Valentin Fyodorovich Turchin (russian: Валенти́н Фёдорович Турчи́н, 14 February 1931 in
Podolsk
Podolsk ( rus, Подольск, p=pɐˈdolʲsk) is an industrial city, center of Podolsk Urban Okrug, Moscow Oblast, Russia, located on the Pakhra River (a tributary of the Moskva River).
History
The first mentions of the village of Podol, w ...
– 7 April 2010 in
Oakland, New Jersey
Oakland is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States and a suburb of New York City. As of the 2010 United States census, the borough's population was 12,754,[cybernetician
A cyberneticist or a cybernetician is a person who practices cybernetics.
Heinz von Foerster once told Stuart Umpleby that Norbert Wiener preferred the term "cybernetician" rather than "cyberneticist", perhaps because Wiener was a mathematician ...]
, and computer scientist. He developed the
Refal programming language, the theory of
metasystem transition A metasystem transition is the emergence, through evolution, of a higher level of organization or control.
A metasystem is formed by the integration of a number of initially independent components, such as molecules (as theorized for instance by ...
s and the notion of
supercompilation
Metacompilation is a computation which involves metasystem transitions (MST) from a computing machine ''M'' to a metamachine ''M' '' which controls, analyzes and imitates the work of ''M''. Semantics-based program transformation, such as partial ...
. He was as a pioneer in
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
and a proponent of the
global brain
The global brain is a neuroscience-inspired and futurological vision of the planetary information and communications technology network that interconnects all humans and their technological artifacts. As this network stores ever more information, t ...
hypothesis.
Biography
Turchin was born in 1931 in
Podolsk
Podolsk ( rus, Подольск, p=pɐˈdolʲsk) is an industrial city, center of Podolsk Urban Okrug, Moscow Oblast, Russia, located on the Pakhra River (a tributary of the Moskva River).
History
The first mentions of the village of Podol, w ...
,
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
. In 1952, he graduated from Moscow University in Theoretical Physics, and got his Ph.D. in 1957. After working on neutron and solid-state physics at the Institute for Physics of Energy in Obninsk, in 1964 he accepted a position at the
Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics
The Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics (russian: Институт прикладной математики им. М.В.Келдыша) is a research institute specializing in computational mathematics. It was established to solve computati ...
in
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
. There he worked in statistical regularization methods and authored REFAL, one of the first AI languages and the AI language of choice in the Soviet Union.
In the 1960s, Turchin became politically active. In Fall 1968, he wrote the pamphlet ''The Inertia of Fear'', which was
quite widely circulated in
samizdat
Samizdat (russian: самиздат, lit=self-publishing, links=no) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the document ...
, the writing began to be circulated under the title ''The Inertia of Fear: Socialism and Totalitarianism'' in Moscow from 1976. Following its publication in the underground press, he lost his research laboratory. In 1970 he authored "The Phenomenon of Science", a grand cybernetic meta-theory of universal evolution, which broadened and deepened the earlier book. By 1973, Turchin had founded the Moscow chapter of
Amnesty International
Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...
with
Andrey Tverdokhlebov
Andrei Nikolayevich Tverdokhlebov (russian: Андре́й Никола́евич Твердохле́бов, 30 September 1940, Moscow – 3 December 2011, Pennsylvania, United States) was a Soviet physicist, dissident and human rights activist ...
and was working closely with the well-known physicist and Soviet dissident
Andrei Sakharov
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov ( rus, Андрей Дмитриевич Сахаров, p=ɐnˈdrʲej ˈdmʲitrʲɪjevʲɪtɕ ˈsaxərəf; 21 May 192114 December 1989) was a Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident, nobel laureate and activist for nu ...
. In 1974 he lost his position at the Institute, and was persecuted by the
KGB
The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...
. Facing almost certain imprisonment, he and his family were forced to emigrate from the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
in 1977.
He went to New York, where he joined the faculty of the
City University of New York
The City University of New York ( CUNY; , ) is the Public university, public university system of Education in New York City, New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven Upper divis ...
in 1979. In 1990, together with
Cliff Joslyn
Cliff Joslyn (born 1963) is an American mathematician, cognitive scientist, and cybernetician. He is currently the Chief Knowledge Scientist and Team Lead for Mathematics of Data Science at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Seattle, Was ...
and
Francis Heylighen
Francis Paul Heylighen (born 27 September 1960) is a Belgian cyberneticist investigating the emergence and evolution of intelligent organization. He presently works as a research professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (the Dutch-speaking Fr ...
, he founded the
Principia Cybernetica Project, a worldwide organization devoted to the collaborative development of an evolutionary-cybernetic philosophy. In 1998, he co-founded the software start-up SuperCompilers, LLC. He retired from his post of Professor of Computer Science at
City College in 1999. A resident of
Oakland, New Jersey
Oakland is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States and a suburb of New York City. As of the 2010 United States census, the borough's population was 12,754,[Peter Turchin
Peter Valentinovich Turchin (russian: Пётр Валенти́нович Турчи́н; born 1957) is a Russian-American complexity scientist, specializing in an area of study he and his colleagues developed called cliodynamics—mathematical ...]
and Dimitri Turchin.
Peter Turchin
Peter Valentinovich Turchin (russian: Пётр Валенти́нович Турчи́н; born 1957) is a Russian-American complexity scientist, specializing in an area of study he and his colleagues developed called cliodynamics—mathematical ...
is a specialist in
population dynamics
Population dynamics is the type of mathematics used to model and study the size and age composition of populations as dynamical systems.
History
Population dynamics has traditionally been the dominant branch of mathematical biology, which has ...
and
mathematical modeling
A mathematical model is a description of a system using mathematical concepts and language. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed mathematical modeling. Mathematical models are used in the natural sciences (such as physics, b ...
of historical dynamics.
Work
The philosophical core of Turchin's scientific work is the concept of the
metasystem transition A metasystem transition is the emergence, through evolution, of a higher level of organization or control.
A metasystem is formed by the integration of a number of initially independent components, such as molecules (as theorized for instance by ...
, which denotes the evolutionary process through which higher levels of control emerge in system structure and function.
Turchin uses this concept to provide a global theory of
evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
and a coherent social systems theory, to develop a complete
cybernetic
Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causality, such as feedback, in regulatory and purposive systems. Cybernetics is named after an example of circular causal feedback, that of steering a ship, where the helmsperson ma ...
s philosophical and ethical system, and to build a constructivist foundation for mathematics.
Using the
REFAL
Refal ("Recursive functions algorithmic language"; russian: РЕФАЛ) "is a functional programming language oriented toward symbolic computations", including "string processing, language translation, ndartificial intelligence". It is one of the ...
language he has implemented a Supercompiler, a unified method for program transformation and optimization based on a metasystem transition.
Major publications
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*Refal-5: Programming Guide and Reference Manual, New England Publishing Co. Holyoke MA, 1989
Principia Cybernetica Web(as editor, together with F. Heylighen and C. Joslyn) (1993–2005)
Most cited publicationsaccording to Google Scholar
References
External links
by Edward Kline, President of The Andrei Sakharov Foundation
on Principia Cybernetica web
by
Ben Goertzel
Ben Goertzel is a cognitive scientist, artificial intelligence researcher, CEO and founder of SingularityNET, leader of the OpenCog Foundation, and the AGI Society, and chair of Humanity+. He helped popularize the term 'artificial general intell ...
Russian edition. The Phenomenon of ScienceThe Phenomenon of Science. A cybernetic approach to human evolution. ETS Publishing House. Moscow - 2000, 398 pp,
refal.ru - REFAL and Supercompilation community
{{DEFAULTSORT:Turchin, Valentin
1931 births
2010 deaths
Cyberneticists
Soviet human rights activists
Superorganisms
Systems scientists
Complex systems scientists
People from Oakland, New Jersey
People from Podolsk
Soviet dissidents
Soviet emigrants to the United States
City University of New York faculty
Amnesty International people
Moscow State University alumni
Soviet mathematicians
Soviet physicists
Programming language designers