Valentin Turchin

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Valentin Turchin (1977)

Valentin Fjodorowitsch Turchin ( Russian Валенти́н Фёдорович Турчи́н ; also written Valentin F. Turčin; * 1931 in Podolsk ; † April 7, 2010 in New York ) was a Soviet and later American mathematician and computer scientist. He is considered one of the pioneers in artificial intelligence .

Life

Turchin graduated from Moscow in 1952 with a degree in theoretical physics and received his doctorate in 1957. He then worked on neutron scattering and solid-state physics at the Institute for Energy Physics in Obninsk . In 1964 he moved to the Keldysh Institute for Applied Mathematics in Moscow. There he worked on statistical regularization methods and developed the REFAL programming language . This was one of the first artificial intelligence programming languages and was primarily used in this area in the USSR . At the time, Valentin Turtschin was considered one of the most eminent computer scientists in the Soviet Union.

In the late 1960s, Turtschin became politically active , especially under the influence of the invasion of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia , and wrote the book The Momentum of Fear and the Scientific World View . It is a devastating criticism of totalitarianism based on the then popular cybernetic social theory . He then lost his research laboratory. In 1970 he wrote the book The Phenomenon of Science , in which he tries to interpret natural as well as cultural evolution from a cybernetic point of view and tries to put the theory of evolution on a corresponding foundation.

In 1973 he founded the Moscow section of Amnesty International with Andrei Tverdochlebov . He also worked with Andrei Sakharov . In 1974 he lost his position at the institute again and was persecuted by the secret service, three years later he was finally forced to leave the USSR. After emigrating in 1979 he became a member of the City University of New York there .

In 1989 he founded Principia Cybernetica with Cliff Joslyn , an organization that promotes the development of an evolutionary cybernetic philosophy. Until 2005, Turtschin was also editor of the Principia Cybernetica publications with Joslyn and Francis Heylighen. In 1998 he co-founded the software start-up company SuperCompilers, LLC. In 1999 Turtschin retired as professor of computer science at the City College of New York .

Turchin's son, Pjotr, is a biologist and works in particular on population dynamics and the mathematical modeling of historical dynamics ( cliodynamics ).

Act

The philosophical core of Turtschins scientific work is the concept of Metasystemübergängen , whereby an evolutionary process is referred to, by the in systems repeated hierarchically higher, qualitatively new arise levels of control. He used this concept to provide a global theory of evolution and a coherent theory of social systems, as well as to attempt a constructivist basis for mathematics. With the help of REFAL, he was able to implement a so-called supercompiler - a uniform method for program transformation and optimization based on meta-transitions. The term “meta” or “supercompilation” also goes back to Turtschin.

Works

  • Slow neutrons . ISPT, Jerusalem, 1965
  • The Phenomenon of Science - A Cybernetic Approach to Human Evolution . New York: Columbia University Press, 1977, ISBN 978-0-231-03983-3 .
  • The Inertia of Fear and the Scientific Worldview . New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. ISBN 978-0-231-04622-0 .
  • The concept of a supercompiler . ACM Transactions on Programming Languages ​​and Systems (New York: ACM) 8 (3): 292-325. July 1986)
  • A Constructive Interpretation of the Full Set Theory . Journal of Symbolic Logic (Association for Symbolic Logic) 52 (1): 172-201. (March 1987)
  • On Cybernetic Epistemology . Systems Research 10: 3rd, 1993
  • The Cybernetic Ontology of Action . Cybernetes 22 (2): 10.1993
  • A Dialogue on Metasystem Transition . World Futures 45 (1): 5-57.1995
  • Refal-5: Programming Guide and Reference Manual . New England Publishing Co. Holyoke MA, 1989

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ History of the Principia Cybernetica Project ( Memento from September 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Francis Heylighen: From the Web to the global brain . , Telepolis article, August 12, 1996, accessed March 9, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Turchin, Valentin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Turchin, Valentin Fjodorowitsch (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Soviet-American cyberneticist and computer scientist
DATE OF BIRTH 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Podolsk
DATE OF DEATH April 7, 2010
Place of death New York City