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SUMMARY:'The Grammar of the Semi-Exact Sciences': Norbert Wiener in India\
 , 1955–1956 - Poornima Paidipaty (Faculty of History)
DTSTART:20170209T130000Z
DTEND:20170209T140000Z
UID:TALK70401@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Richard Staley
DESCRIPTION:From September 1955 until April 1956\, the MIT mathematician a
 nd father of cybernetics\, Norbert Wiener spent 7 months as a visiting pro
 fessor at the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta. According to his b
 iographers Conway and Siegelman\, his experiences in India had a profound 
 influence on Wiener's later professional years. Yet little is known about 
 this time period\, which followed shortly on the success and acclaim of cy
 bernetics\, as a midcentury vision of techno-futurism. Between classroom l
 ectures\, Wiener spent much of his time working on a book manuscript\, tit
 led 'The Grammar of the Semi-Exact Sciences'\, on problems of nonlinear pr
 ediction. He promised his publisher that the book would serve as a splashy
  follow-up to his 1948 publication\, _Cybernetics_. Though he never comple
 ted or published the book\, the manuscript offers an important glimpse of 
 Wiener's work on predictive analysis\, especially when set in the context 
 of India's rapid and uncertain postcolonial economic development.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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