`Mathematical Machines' of the Cold War: Soviet Computing, American cybernetics and ideological disputes in the early 1950s (Q2761679)

An analysis of the influence of the military and of ideology on Soviet computing in the 1950s. Some (à la Lysenko) `ideologized' science, translating it into a ``value-laden political language'', in an attempt to ``criticize and destroy'' Western science, whereas others, attempting to maintain some semblance of professionality ``split Western scientific theories into two presumably independent parts: the ideologically neutral, objective `core', and the ideology-laden philosophical `shell'.'' The former could be adopted by Soviet scientists, which were supposed to ``overtake and surpass'' American science, whereas the latter required a ``criticize and destroy'' attitude. The author proposes the term ``Cold War science'' as more appropriate than ``Stalinist science'', and finds similarities with its American counterpart. NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEReviewer's Remark: The similarities found in comparing ``discursive strategies developed by scientists on both sides of the Atlantic'' do not take into account the personal circumstances or motivations (which were vastly different from those of their American counterparts, being often of a self-preservation nature) which led the Soviet scientists to utter their public pronouncements (such as those of A. D. Alexandrov in the \textit{Pravda}, in which he takes on both formalism and intuitionism (an attitude with which the `working mathematician' who chooses to ignore the foundations would sympathize), and goes on to conclude that Soviet mathematicians, armed with ``the postulates of dialectical materialism'' are immune to the ``errors'' of Hilbert and Brouwer).