Norbert Wiener

1894–1964 · American mathematician, scientist in cybernetics and artificial intelligence

Topics: learning, life, complexity

• We know that for a long time everything we do will be nothing more than the jumping off point for those who have the advantage of already being aware of our ultimate results.

  — Norbert Wiener

• [T]he best material model of a cat is another, or preferably the same cat.

  — Norbert Wiener

• A significant idea of organization cannot be obtained in a world in which everything is necessary and nothing is contingent'

  — Norbert Wiener

• We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not the stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves.

  — Norbert Wiener

• What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their experiments lead.

  — Norbert Wiener

• The sense of tragedy is that the world is not a pleasant little nest made for our protection, but a vast and largely hostile environment, in which we can achieve great things only by defying the gods; and that this defiance inevitably brings its own punishment.

  — Norbert Wiener

• The most fruitful areas for the growth of the sciences were those which had been neglected as a no-man's land between the various established fields.

  — Norbert Wiener

• To live effectively is to live with adequate information.

  — Norbert Wiener