Norbert Wiener 18941964 [Paperback]

1 Prologue.- A) Americas second Leibniz. B) The difficulties of a biographer. C) Scope and focus. D) Poetry, prose and mathematical symbolism. E) Policy as to mathematical usage.- 2 Count Tolstoy and Wieners Father.- Solomon and Leo Wiener. The gift of tongues. Tolstoyan conversion and arrival in New Orleans. Mutualistic communities in the 1880s. Leos Mark Twain characteristics: the Russian Irishman. Marriage and family. Professorships at Missouri and Harvard.- 3 New England and Wieners Early Training, 19011905.- Norberts Cambridge home. Early biological curiosities. Peabody School and Leos tutelage. The avenger of blood. Infantile maladroitness and threat of myopia. Old Mill Farms and Ayer High School. Love for the democracy of the New England town.- 4 Harvard and Wieners University Training, 19061913.- A) An eleven-year-old freshman at Tufts College. B) A semester in zoology. C) The black year at the Sage school of philosophy. D) The return to Harvard.- 5 Bertrand Russell and Wieners Postdoctoral Years, 19141917.- A) Wieners emancipation. B) The doctrine of types. C) The Tractatus and logical empiricism. D) Wieners philosophical activity. E) Columbia and its word-minded philosopher (1915). F) Harvard and the Docent Lectures (19151916). G) The unpleasant stint in Maine (1916). Note: The Peano postulate system.- 6 World War I and Wieners Military Yearnings.- The young war enthusiast. Futile efforts to enlist in the armed forces. Staff work with the Encyclopedia Americana. Computer at the U.S. Army Proving Grounds. Private in the U.S. Infantry. Fowlersque touch.- 7 From Postulate Systems to the Brownian Motion and Potential Theory.- A) Wiener joins the Massachussetts Institute of Technology. B) The relation of space and geometry to experience [22a]. C) Postulate systems. D) The Brownian motion. E) Theory of the potential. Note 1: Boolean algebra. Note 2: Algebraic field. Note 3: The Brownian movement. Note 4: The Borel terminology. Note 5: Hală#