Valentin Turchin
Valentin Fyodorovich Turchin | |
|---|---|
| Валентин Фёдорович Турчин | |
USSR | |
| Died | April 7, 2010 (aged 79) |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Citizenship |
|
| Alma mater | Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics |
| Known for |
|
| Children | Peter Turchin Dimitri Turchin |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | cybernetics, computer science |
| Institutions | |
Valentin Fyodorovich Turchin (
supercompilation. He was a pioneer in artificial intelligence and a proponent of the global brain
hypothesis.
Biography
Turchin was born in 1931 in Podolsk, Soviet Union. In 1952, he graduated from Moscow University with a degree 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 in Moscow. There he worked on 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 the Fall of 1968, he wrote the pamphlet The Inertia of Fear, which was quite widely circulated in
Andrey Tverdokhlebov and was working closely with the well-known physicist and Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov. In 1974 he lost his position at the Institute and was persecuted by the KGB. Facing almost certain imprisonment, he and his family were forced to emigrate from the Soviet Union
in 1977.
He went to New York, where he joined the faculty of 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 as Professor of Computer Science at City College in 1999. A resident of Oakland, New Jersey,[5] he died there on 7 April 2010.[1]
He has two sons named
mathematical modeling
of historical dynamics.
Work
The philosophical core of Turchin's scientific work is the concept of the metasystem transition, 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
cybernetics
philosophical and ethical system, and to build a constructivist foundation for mathematics.
Using the
REFAL language he has implemented Supercompiler, a unified method for program transformation and optimization based on a metasystem transition.[6]
Major publications
- Valentin F. Turchin (1977). The Phenomenon of Science. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-03983-3.
- Sakharov, Andrei; Turchin, Valentin; Medvedev, Roy (6 June 1970). "The need for democratization". The Saturday Review: 26–27.
- Sakharov, Andrei; Turchin, Valentin; Medvedev, Roy (Summer 1970). "An open letter". Survey: 160–170.
- Valentin F. Turchin (May 1978). "Why you should boycott the Russians". S2CID 4222713.
- Valentin F. Turchin (September 1978). "Boycotting the Soviet Union". .
- Турчин, Валентин (1978). Инерция страха: социализм и тоталитаризм [The inertia of fear: socialism and totalitarianism] (in Russian) (2 ed.). New York: Khronika.
- Turchin, Valentin; Handle, Philip (January 1980). "Boycott Helsinki meeting". .
- Turchin, Valentin (4 January 1980). "From Helsinki to Hamburg". JSTOR 1683174.
- Valentin F. Turchin (1981). The Inertia of Fear and the Scientific Worldview. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-04622-0.
- Turchin, Valentin (July 1985). "Orlov in exile". .
- Valentin F. Turchin (July 1986). "The concept of a supercompiler". ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems. 8 (3): 292–325. S2CID 8403840.
- Valentin F. Turchin (March 1987). "A constructive interpretation of the full set theory". Journal of Symbolic Logic. 52 (1): 172–201. S2CID 2205937.
- Valentin F. Turchin (1993). "On cybernetic epistemology". S2CID 60953576.
- Turchin, Valentin F. (1993). "The Cybernetic Ontology of Action" (PDF). Kybernetes. 22 (2): 10–30. doi:10.1108/eb005960.
- Turchin, Valentin F. (1995). "A dialogue on metasystem transition" (PDF). World Futures. 45 (1): 5–57. .
- 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 publications according to Google Scholar
References
- ^ S2CID 11028438.
- A Chronicle of Current Events(40–42): 270. 1979.
- ISBN 978-0-231-03983-3.
- ISBN 978-0-231-03983-3.
- ^ Rosenthal, Andrew. "For the Soviet Emigres, Gorbachev Stirs Both Optimism and Skepticism", The New York Times, December 5, 1987. Accessed May 25, 2016. "Valentin Turchin, who teaches computer sciences at the City College of New York and lives in Oakland, N.J., said: 'Both sides of Gorbachev's new era must be stressed. What he says is significant and unprecedented, but at the same time, it should be seen only as a beginning. In addition, we generally have the impression that during the last months, things have started curving down.'"
- ISSN 0302-9743. Archived from the originalon 2001-12-25.
External links
- Valentin Turchin, eulogy by Edward Kline, President of The Andrei Sakharov Foundation
- Turchin's home page on Principia Cybernetica web
- Profile of Valentin Turchin by Ben Goertzel
- Russian edition. The Phenomenon of Science The Phenomenon of Science. A cybernetic approach to human evolution. ETS Publishing House. Moscow - 2000, 398 pp, ISBN 5-93386-019-0
- refal.ru - REFAL and Supercompilation community