From Cybernetics and Systems Theory to Computer Science and Fuzzy Sets: A biographical Sketch on Lotfi A. Zadeh
Rudolf Seising
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08 Sep 2021
Abstract:
After World War II, scientists and technicians among Claude E. Shannon and Norbert Wiener established the new research field of Information Theory. Some of them referenced the work of appropriate experts, e.g. MIT colleague Ernest Guillemin and their research would be consolidated by a new generation communication engineers, e.g. Lotfi A. Zadeh, who passed in September 2017.
By forming new concepts, Zadeh tied directly into Wieners statistical basis of filter theory but then immediately surpassed it. If filters that were realized as electrical circuits did not operate according to the mathematical theory, then one must be content with less! His attempts to describe real systems in a mathematically precise manner failed. There were questions about the problems of pattern recognition which Zadeh was beginning to ponder in terms of the gradual membership of elements to sets. He introduced Fuzzy Sets in order to solve the problem of abstraction in pattern recognition in a natural and comfortable way.
From the content of some unpublished documents and also some rather non-famous papers by Lotfi A. Zadeh it is argued that the emergences of Computer science and his theory of Fuzzy Sets have been historically interlinked. Zadehs task as Chair of the Electrical Engineering Department in Berkeley in the 1960s, his activities in Education of Engineering and his creation of the theory of Fuzzy sets generated his view on the scientific discipline of Computer science as a fuzzy set.
Biography:
Rudolf Seising was born 1961 in Duisburg, Germany. He obtained his Ph.D. in Philosophy of Science and the German Habilitation in History of science from the LudwigMaximiliansUniversity in Munich after studies of Mathematics, Physics and Philosophy at the Ruhr-University of Bochum (Germany). Dr. Seising is now with the Research Institute for the History of Science and Technology at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.
After World War II, scientists and technicians among Claude E. Shannon and Norbert Wiener established the new research field of Information Theory. Some of them referenced the work of appropriate experts, e.g. MIT colleague Ernest Guillemin and their research would be consolidated by a new generation communication engineers, e.g. Lotfi A. Zadeh, who passed in September 2017.
By forming new concepts, Zadeh tied directly into Wieners statistical basis of filter theory but then immediately surpassed it. If filters that were realized as electrical circuits did not operate according to the mathematical theory, then one must be content with less! His attempts to describe real systems in a mathematically precise manner failed. There were questions about the problems of pattern recognition which Zadeh was beginning to ponder in terms of the gradual membership of elements to sets. He introduced Fuzzy Sets in order to solve the problem of abstraction in pattern recognition in a natural and comfortable way.
From the content of some unpublished documents and also some rather non-famous papers by Lotfi A. Zadeh it is argued that the emergences of Computer science and his theory of Fuzzy Sets have been historically interlinked. Zadehs task as Chair of the Electrical Engineering Department in Berkeley in the 1960s, his activities in Education of Engineering and his creation of the theory of Fuzzy sets generated his view on the scientific discipline of Computer science as a fuzzy set.
Biography:
Rudolf Seising was born 1961 in Duisburg, Germany. He obtained his Ph.D. in Philosophy of Science and the German Habilitation in History of science from the LudwigMaximiliansUniversity in Munich after studies of Mathematics, Physics and Philosophy at the Ruhr-University of Bochum (Germany). Dr. Seising is now with the Research Institute for the History of Science and Technology at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.
