Customer Reviews

Norbert Wiener: Collected Works, Vol. 4: Cybernetics, Science, and Society; Ethics, Aesthetics, and Literary Criticism; Book Reviews and Obituaries (Mathematicians of Our Time)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

The first thing that needs to be said is that this series is not the collected works of Norbert Wiener, but the collected papers of Norbert Wiener. Thus you will not find any of Wiener's more developed works on Cybernetics, Science and Society here. You will still have to buy 'Human use of Human Beings', 'God and Golem' etc.

The papers are also reproduced directly from their original sources. Thus you can get advertisements, tiny fonts, page leaps, no continuous pagination and so on. This is either irritating or interesting depending on your point of view.

However, the main point is the work, and this is every bit as interesting as you might hope. Sure if you have read the other stuff you are going to have read some of it before, in better versions, but you are also going to find Wiener's philosophy articles for an encyclopedia and other gems which would easily be lost.

Also the technical, mathematical writings tend to be in the other volumes, which may be a plus for some people.

4 stars because its not absolutely essential, and because of the formatting issues.