The Phenomenon of Science

Turchin, Valentin F. The Phenomenon of Science: A Cybernetic Approach to Human Evolution. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.
(Out of print)

The whole book can be found online on Principia Cybernetica at:
http://pcp.lanl.gov/POSBOOK.html.

An arcing meta-theory of universal evolution and one of the seminal works in systems theory and cybernetics, authored by Dr. Valentin Turchin in 1970. It was the first book to introduce the concept of a metasystem transition and its elegant application to systems of all kinds. Turchin used the metasystem transition concept in an attempt to construct a global theory of evolution and social systems, develop a complete cybernetic philosophical and ethical system, and build a new conceptual/philosophical foundation for mathematics.

Interestingly, the original manuscript for The Phenomenon of Science was accepted for publication by the Soviet Union's leading publishing house and praised for its quality by Soviet reviewers, but the book was ultimately rejected due to the author's dissident political activities which, four years later, led to his dismissal from the Institute of Applied Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. The book circulated widely in samizdat and eventually made its way to the West, where it was published by Columbia University in 1977--the same year Dr. Turchin was expelled from the Soviet Union.

Along with Joël de Rosnay's The Macroscope, The Phenomenon of Science is considered to be mandatory reading for those interested in exploring the highly interdisciplinary world of systems theory.

Table of Contents

1. The Initial Stages of Evolution
2. Hierarchical Structures
3. On the Path Toward the Human Being
4. The Human Being
5. From Step to Step
6. Logical Analysis of Language
7. Language and Thinking
8. Primitive Thinking
9. Mathematics Before the Greeks
10. From Thales to Euclid
11. From Euclid To Descartes
12. From Descartes to Bourbaki
13. Science and Metascience
14. The Phenomenon of Science