, and servomechanisms. His earlier research in feedback control in circuit instrumentation now prompted Wiener to postulate the similarity between the operation of these mechanisms and that of the human brain and nervous system. His work here led to a new field of science that he called cybernetics, which he defined as the study of control and communication in man and in the machine. His book Cybernetics (1948) was widely read by both scientists and the general public. The book popularized the study of the relationships between the creations of the new age of technology and their creators. (Bowker Author Biography)