God & Golem, Inc. Quotes

“It is the part of the scientist—of the intelligent and honest man of letters and of the intelligent and honest clergyman as well—to entertain heretical and forbidden opinions experimentally, even if he is finally to reject them.”
― Norbert Wiener, God and Golem, Inc.: A Comment on Certain Points where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion

“The learning of the individual is a process that occurs in the life of the individual, in ontogeny. Biological reproduction is a phenomenon that occurs in the life of the race, in phylogeny, but the race learns even as the individual does. Darwinian natural selection is a kind of racial learning, which operates within the conditions imposed by the reproduction of the individual.”
― Norbert Wiener, God & Golem, Inc.

“The learning of the individual is a process that occurs in the life of the individual, in ontogeny. Biological reproduction is a phenomenon that occurs in the life of the race, in phylogeny, hut the race learns even as the individual does. Darwinian natural selection is a kind of racial learning, which operates within the conditions imposed by the reproduction of the individual.”
― Norbert Wiener, God & Golem, Inc.

“The basis of natural selection lies in three facts. The first of these is that there is such a phenomenon as heredity: that an individual plant or animal produces offspring after its own image. The second is that these offspring are not completely after its own image but may differ from it in ways also subject to heredity. This is the fact of variation and by no means implies the very doubtful inheritance of acquired characteristics. The third element of Darwinian evolution is that the overrich pattern of spontaneous variation is trimmed by the difference in the viability of different variations, most of which tend to diminish the probability of continued racial existence, although some, perhaps a very few, tend to increase it.”
― Norbert Wiener, God & Golem, Inc.

“Darwinian natural selection is a kind of racial learning, which operates within the conditions imposed by the reproduction of the individual.”
― Norbert Wiener, God & Golem, Inc.

“In the past, a partial and inadequate view of human purpose has been relatively innocuous only because it has been accompanied by technical limitations. . . This is only one of the many places where human impotence has shielded us from the full destructive impact of human folly.”
― Norbert Wiener, God & Golem, Inc.