Title

Refining Wieners Perspective on the Notions of Time

Author(s)

J. Scharinger

Abstract

Norbert Wiener who coined the term cybernetics basically distinguishes between two different notions of time, Newtonian time and Bergsonian time. Newtonian time is an ideally simple science. As Wiener puts it, in any such theory the future after a fashion repeats the past and the book of astronomy reads the same backwards as forwards. When all this was reduced by Newton to a formal set of postulates and a closed mechanics, the fundamental laws of this mechanics were unaltered by the transformation of the time-variable into its negative.

In certain cases dissipative behavior can be derived directly from a conservative systems dynamics without introducing any sort of approximation. Therefore, time-directed phenomena are not generated artificially by statistical arguments, but are based on an exact systems analysis.

Last updated: 05.03.07

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