WIENER,NORBERT AND THE CYBERNETIC STUDY O F RELIGION

The last book of Norbert Wiener entitled ''God and Golem, Inc. '' publ ished exactly 30 years ago (the first edition 1964) with the suggestiv e subtitle ''A comment on Certain Points where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion'' has, for the first time in the history of cybernetics, dea lt with cybernetic interpretations of some principal religious concept s such as Omniscience, Omnipotence Creation (including the problem of interrelations between Creator and creature) treated usually in theolo gy, in particular theism (ie. the theology of monotheism as a whole). ''The new science of cybernetics'' conceived at the time as ''the scie nce of communication [of knowledge] and control [of behavior], whether in machine or in living organisms'', made it possible to interconnect principal notions of cybernetics and those of religion and to shed li ght not only on religious tenets, but surprisingly also on some cybern etic conceptions, especially the idea of interrelation between man and machine created by him. In this paper the author discusses in detail the contribution of Norbert Wiener to creating and understanding such a novel domain of cybernetic research which topic was, to my knowledge , almost entirely neglected or disregarded during three decades after its first exposition by the founder of cybernetics in lectures (beginn ing from January 1962) and later on in the book in question.