https://www.jstor.org/stable/2492266

  • In the 19th century, it was understood that doing science based on philosophy did not lead to good results. However, in the Soviet Union, it was believed that if one followed materialism, “correct” results would be obtained.

  • In that case, was “correctness” determined by a priori intuition or by political/ideological judgment?

    • (blu3mo) This could be useful for dividing Eastern Europe.
  • Pages 450-453, 456-457 mainly discuss the ideological constraints on Soviet science and the introduction of cybernetics.

    • There are many concrete examples, so it could be a great source for quotes.
  • The specific process of how cybernetics was rejected and then accepted is described in detail on pages 450-452.

    • Around 1965.

(1945) Bol’shevik noted that “socialist” and “bourgeois” science had little in common.

  • There is a sense of technological determinism.

These three scientists were convinced that some thinkers rejected cybernetics because they were unaware of its scientific core and because the philosophers equated Wiener’s theory with popularized Western versions of cybernation that indulged in sensationalism and speculation.

  • “a form of reactionary pseudoscience originating in the United States after World War II and now widely employed in other capitalist countries; a form of contemporary mechanization” (Russian physicist, 1954)

Khrushchev’s advice, given at a meeting in December 1962 of the Kiev Communist Party attended mainly by economists, stressing the “necessity for developing research in cybernetics and for using computers in accounting and planning in the national economy.”

  • They started to recognize the use of computers in economic management.

  • However, during the process of acceptance, there were also Soviet adaptations.

    • Wiener was variously accused of pragmatism, antiscientism, vulgar materialism, natural-history materialism, positivism, and idealistic eclecticism.

    • It was Sovietized as it entered.
    • This is discussed around pages 458-459.

While Soviet intellectuals generally agree that some of the operational features of electronic calculating machines simulate human behavior, they almost invariably stress that human beings and machines are entirely dissimilar from the structural point of view.

  • From a dialectical materialist perspective, humans and machines cannot be the same.

Page 461-

  • Explanation of how cybernetics conflicted with dialectical materialism.
    • Then it expands to the entire world and all of science on page 463.

To this day there is no definite and uniformly accepted Soviet formula on the relationship of dialectical materialism to the exact sciences.

  • Page 464.
    • The development of information science in the Soviet Union.

As a result of the interaction between philosophy and Soviet cybernetics,

  • Most importantly, Soviet Marxists and scientists have managed to demonstrate the flexibility of dialectical materialism and its compatibility with cybernetics.