Valentin Turchin

Valentin Fedorovich Turtschin (Russian Валентин Фёдорович Турчин, 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 of artificial intelligence.

Life

Turtschin closed in 1952 to study theoretical physics in Moscow and received his doctorate in 1957. Afterwards he worked on neutron scattering and solid-state physics at the Institute of Physics of Energy in Obninsk. In 1964 he moved to the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics in Moscow. There he worked on statistical regularization and developed the REFAL programming language. This was one of the first programming of artificial intelligence and has been used primarily in the USSR in this field. Valentin Turtschin was at this time as one of the most eminent computer scientists of the Soviet Union.

In the late 1960s Turtschin was, especially in the wake of the invasion of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia, politically active, and wrote the book The momentum of fear and the scientific worldview. It's a devastating critique of totalitarianism, which was based on the cybernetic social theory then emerging. He lost his research laboratory. In 1970 he wrote the book The Phenomenon of Science, in which he interpreted the natural as well as cultural evolution from a cybernetic point of view and tries to put the theory of evolution on adequate foundations.

In 1973 he founded, together with Andrei Tversdoklebov the Moscow branch of Amnesty International. He also worked with Andrei Sakharov. In 1974, he lost again its position at the Institute and has been persecuted by the secret, three years later he was finally forced to leave the USSR. After the emigration in 1979 he was a member of the local City University of New York. In 1990 he founded with Cliff Joslyn and Francis Heylighen the " Principia Cybernetica Project", an organization that promotes the development of an evolutionary - cybernetic philosophy. He was from 1993 to 2005 with two co-founders, editor of the Principia Cybernetica Web publication. In 1998 he was co-founder of software start -up company Super compiler, LLC. 1999 Turtschin was emeritus professor of computer science at the City College of New York.

His son, Pyotr Turtschin, is a biologist, and especially works on population dynamics and the mathematical modeling of historical dynamics ( Kliodynamik ).

Work

The philosophical core of Turtschins scientific work is the concept of Metasystemübergängen, which is called an evolutionary process, caused by the repeated systems in hierarchically higher, qualitatively new levels of control. He used this concept to provide a global theory of evolution and a coherent theory of social systems as well as for the test of a constructivist basis of mathematics. He has implemented a super compiler using REFAL - a common methodology for program transformation and optimization, which is based on Metaübergängen. On Turtschin the notion of " meta " or " Super Compilation" goes back.

Works

• Slow neutron. 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 super compiler. 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: 3, 1993
• The Cybernetic Ontology of Action. Kybernetes 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