critical assessment of Georg Klaus
podium on the special issue of the Zeitschrift für Semiotik dedicated to Georg Klaus. on the left Roland Posner, TU Berlin (photo: Arne Fellien)
the Leibniz-Sozietät der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Kybernetik and the University of Applied Sciences (Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft) Berlin invited in the beginning of december to a two-days scientific meeting on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Georg Klaus. Georg Klaus, in the german-speaking west known as co-editor of the 3 volumes rororo-paperback “marxistisch-leninistisches wörterbiuch der philosophie”, was philosopher in the GDR. he had tried to introduce cybernetics in his country. Ulbricht supported his ideas, but Honecker did not. interestingly, it came to my mind that at the very same time when Klaus seemed to propagate a use of cybernetics like Lenin had done regarding modern capitalist production methods in the early Soviet Union, Ludwig von Bertalanffy was a critic of the contemporary inhumane use of cybernetics in western countries.
Klaus also worked in the field of semiotics as well as informatics (about the information concept and about computers) besides logic.
here a link to a well-informed article to which Sebastian Sevignani drew my attention, a link to an article by Karl-Heinz Bernhardt, and a link to an article by Michael Eckardt; here the programme of the meeting (all in german).
attendees of the meeting ” Kybernetik, Informatik, Logik und Semiotik” on the second day (photo: Arne Fellien)