From Newspeak to Cyberspeak : A History of Soviet Cybernetics

by Slava Gerovitch

• ISBN13: 9780262072328
• ISBN10: 0262072327
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-06-01
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

In this book, Slava Gerovitch argues that Soviet cybernetics was not just an intellectual trend but a social movement for radical reform in science and society as a whole. Followers of cybernetics viewed computer simulation as a universal method of problem solving and the language of cybernetics as a language of objectivity and truth. With this new objectivity, they challenged the existing order of things in economics and politics as well as in science. The history of Soviet cybernetics followed a curious arc. In the 1950s it was labeled a reactionary pseudoscience and a weapon of imperialist ideology. With the arrival of Khrushchev's political "thaw," however, it was seen as an innocent victim of political oppression, and it evolved into a movement for radical reform of the Stalinist system of science. In the early 1960s it was hailed as "science in the service of communism," but by the end of the decade it had turned into a shallow fashionable trend. Using extensive new archival materials, Gerovitch argues that these fluctuating attitudes reflected profound changes in scientific language and research methodology across disciplines, in power relations within the scientific community, and in the political role of scientists and engineers in Soviet society. His detailed analysis of scientific discourse shows how the Newspeak of the late Stalinist period and the Cyberspeak that challenged it eventually blended into "CyberNewspeak."

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements	xi
Introduction: Soviet Science and Politics through the Prism of Language	1	(10)
The Cold War in Code Words: The Newspeak of Soviet Science	11	(40)
Balancing Military and Ideological Priorities for Cold War Science	14	(4)
Shifting Boundaries between Knowledge and Ideology	18	(3)
Newspeak: The Fundamentals	21	(5)
Scientific Newspeak	26	(5)
``Formalism'' as a Floating Signifier	31	(2)
From Formulas to ``Formalism'' in Mathematics	33	(4)
From Literary Form to ``Formalism'' in Linguistics	37	(5)
The Specter of ``Idealism'' in Physiology	42	(9)
Cyberspeak: A Universal Language for Men and Machines	51	(52)
Norbert Wiener and Andrei Kolmogorov: Two Mathematicians Tackle Biology	56	(5)
Control via Feedback: The Body as a Servomechanism	61	(3)
The Order of Life: The Organism as an Entropy-Reducing Machine	64	(3)
Human Communication as an Engineering Problem: Man as an ``Information Source''	67	(5)
The Computer and the Mind as Universal Logical Machines	72	(3)
The Logic of the Brain: The Nervous System as a Turing Machine	75	(4)
The Computer as a Brain and the Brain as a Computer	79	(4)
'The Making of Cyberspeak and the Emergence of Cybernetics	83	(6)
Cyberspeak Becomes Universal	89	(7)
The Cybernetics Bandwagon	96	(7)
``Normal Pseudo-Science''	103	(50)
Cybernetic Ideas in a Soviet Context: Pro and Contra	105	(8)
``Russian Scandal'' at the Root of Cybernetics	113	(2)
Postwar Ideological Campaigns as Rituals	115	(3)
The Cybernetics ``Scandal''	118	(8)
Serial Reproduction of Criticism	126	(5)
Computers as ``Mathematical Machines'' of the Cold War	131	(11)
The Military Definition of Computing: Technology without Ideology	142	(8)
Soviet Computers: A State Secret or a ``Display Technology''?	150	(3)
Cybernetics in Rebellion	153	(46)
Soviet Science in Search of a New Language	153	(2)
Soviet Computers: Declassified and Deified	155	(6)
The Computer as a Paragon of Objectivity	161	(2)
Soviet Philosophy between Scylla and Charybdis	163	(3)
The Newspeak Defense of Cybernetics	166	(7)
The Military Defense of Cybernetics	173	(6)
Cyberspeak Challenges Newspeak	179	(4)
Cybernetics and Genetics: A Common Cause	183	(5)
Cybernetics Challenges Soviet Philosophy	188	(5)
The Legitimation of Cybernetics	193	(6)
The ``Cybernetization'' of Soviet Science	199	(54)
Cybernetics as a ``Trading Zone''	200	(4)
The Council on Cybernetics as an Institutional ``Umbrella''	204	(7)
Biological Cybernetics: Genes as ``Units of Hereditary Information''	211	(3)
The Mathematical ``Axioms of Life''	214	(4)
Physiological Cybernetics: The Brain as a Subject of Technology	218	(6)
``Man Is the Most Perfect of All Known Cybernetic Machines...''	224	(3)
Cybernetic Linguistics: Making the Study of Language an ``Exact Science''	227	(5)
From Machine Translation to Linguistic Theory	232	(9)
The Fate of the Institute of Cybernetics	241	(5)
``What Is Cybernetics?''	246	(7)
Cybernetics in the Service of Communism	253	(40)
``Cybernetics in the Service of Communism''	253	(4)
The ``Dialectical Materialization'' of Cybernetics	257	(3)
Cybernetics in Fashion	260	(4)
From ``Military Cybernetics'' to ``Economic Cybernetics''	264	(4)
``Optimal Decision-Making on a National Scale'': Aspirations and Constraints	268	(6)
``Optimal Planning'': A Vehicle of Economic Reform or an Obstacle to It?	274	(5)
Cybernetics in the Service of the Establishment	279	(6)
CyberNewspeak: The ``Scientific Management of Society''	285	(3)
The End of the Cybernetics Game	288	(5)
Conclusion Soviet Cybernetics: Prometheus or Proteus?	293	(12)
Cyberspeak as a Carnival Language	293	(3)
Cyberspeak as an Instrument of Freedom	296	(4)
Cyberspeak as a Universal Language of Capitalism and Communism	300	(5)
Notes	305	(56)
Index	361