Norbert Wiener Quotes
The advantage is that mathematics is a field in which one's blunders tend to show very clearly and can be corrected or erased with a stroke of the pencil.
Wiener, Norbert. Ex-Prodigy: My Childhood and Youth. Simon and Schuster, 1953, p. 212.
Feynman generally emphasized the importance of a scientist understanding the mathematics of his/her subject, especially where nature's complexities abounded. At the time few appreciated the importance in the biological sciences of mathematics which we know today is so essential.
Kennedy had compiled all the overt Federal, State and Local laws and ordinances that required or supported discrimination against Blacks. At the time it was published, the Cold War was raging and the Communists were claiming all over Europe that the United States was really not free given the racial discrimination. With Kennedy’s book, they had a field day citing chapter and verse and naming communities and reading the laws all over the United States. The U. S. Information Agency and the CIA were both were having a difficult time coping with the Communists use of Kennedy’s book, and a CIA agent approached Kennedy and offered to make him “financially independent” if he would repudiate the book and stop publication.
He was very aware that there were three factors inhibiting staff members from speaking up to criticize a plan: Junior officers a reluctant to take a position that is in opposition to their superiors; many attendees see themselves as institutional representatives of their organization or sub organization and are reluctant to take a position different from that which was taken by the organization; after months of planning and the vast majority of other staff in support of a plan, most people are intimidated from raising a dissident point of view especially if they are the only one in the group with that view. Presidents, agency heads, commanders, and other leaders all face this problem. However many do not want any dissident opinions at the late stages of a planning process. The better leaders however do want those outlier opinions especially at the later stages. Eisenhower usually went out of his way to emphasize his desire for honest criticism and chided others who did not like criticism—see {637081} ,
Norbert Wiener was an American mathematician and philosopher. He was a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and mathematical noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.
