ABSTRACT
Information theory, repeatedly hailed as a “major breakthrough“ came at a time when mathematical sciences had just become newsworthy—on the heels of nuclear fission. But while the impact of the suddenly publicized atomic physics has been on the entire population through the conventional channels of popular fancy—the awesome possibilities for good and evil of vast amounts of suddenly harnessed energy—the appeal of information theory has been largely confined to academic circles. Yet the nature of this appeal has been not unlike the other. It is felt that a new conceptualization has crystallized which will lead to momentous theoretical reconstructions in biology, psychology, and the social sciences. A vast proliferation of papers devoted to attempts to exploit the new conceptualization reflects this feeling. A 1953 bibliography of information theory [F. L. Stumpers’] contains some 800 entries. Writings on the subject range from sophisticated analysis of radar systems and television circuits to crackpot speculations. Usually, there is a well-marked negative correlation between the scope and the soundness of the writings, so that it is not hard to understand the disappointment with “information theory’’ as a broad conceptual tool: the sound work is confined either to engineering or to rather trivial applications (rote learning, etc.); ambitious formulations remain vague.
