Norbert Wiener: Invention: The Care and Feeding of Ideas (1993)

“Internationally honored for achievements throughout his career, author of Cybernetics, ExProdigy, and the essay God and Golem, Inc., which won the National Book Award in 1964, Norbert Wiener was no ordinary mathematician. With the ability to understand how things worked or might work at a very deep level, he linked his own mathematics to engineering and provided basic ideas for the design of all sorts of inventions, from radar to communications networks to computers to artificial limbs. Years after he died, the manuscript for this book was discovered among his papers. The world of science has changed greatly since Wiener’s day, and much of the change has been in the direction he warned against. Now published for the first time, this book can be read as a salutary corrective from the past and a chance to rethink the components of an environment that encourages inventiveness.

Wiener provides an insider’s understanding of the history of discovery and invention, emphasizing the historical circumstances that foster innovations and allow their application. His message is that truly original ideas cannot be produced on an assembly line, and that their consequences are often felt only at distant times and places. The intellectual and technological environment has to be right before the idea can blossom. The best course for society is to encourage the best minds to pursue the most interesting topics, and to reward them for the insights they produce. Wiener’s comments on the problem of secrecy and the importance of the “free-lance” scientist are particularly pertinent today.”

With an introduction by Steve Joshua Heims
Publisher MIT Press, 1993
ISBN 0262231670
185 pages

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Wolfgang Lefèvre (ed.): Picturing Machines 1400-1700 (2004)

“Technical drawings by the architects and engineers of the Renaissance made use of a range of new methods of graphic representation. These drawings—among them Leonardo da Vinci’s famous drawings of mechanical devices—have long been studied for their aesthetic qualities and technological ingenuity, but their significance for the architects and engineers themselves is seldom considered. The essays in Picturing Machines 1400-1700 take this alternate perspective and look at how drawing shaped the practice of early modern engineering. They do so through detailed investigations of specific images, looking at over 100 that range from sketches to perspective views to thoroughly constructed projections.

In early modern engineering practice, drawings were not merely visualizations of ideas but acted as models that shaped ideas. Picturing Machines establishes basic categories for the origins, purposes, functions, and contexts of early modern engineering illustrations, then treats a series of topics that not only focus on the way drawings became an indispensable means of engineering but also reflect the main stages in their historical development. The authors examine the social interaction conveyed by early machine images and their function as communication between practitioners; the knowledge either conveyed or presupposed by technical drawings, as seen in those of Giorgio Martini and Leonardo; drawings that required familiarity with geometry or geometric optics, including the development of architectural plans; and technical illustrations that bridged the gap between practical and theoretical mechanics.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2004
ISBN 0262122693, 9780262122696
347 pages

Publisher

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Helaine Selin (ed.): Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures (1997)

Here, at last, is the massively updated and augmented second edition of this landmark encyclopedia. The electronic version of this two-volume work contains approximately 1000 entries dealing in depth with the history of the scientific, technological and medical accomplishments of cultures outside of the United States and Europe.

The entries consist of fully updated articles together with hundreds of entirely new topics adorned with full color pictures. This unique reference work includes intercultural articles on broad topics such as mathematics and astronomy as well as thoughtful philosophical articles on concepts and ideas related to the study of non-Western Science, such as rationality, objectivity, and method.

You’ll also find material on religion and science, East and West, and magic and science. This amazing resource even contains entries on fascinating esoteric topics such as Native American mathematics, Polynesian navigation, and African Metallurgy.There are also biographical articles for those cultures where individual scientists are known to us, such as China and the Islamic world.

Publisher Springer, 1997
ISBN 0792340663, 9780792340669
Length 1117 pages

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