The history of one discussion: Cybernetics in the context of a provincial college


Numerous historical investigations have examined the ideological dimensions of mid-twentieth-century discussions in Soviet science. Studies have often considered cybernetics among the most-targeted disciplines, but without good reason, as this article intends to demonstrate. The situation surrounding cybernetics differed significantly from such sciences as genetics or linguistics, which became the focus of major political meetings and debates. Ideological and political factors did complicate the development of cybernetics in the USSR, but their influences were more ambivalent and not straightforwardly destructive. A case study of the institutionalization of cybernetics at Gorky University, where the country’s first department of computational mathematics and cybernetics was founded, supports this conclusion and illustrates the general situation regarding attitudes toward cybernetics in the Soviet Union.

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Recommended bibliographic description

, The history of one discussion: Cybernetics in the context of a provincial college, Voprosy Istorii Estestvoznaniia i Tekhniki [Studies in History of Science and Technology], , p.  79-93

     
    © Studies in the History of Science and Technology: Quarterly scientific journal of the Russian Academy of Sciences (2015)
    ISSN 0205-9606. Индекс 70143