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Wendigo (/ˈwɛndɪɡoʊ/) is a mythological creature or evil spirit which originates from the folklore of Plains and Great Lakes Natives as well as some First Nations. It is based in and around the East Coast forests of Canada, the Great Plains region of the United States, and the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada, grouped in modern ethnology as speakers of Algonquian-family languages. The wendigo is often said to be a malevolent spirit, sometimes depicted as a creature with human-like characteristics, which possesses human beings. The wendigo is known to invoke feelings of insatiable greed/hunger, the desire to cannibalize other humans, as well as the propensity to commit murder in those that fall under its influence.[1]
At odds with its portrayals in twentieth-century and twenty-first-century settler culture, in some indigenous representations the wendigo is described as a giant humanoid with a heart of ice; a foul stench or sudden, unseasonable chill might precede its approach.[2] Possibly due to longtime identification by Europeans with their own superstitions about werewolves,[3] for example as mentioned in The Jesuit Relations below, Hollywood film representations often label human/beast hybrids featuring antlers or horns with the "wendigo" name, but such animal features do not appear in the original indigenous stories.[2]
In modern psychiatry the wendigo lends its name to a form of psychosis known as "Wendigo psychosis" which is characterized by symptoms such as: an intense craving for human flesh and an intense fear of becoming a cannibal.[4][5] Wendigo psychosis is described as a culture-bound syndrome. In some First Nations communities other symptoms such as insatiable greed and destruction of the environment are also thought to be symptoms of Wendigo psychosis.[4
Etymology
The word appears in many Native American languages, and has many alternative translations. The source of the English word is the Ojibwe word wiindigoo.[6] In the Cree language it is wīhtikow,[7] also transliterated wetiko.[8] Other transliterations include[9] Wiindigoo, Weendigo, Windego, Wiindgoo, Windgo, Windago, Windiga, Wendego, Windagoo, Widjigo, Wiijigoo, Wijigo, Weejigo, Wìdjigò, Wintigo, Wentigo, Wehndigo, Wentiko, Windgoe, Wītikō, and Wintsigo.
A plural form windigoag is also spelled windegoag, wiindigooag, or windikouk.[9]
The Proto-Algonquian term has been reconstructed as *wi·nteko·wa, which may have meant "owl."[10]
Parallels
The Wechuge is a similar being that appears in the legends of the Athabaskan people of the Northwest Pacific Coast. It too was cannibalistic, however, it was characterized as enlightened with ancestral insights.[11]
Folklore
Description
The wendigo is part of the traditional belief system of a number of Algonquin-speaking peoples, including the Ojibwe, the Saulteaux, the Cree, the Naskapi, and the Innu.[12] Although descriptions can vary somewhat, common to all these cultures is the view that the wendigo is a malevolent, cannibalistic, supernatural being.[13] They were strongly associated with winter, the north, coldness, famine, and starvation.[14]
Basil H. Johnston, an Ojibwe teacher and scholar from Ontario, gives a description of a wendigo:
The Wendigo was gaunt to the point of emaciation, its desiccated skin pulled tightly over its bones. With its bones pushing out against its skin, its complexion the ash-gray of death, and its eyes pushed back deep into their sockets, the Wendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disinterred from the grave. What lips it had were tattered and bloody ... Unclean and suffering from suppuration of the flesh, the Wendigo gave off a strange and eerie odor of decay and decomposition, of death and corruption.[15]
In Ojibwe, Eastern Cree, Westmain Swampy Cree, Naskapi, and Innu lore, wendigos are often described as giants that are many times larger than human beings, a characteristic absent from myths in other Algonquian cultures.[16] Whenever a wendigo ate another person, it would grow in proportion to the meal it had just eaten, so it could never be full.[17] Therefore, wendigos are portrayed as simultaneously gluttonous and extremely thin due to starvation.
The wendigo is seen as the embodiment of gluttony, greed, and excess: never satisfied after killing and consuming one person, they are constantly searching for new victims.[18]
A wendigo need not lose the human's powers of cognition or speech and in some depictions may clearly communicate with its prospective victims or even threaten or taunt them. A specimen of folk story collected in the early twentieth century by Lottie Chicogquaw Marsden, an ethnographer of the Chippewas of Rama First Nation, in which a wendigo also exhibits tool use, an ability to survive partial dismemberment, and autocannibalism, reads[19]
One time long ago a big Windigo stole an Indian boy, but the boy was too thin, so the Windigo didn't eat him up right away, but he travelled with the Indian boy waiting for him till he'd get fat. The Windigo had a knife and he'd cut the boy on the hand to see if he was fat enough to eat, but the boy didn't get fat. They travelled too much. One day they came to an Indian village and the Windigo sent the boy to the Indian village to get some things for him to eat. He just gave the boy so much time to go there and back. The boy told the Indians that the Windigo was near them, and showed them his hand where the Windigo cut him to see if he was fat enough to eat. They heard the Windigo calling the boy. He said to the boy "Hurry up. Don't tell lies to those Indians." All of these Indians went to where the Windigo was and cut off his legs. They went back again to see if he was dead. He wasn't dead. He was eating the juice (marrow) from the inside of the bones of his legs that were cut off. The Indians asked the Windigo if there was any fat on them. He said, "You bet there is, I have eaten lots of Indians, no wonder they are fat." The Indians then killed him and cut him to pieces. The end of this Giant Windigo.
Human cannibalism
In some traditions, humans overpowered by greed could turn into wendigos; the myth thus served as a method of encouraging cooperation and moderation. Other sources say wendigos were created when a human resorted to cannibalism to survive. Humans could also turn into wendigos by being in contact with them for too long.[20]
Taboo reinforcement ceremony
Among the Assiniboine, the Cree and the Ojibwe, a satirical ceremonial dance is sometimes performed during times of famine to reinforce the seriousness of the wendigo taboo.[clarification needed] The ceremony, known as wiindigookaanzhimowin, was performed during times of famine, and involved wearing masks and dancing backward around a drum.[21] The last known wendigo ceremony conducted in the United States was at Lake Windigo of Star Island of Cass Lake, located within the Leech Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota.[when?][22][failed verification]
Psychosis
In historical accounts of retroactively diagnosed Wendigo psychosis, it has been reported that humans became possessed by the wendigo spirit, after being in a situation of needing food and having no other choice besides cannibalism. In 1661, The Jesuit Relations reported:
Ce qui nous mit plus en peine, fut la nouvelle que nous apprismes dés l'entrée du Lac, à sçauoir : que les deputez par nostre Conducteur, qui deuoient conuoquer les Nations à la Mer du Nord, et leur donner le rendez-vous pour nous y attendre, auoient esté tuez l'Hiuer passé, d'une façon estonnante. Ces pauures gens furent saisis, à ce qu'on nous a dit, d'vn mal qui nous est inconnu, mais qui n'est pas bien extraordinaire parmy les peuples que nous cherchons : ils ne sont ny lunatiques, ny hypocondriaques, ny phrenetiques; mais ils ont vn mélange de toutes ces sortes de maladies, qui, leur blessant l'imagination, leur cause vne faim plus que canine, et les rend si affamez de chair humaine, qu'ils se iettent sur les femmes, sur les enfans, mesme sur les hommes, comme de vrais loups-garous, et les deuorent à belles dents, sans se pouuoir rassasier ny saouler, cherchans tousiours nouuelle proye, et plus auidement que plus ils en ont mangé. C'est la maladie dont ces députez furent atteints; et comme la mort est l'vnique remede parmy ces bonnes gens, pour arrester ces meurtres, ils ont esté massacrez pour arrester le cours de leur manie.[23]
What caused us greater concern was the news that met us upon entering the Lake, namely, that the men deputed by our Conductor for the purpose of summoning the Nations to the North Sea, and assigning them a rendezvous, where they were to await our coming, had met their death the previous Winter in a very strange manner. Those poor men (according to the report given us) were seized with an ailment unknown to us, but not very unusual among the people we were seeking. They are afflicted with neither lunacy, hypochondria, nor frenzy; but have a combination of all these species of disease, which affects their imaginations and causes them a more than canine hunger. This makes them so ravenous for human flesh that they pounce upon women, children, and even upon men, like veritable werewolves, and devour them voraciously, without being able to appease or glut their appetite—ever seeking fresh prey, and the more greedily the more they eat. This ailment attacked our deputies; and, as death is the sole remedy among those simple people for checking such acts of murder, they were slain in order to stay the course of their madness.[24]
Although in many recorded cases of Wendigo psychosis the individual has been killed to prevent cannibalism from resulting, some Cree folklore recommends treatment by ingestion of fatty animal meats or drinking animal grease; those treated may sometimes vomit ice as part of the curing process.[25]
One of the more famous cases of Wendigo psychosis reported involved a Plains Cree trapper from Alberta, named Swift Runner.[26][27] During the winter of 1878, Swift Runner and his family were starving, and his eldest son died. Twenty-five miles away from emergency food supplies at a Hudson's Bay Company post, Swift Runner butchered and ate his wife and five remaining children.[28] Given that he resorted to cannibalism so near to food supplies, and that he killed and consumed the remains of all those present, it was revealed that Swift Runner's was not a case of pure cannibalism as a last resort to avoid starvation, but rather of a man with Wendigo psychosis.[28] He eventually confessed and was executed by authorities at Fort Saskatchewan.[29]
Another well-known case involving Wendigo psychosis was that of Jack Fiddler, an Oji-Cree chief and medicine man known for his powers at defeating wendigos. In some cases, this entailed killing people with Wendigo psychosis. As a result, in 1907, Fiddler and his brother Joseph were arrested by the Canadian authorities for homicide. Jack committed suicide, but Joseph was tried and sentenced to life in prison. He ultimately was granted a pardon but died three days later in jail before receiving the news of this pardon.[30]
Fascination with Wendigo psychosis among Western ethnographers, psychologists, and anthropologists led to a hotly debated controversy in the 1980s over the historicity of this phenomenon. Some researchers argued that essentially, wendigo psychosis was a fabrication, the result of naïve anthropologists taking stories related to them at face value without observation.[31][32] Others have pointed to a number of credible eyewitness accounts, both by Algonquians and others, as evidence that wendigo psychosis was a factual historical phenomenon.[33]
The frequency of Wendigo psychosis cases decreased sharply in the 20th century as Boreal Algonquian people came into greater and greater contact with European ideologies and more sedentary, less rural, lifestyles.[5]
In his 2004 treatise Revenge of the Windigo on disorders and treatments of the behavioral health industry in the United States and Canada that are peculiar to indigenous people, James B. Waldram wrote,[34]
...no actual cases of windigo psychosis have ever been studied, and Lou Marano's scathing critique in 1985 should have killed off the cannibal monster within the psychiatric annals. The windigo, however, continues to seek revenge for this attempted scholarly execution by periodically duping unsuspecting passers-by, like psychiatrists, into believing that windigo psychosis not only exists but that a psychiatrist could conceivably encounter a patient suffering from this disorder in his or her practice today! Windigo psychosis may well be the most perfect example of the construction of an Aboriginal mental disorder by the scholarly professions, and its persistence dramatically underscores how constructions of the Aboriginal by these professions have, like Frankenstein's monster, taken on a life of their own.
The 10th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) classifies "Windigo" as a culture-specific disorder, describing it as "Rare, historic accounts of cannibalistic obsession... Symptoms included depression, homicidal or suicidal thoughts, and a delusional, compulsive wish to eat human flesh... Some controversial new studies question the syndrome's legitimacy, claiming cases were actually a product of hostile accusations invented to justify the victim's ostracism or execution."[35]
As a concept or metaphor
In addition to denoting a cannibalistic monster from certain traditional folklore, some Native Americans also understand the wendigo conceptually. As a concept, the wendigo can apply to any person, idea, or movement infected by a corrosive drive toward self-aggrandizing greed and excessive consumption, traits that sow disharmony and destruction if left unchecked. Ojibwe scholar Brady DeSanti asserts that the wendigo "can be understood as a marker indicating... a person... imbalanced both internally and toward the larger community of human and spiritual beings around them."[36] Out of equilibrium and estranged by their communities, individuals thought to be afflicted by the wendigo spirit unravel and destroy the ecological balance around them. Chippewa author Louise Erdrich's novel The Round House, winner of the National Book Award, depicts a situation where an individual person becomes a wendigo. The novel describes its primary antagonist, a rapist whose violent crimes desecrate a sacred site, as a wendigo who must be killed because he threatens the reservation's safety.
In addition to characterizing individual people who exhibit destructive tendencies, the wendigo can also describe movements and events with similarly negative effects. According to Professor Chris Schedler, the figure of the wendigo represents "consuming forms of exclusion and assimilation" through which groups dominate other groups."[37] This application allows Native Americans to describe colonialism and its agents as wendigos since the process of colonialism ejected natives from their land and threw the natural world out of balance. DeSanti points to the 1999 horror film Ravenous as an illustration of this argument equating "the cannibal monster" to "American colonialism and manifest destiny". This movie features a character who articulates that expansion brings displacement and destruction as side effects, explaining that "manifest destiny" and "western expansion" will bring "thousands of gold-hungry Americans... over the mountains in search of new lives... This country is seeking to be whole... Stretching out its arms... and consuming all it can. And we merely follow".[38] For a more detailed exploration linking wendigo attributes to colonialism, see Jack D. Forbes's 1978 book Columbus and Other Cannibals, which was an influential text in the American Indian Movement.
As a concept, wendigo can apply to situations other than some Native American-European relations. It can serve as a metaphor explaining any pattern of domination by which groups subjugate and dominate or violently destroy and displace. Joe Lockhard, English professor at Arizona State University, argues that wendigos are agents of "social cannibalism" who know "no provincial or national borders; all human cultures have been visited by shape-shifting wendigos. Their visitations speak to the inseparability of human experience... National identity is irrelevant to this borderless horror".[39] Lockhard's ideas explain that wendigos are an expression of a dark aspect of human nature: the drive toward greed, consumption, and disregard for other life in the pursuit of self-aggrandizement.
Romantic scholar and documentarian Emily Zarka, also a professor at Arizona State University, observes that two commonalities among the indigenous cultures of Algonquian language family speakers are that they are situated in climes where harsh winters are frequent and may be accompanied by starvation. She states that the wendigo symbolically represents three major concepts: it is the incarnation of winter, the embodiment of hunger, and the personification of selfishness.[2]
In popular culture
Wikisource has original text related to this article:The Wendigo
Although distinct from how it appears in the traditional lore, one of the first appearances of a character inspired by, or named after, a wendigo in non-Indigenous literature is Algernon Blackwood's 1910 short story "The Wendigo".[40][41] Joe Nazare wrote that Blackwood's "subtly-demonizing rhetoric transforms the Wendigo from a native myth into a descriptive template for the Indian savage."[42]
Blackwood's work has influenced many of the subsequent portrayals in mainstream horror fiction,[42][43] such as August Derleth's "The Thing that Walked on the Wind" and "Ithaqua" (1933 and 1941),[41] which in turn inspired the character in Stephen King's novel Pet Sematary,[42] where it is a personification of evil, an ugly grinning creature with yellow-grey eyes, ears replaced by ram's horns, white vapor coming from its nostrils, and a pointed, decaying yellow tongue.[43] These works set the template for later portrayals in popular culture, at times even replacing the Native American lore.[42] In an early short story by Thomas Pynchon, "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna" (first published in 1959) the plot centers around a character developing Wendigo Syndrome and going on a killing spree.
A character inspired by the wendigo appears in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by the writer Steve Englehart and artist Herb Trimpe, the monster is the result of a curse that afflicts those who commit acts of cannibalism. It first appeared in The Incredible Hulk #162 (April 1973), and again in the October 1974 issue.[44]
Without explicitly using the term, the 1995 novel Solar Storms by Chickasaw author and poet Linda K. Hogan both explored the mythology of the wendigo and used the creatures as a device to interrogate issues of independence, spirituality, and politics, an individual's relationship to the famiy, and as a metaphor for corporate voracity, exploitation, and power viewed as a form of cannibalism.[45]
Other creatures based on the legend, or named for it, appear in various films and television shows, including Dark Was the Night and Ravenous.[46] Television series include Teen Wolf, Supernatural,[47] Blood Ties,[48] Charmed,[49] Grimm,[50] and Hannibal, where an FBI profiler has recurring dreams or visions of a wendigo that symbolizes the titular cannibalistic serial killer.[51] A wendigo appears in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic "Hearth's Warming Eve", and in the DuckTales Christmas special, "Last Christmas!", in which the creatures are described as "poor souls turned into monsters by obsession and desperation."[52] A wendigo also appears in the 2020 horror film The Retreat.[53][54][55]
The 2015 horror survival video game Until Dawn by Supermassive Games features wendigos as the main antagonists.[56] Wrist, the 2016 debut novel by Canadian horror fiction writer Nathan Niigan Noodin Adler, was based on the story of the wendigo.[57]
The 2015 series Summoner by Taran Matharu featured a type of demon known as a Wendigo.[58]
In the 2018 role-playing game Fallout 76 by Bethesda Game Studios, wendigos are featured as one of the cryptid enemies found in the area of Appalachia; mutated from people who consumed human flesh in isolation.[59]
In the 2018 first-person shooter video game Dusk, wendigos are featured as strong enemies that remain invisible to the player until they receive damage.[60]Several of these creatures also appear in the game's cover art.[61]
In the 2021 film Antlers by Scott Cooper, Frank, Luca's father, transforms into a wendigo, which is portrayed as a deer-like creature with a glowing heart that moves from person to person with a never ending hunger. Guillermo del Toro, producer of the film, developed the wendigo on the basis that the more the creature eats, the more it gets hungry and the more it gets hungry, the weaker it becomes.[62][63]
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The ouroboros or uroboros (/ˌjʊərəˈbɒrəs/[2]) is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon[3] eating its own tail. The ouroboros entered Western tradition via ancient Egyptian iconography and the Greek magical tradition. It was adopted as a symbol in Gnosticism and Hermeticism and most notably in alchemy. The term derives from Ancient Greek οὐροβόρος,[4] from οὐρά oura 'tail' plus -βορός -boros '-eating'.[5][6] The ouroboros is often interpreted as a symbol for eternal cyclic renewal or a cycle of life, death, and rebirth: the snake's skin-sloughing symbolizes the transmigration of souls. The snake biting its own tail is a fertility symbol in some religions: the tail is a phallic symbol and the mouth is a yonic or womb-like symbol.[7]
Ancient Egypt[edit]
One of the earliest known ouroboros motifs is found in the Enigmatic Book of the Netherworld, an ancient Egyptian funerary text in KV62, the tomb of Tutankhamun, in the 14th century BCE. The text concerns the actions of the god Ra and his union with Osiris in the underworld. The ouroboros is depicted twice on the figure: holding their tails in their mouths, one encircling the head and upper chest, the other surrounding the feet of a large figure, which may represent the unified Ra-Osiris (Osiris born again as Ra). Both serpents are manifestations of the deity Mehen, who in other funerary texts protects Ra in his underworld journey. The whole divine figure represents the beginning and the end of time.[8]
Ouroboros swallowing its tail; based on Moskowitz's symbol for the constellation Draco.
The ouroboros appears elsewhere in Egyptian sources, where, like many Egyptian serpent deities, it represents the formless disorder that surrounds the orderly world and is involved in that world's periodic renewal.[9] The symbol persisted in Egypt into Roman times, when it frequently appeared on magical talismans, sometimes in combination with other magical emblems.[10] The 4th-century CE Latin commentator Servius was aware of the Egyptian use of the symbol, noting that the image of a snake biting its tail represents the cyclical nature of the year.[11]
China[edit]
An early example of an ouroboros (as a purely artistic representation) was discovered in China, on a piece of pottery in the Yellow River basin. The jar belonged to the neolithic Yangshao culture which occupied the area along the basin from 5000-3000 BCE.[12]
Gnosticism and alchemy[edit]
Early alchemical ouroboros illustration with the words ἓν τὸ πᾶν ("The All is One") from the work of Cleopatra the Alchemist in MS Marciana gr. Z. 299. (10th century).
In Gnosticism, a serpent biting its tail symbolized eternity and the soul of the world.[13] The Gnostic Pistis Sophia (c. 400 CE) describes the ouroboros as a twelve-part dragon surrounding the world with its tail in its mouth.[14]
The famous ouroboros drawing from the early alchemical text, The Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra (Κλεοπάτρας χρυσοποιία), probably originally dating to the 3rd century Alexandria, but first known in a 10th-century copy, encloses the words hen to pan (ἓν τὸ πᾶν), "the all is one". Its black and white halves may perhaps represent a Gnostic duality of existence, analogous to the Taoist yin and yang symbol.[15] The chrysopoeia ouroboros of Cleopatra the Alchemist is one of the oldest images of the ouroboros to be linked with the legendary opus of the alchemists, the philosopher's stone.[citation needed]
A 15th-century alchemical manuscript, The Aurora Consurgens, features the ouroboros, where it is used among symbols of the sun, moon, and mercury.[16]
A highly stylized ouroboros from The Book of Kells, an illuminated Gospel Book (c. 800 CE)
Engraving of a wyvern-type ouroboros by Lucas Jennis, in the 1625 alchemical tract De Lapide Philosophico. The figure serves as a symbol for mercury.[17]
An engraving of a woman holding an ouroboros in Michael Ranft's 1734 treatise on vampires.
Seal of the Theosophical Society, founded 1875
World serpent in mythology[edit]
In Norse mythology, the ouroboros appears as the serpent Jörmungandr, one of the three children of Loki and Angrboda, which grew so large that it could encircle the world and grasp its tail in its teeth. In the legends of Ragnar Lodbrok, such as Ragnarssona þáttr, the Geatish king Herraud gives a small lindworm as a gift to his daughter Þóra Town-Hart after which it grows into a large serpent which encircles the girl's bower and bites itself in the tail. The serpent is slain by Ragnar Lodbrok who marries Þóra. Ragnar later has a son with another woman named Kráka and this son is born with the image of a white snake in one eye. This snake encircled the iris and bit itself in the tail, and the son was named Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye.[18]
It is a common belief among indigenous people of the tropical lowlands of South America that waters at the edge of the world-disc are encircled by a snake, often an anaconda, biting its own tail.[19]
The ouroboros has certain features in common with the Biblical Leviathan. According to the Zohar, the Leviathan is a singular creature with no mate, "its tail is placed in its mouth", while Rashi on Baba Batra 74b describes it as "twisting around and encompassing the entire world". The identification appears to go back as far as the poems of Kalir in the 6th-7th centuries.[citation needed]
Connection to Indian thought[edit]
In the Aitareya Brahmana, a Vedic text of the early 1st millennium BCE, the nature of the Vedic rituals is compared to "a snake biting its own tail."[20]
Ouroboros symbolism has been used to describe the Kundalini. According to the medieval Yoga-kundalini Upanishad: "The divine power, Kundalini, shines like the stem of a young lotus; like a snake, coiled round upon herself she holds her tail in her mouth and lies resting half asleep as the base of the body" (1.82).[citation needed]
Storl (2004) also refers to the ouroboros image in reference to the "cycle of samsara".[21]
Modern references[edit]
Jungian psychology[edit]
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung saw the ouroboros as an archetype and the basic mandala of alchemy. Jung also defined the relationship of the ouroboros to alchemy:[22][23]
The alchemists, who in their own way knew more about the nature of the individuation process than we moderns do, expressed this paradox through the symbol of the Ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail. The Ouroboros has been said to have a meaning of infinity or wholeness. In the age-old image of the Ouroboros lies the thought of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was clear to the more astute alchemists that the prima materia of the art was man himself. The Ouroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e. of the shadow. This 'feedback' process is at the same time a symbol of immortality since it is said of the Ouroboros that he slays himself and brings himself to life, fertilizes himself, and gives birth to himself. He symbolizes the One, who proceeds from the clash of opposites, and he, therefore, constitutes the secret of the prima materia which ... unquestionably stems from man's unconscious.
The Jungian psychologist Erich Neumann writes of it as a representation of the pre-ego "dawn state", depicting the undifferentiated infancy experience of both mankind and the individual child.[24]
Kekulé's dream[edit]
The ouroboros, Kekulé's inspiration for the structure of benzene
Kekulé's proposal for the structure of benzene (1872)
The German organic chemist August Kekulé described the eureka moment when he realized the structure of benzene, after he saw a vision of Ouroboros:[25]
I was sitting, writing at my text-book; but the work did not progress; my thoughts were elsewhere. I turned my chair to the fire and dozed. Again the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept modestly in the background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by the repeated visions of the kind, could now distinguish larger structures of manifold conformation: long rows, sometimes more closely fitted together; all twining and twisting in snake-like motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightning I awoke; and this time also I spent the rest of the night in working out the consequences of the hypothesis.
Cosmos[edit]
Martin Rees used the ouroboros to illustrate the various scales of the universe, ranging from 10−20 cm (subatomic) at the tail, up to 1025 cm (supragalactic) at the head.[26] Rees stressed "the intimate links between the microworld and the cosmos, symbolised by the ouraborus",[27] as tail and head meet to complete the circle.
Cybernetics[edit]
Cybernetics deployed circular logics of causal action in the core concept of feedback in the directive and purposeful behaviour in human and living organisms, groups, and self-regulating machines. The general principle of feedback describes a circuit (electronic, social, biological, or otherwise) in which the output or result is a signal that influences the input or causal agent through its response to the new situation. W. Ross Ashby applied ideas from biology to his own work as a psychiatrist in "Design for a Brain" (1952): that living things maintain essential variables of the body within critical limits with the brain as a regulator of the necessary feedback loops. Parmar contextualises his practices as an artist in applying the cybernetic Ouroboros principle to musical improvisation.[28]
Hence the snake eating its tail is an accepted image or metaphor in the autopoietic calculus for self-reference,[29] or self-indication, the logical processual notation for analysing and explaining self-producing autonomous systems and "the riddle of the living", developed by Francisco Varela. Reichel describes this as:
...an abstract concept of a system whose structure is maintained through the self-production of and through that structure. In the words of Kauffman, is 'the ancient mythological symbol of the worm ouroboros embedded in a mathematical, non-numerical calculus.[30][31]
The calculus derives from the confluence of the cybernetic logic of feedback, the sub-disciplines of autopoiesis developed by Varela and Humberto Maturana, and calculus of indications of George Spencer Brown. In another related biological application:
It is remarkable, that Rosen's insight, that metabolism is just a mapping..., which may be too cursory for a biologist, turns out to show us the way to construct recursively, by a limiting process, solutions of the self-referential Ouroborus equation f(f) = f, for an unknown function f, a way that mathematicians had not imagined before Rosen.[32][33]
Second-order cybernetics, or the cybernetics of cybernetics, applies the principle of self-referentiality, or the participation of the observer in the observed, to explore observer involvement in all behaviour and the praxis of science[34] including D.J. Stewart's domain of "observer valued imparities".[35]
Armadillo girdled lizard[edit]
The genus of the armadillo girdled lizard, Ouroborus cataphractus, takes its name from the animal's defensive posture: curling into a ball and holding its own tail in its mouth
In Spanish culture[edit]
A medium-sized European hake, known in Spanish as pescadilla, is often presented with its mouth biting its tail receiving the name of pescadilla de rosca ("torus hake").[37] La pescadilla que se muerde la cola, "the hake that bites its tail", is a proverbial Spanish expression for circular reasoning and vicious circles.[38]
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Second-order cybernetics
Jump to navigationJump to searchSecond-order cybernetics, also known as the cybernetics of cybernetics, is the recursive application of cybernetics to itself and the reflexive practice of cybernetics according to such a critique. It is cybernetics where "the role of the observer is appreciated and acknowledged rather than disguised, as had become traditional in western science".[1] Second-order cybernetics was developed between the late 1960s and mid 1970s[note 1] by Margaret Mead, Heinz von Foerster and others. Foerster referred to it as "the control of control and the communication of communication" and differentiated first order cybernetics as "the cybernetics of observed systems" and second-order cybernetics as "the cybernetics of observing systems".[4] It is closely allied to radical constructivism, which was developed around the same time by Ernst von Glasersfeld.[5] While it is sometimes considered a break from the earlier concerns of cybernetics, there is much continuity with previous work and it can be thought of as a distinct tradition within cybernetics, with origins in issues evident during the Macy conferences in which cybernetics was initially developed.[6][7][8] Its concerns include autonomy, epistemology, ethics, language, self-consistency, self-referentiality, and self-organizing capabilities of complex systems. It has been characterised as cybernetics where "circularity is taken seriously".[9]
Terminology[edit]
Second-order cybernetics can be abbreviated as C2 or SOC, and is sometimes referred to as the cybernetics of cybernetics,[2][4][10] or, more rarely, the new cybernetics,[11][12][13][14][15] or second cybernetics.[16]
These terms are often used interchangeably, but can also stress different aspects:
Most specifically, and especially where phrased as the cybernetics of cybernetics, second-order cybernetics is the recursive application of cybernetics to itself. This is closely associated with Mead's 1967 address to the American Society for Cybernetics (published 1968)[2] and Foerster's "Cybernetics of Cybernetics"[4] book, developed as a course option at the Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL), where Cybernetic texts were analysed according to the principles they put forward. In this sense, second-order cybernetics can be considered the "conscience"[1] of cybernetics, attending to the subject's consistency and clarity.
More generally, second-order cybernetics is the reflexive practice of cybernetics, where cyberneticians understand themselves and other participants to be part of the systems they study and act in, taking a second-order position whether or not it is termed as such. When cybernetics is practiced in this way, second-order cybernetics and cybernetics may be used interchangeably, with the qualifier 'second-order' being used when drawing distinctions from (or critiquing) other approaches (e.g. differentiating from purely technological applications) or as a way of emphasising reflexivity.[17]
Additionally, and especially where referred to as the new cybernetics, second-order cybernetics may refer to substantial developments in direction and scope taken by cybernetics from the 1970s onwards, with greater focus on social and philosophical concerns.
Initial development[edit]
See also: Cybernetics § History
Second-order cybernetics took shape during the late 1960s and mid 1970s. The 1967 keynote address to the inaugural meeting of the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) by Margaret Mead, who had been a participant at the Macy Conferences, is a defining moment in its development. Mead characterised "cybernetics as a way of looking at things and as a language for expressing what one sees",[2] calling on cyberneticians to assume responsibility for the social consequences of the language of cybernetics and the development of cybernetic systems.[18] Mead's paper concluded with a proposal directed at the ASC itself, that it organise itself in the light of the ideas with which it was concerned. That is, the practice of cybernetics by the ASC should be subject to cybernetic critique, an idea returned to by Ranulph Glanville in his time as president of the society.[19][20]
Mead's paper was published in 1968 in a collection edited by Heinz von Foerster.[2] With Mead uncontactable due to field work at the time, Foerster titled the paper "Cybernetics of Cybernetics", a title that perhaps emphasised his concerns more than Mead's.[1] Foerster promoted second-order cybernetics energetically, developing it as a means of renewal for cybernetics generally and as what has been called an "unfinished revolution" in science.[21] Foerster developed second-order cybernetics as a critique of realism and objectivity and as a radically reflexive form of science, where observers enter their domains of observation, describing their own observing not the supposed causes.
The initial development of second-order cybernetics was consolidated by the mid 1970s in a series of significant developments and publications. These included: the 1974 publication of the "Cybernetics of Cybernetics" book, edited by Foerster,[4] developed as a course option at the BCL examining various texts from cybernetics according to the principals they proposed;[4] autopoiesis, developed by biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela;[22][23] conversation theory, developed by Gordon Pask, Bernard Scott and Dionysius Kallikourdis;[24][25][26][27][28][3] radical constructivism, developed by Ernst von Glasersfeld;[29] and other explorations of self-reference, including Foerster's eigen-forms[30] and Glanville's theory of objects.[31]
Participant observers[edit]
A key concept in second-order cybernetics is that observers (and other actors, such as designers, modellers, users...) are to be understood as participants within the systems with which they are engaged, in contrast to the detachment implied in objectivity and conventional scientific practice. This includes cyberneticians inclusion of themselves in the practice of cybernetics, as well as the inclusion of participants within the consideration and design of systems more generally.
Second-order cybernetics' emphasis on participation and inclusion has led to affinities and overlaps with action research,[7] design,[32][33] and the creative arts.[34]
While second-order cybernetics continues to use of the terms observing and observers following Foerster's formulation, Ranulph Glanville has suggested using the terms composition and composers instead to better indicate the active role of participation.[35]
Ethical implications[edit]
The critique of objectivity developed in second-order cybernetics has led to a concern with ethical issues. Foerster developed a critique of morality in ethical terms, arguing for ethics to remain implicit in action.[36] Foerster's position has been described as an "ethics of enabling ethics"[37] or as a form of "recursive ethical questioning".[38] Varela published a short book on "ethical know-how".[39] Glanville identified a number of "desirable" ethical qualities implicit in the cybernetic devices of the black box, distinction, autonomy, and conversation.[40] Others have drawn connections to design[41][42] and critical systems heuristics.[43]
Relationship to "first order" cybernetics[edit]
Diagram from Stewart Brand's 1976 conversation with Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, noting that they and Norbert Wiener understood themselves as participant observers in contrast to the detached "input-output" approach typical of engineering.
The relationship of first order and second-order cybernetics can be compared to that between Isaac Newton's view of the universe and that of Albert Einstein.[1] Just as Newton's description remains appropriate and usable in many circumstances, even flights to the moon, so first order cybernetics also provides everything that is needed in many circumstances. In the same way that the Newtonian view is understood to be a special, restricted version of Einstein's view, so first order cybernetics may be understood as a special, restricted version of second-order cybernetics.
The distinction between first- and second-order cybernetics is sometimes used as a form of periodisation. However, this can obscure the continuity between earlier and later cybernetics,[note 2][33] with what would come to be called second-order qualities evident in the work of cyberneticians such as Warren McCulloch[7] and Gregory Bateson,[1] and with Foerster and Mead being both Macy conference participants and instigators of second-order cybernetics. Mead and Bateson, for instance, noted that they and Wiener understood themselves as participant observers in contrast to the detached "input-output" approach typical of engineering.[8] In this sense, second-order cybernetics can be thought of as a distinct tradition within cybernetics that developed along different lines to the narrower framing of engineering cybernetics.[7]
Pask summarized the differences between the old and the new cybernetics as a shift in emphasis:[45][46] from information to coupling, from the reproduction of "order-from-order" (Schroedinger 1944) to the generation of "order-from-noise" (von Foerster 1960), from transmission of data to conversation, and from external observation to participant observation.
Third and higher orders[edit]
Some see the definition of third and higher orders of cybernetics as a next step in the development of the discipline, but this has not won widespread acceptance. Attempts to define a third order of cybernetics have been concerned with embedding the participant observer of second-order cybernetics explicitly within broader social and/or ecological[47] contexts.
Foerster discouraged the definition of higher orders, regarding the distinction between first- and second- as an either/or regarding the position of the cyberneticians with regard to their system of concern.[48]
Heinz von Foerster and the Biological Computer Laboratory[edit]
Main articles: Heinz von Foerster and Biological Computer Laboratory
Second-order cybernetics is closely identified Heinz von Foerster and the work of the Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL) at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign.
Foerster attributes the origin of second-order cybernetics to the attempts by cyberneticians to construct a model of the mind:
... a brain is required to write a theory of a brain. From this follows that a theory of the brain, that has any aspirations for completeness, has to account for the writing of this theory. And even more fascinating, the writer of this theory has to account for her or himself. Translated into the domain of cybernetics; the cybernetician, by entering his own domain, has to account for his or her own activity. Cybernetics then becomes cybernetics of cybernetics, or second-order cybernetics.[49]
Associated theories[edit]
Theoretical developments closely associated with the development of second-order cybernetics include:
Autopoiesis[edit]
Main article: Autopoiesis
See also: Santiago theory of cognition, Humberto Maturana, and Francisco Varela
Biologists such as Maturana, Varela, and Atlan "realized that the cybernetic metaphors of the program upon which molecular biology had been based rendered a conception of the autonomy of the living being impossible. Consequently, these thinkers were led to invent a new cybernetics, one more suited to the organization mankind discovers in nature."[12]
Conversation theory[edit]
Main article: Conversation theory
See also: Gordon Pask
Eigenform[edit]
Main article: Eigenform
The notion of eigenform is an example of a self-referential system that produces a stable form. It plays an important role in the work of Heinz von Foerster[30] and is "inextricably linked with second order cybernetics".[50]
Radical constructivism[edit]
Main article: Radical constructivism
See also: Ernst von Glasersfeld
Radical constructivism is an approach to epistemology developed initially by Ernst von Glasersfeld. It is closely associated with second-order cybernetics,[51] especially with the work of Heinz von Foerster and Humberto Maturana.
Practice and application[edit]
In the creative arts[edit]
Second-order cybernetics has been a point of reference in the creative arts, including in theatre studies[52] and music theory.[53][54]
Practitioners in the creative arts whose work is associated with second-order cybernetics include Roy Ascott,[55] Herbert Brün,[56] and Tom Scholte.
In design[edit]
See also: Systemic design and Metadesign
Second-order cybernetics has contributed to design in areas including design computation, design methods, and the relationship between design and research.[57]
Theorists and practitioners working at the intersection of cybernetics and design include Delfina Fantini van Ditmar, Ranulph Glanville, Klaus Krippendorff, John Frazer, and Paul Pangaro.
In enactivism and embodied cognitive science[edit]
Main articles: Enactivism and Embodied cognition
See also: Francisco Varela
Enactivism is a position in cognitive science that argues that cognition arises through a dynamic interaction between an acting organism and its environment.[58]
In education[edit]
Contributions in education, include:
Pask's work was carried out in the context of the development of theories of teaching and learning, and the development of educational technology.
Radical constructivism has been applied in educational research and practice, where it challenges traditional assumptions about learning and teaching.[59]
In family therapy[edit]
The ideas of second-order cybernetics have been influential in systemic and constructivist approaches to family therapy,[60][61] with Bateson's work at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto being a key influence. Family therapists influenced by aspects of second-order cybernetics include Lynn Hoffman, Bradford Keeney and Paul Watzlawick.
In management and organisation[edit]
Main article: Management cybernetics
Organizational cybernetics is distinguished from management cybernetics. Both use many of the same terms but interpret them according to another philosophy of systems thinking. Organizational cybernetics by contrast offers a significant break with the assumption of the hard approach. The full flowering of organizational cybernetics is represented by Beer's viable system model.[62]
Organizational cybernetics studies organizational design, and the regulation and self-regulation of organizations from a systems theory perspective that also takes the social dimension into consideration. Researchers in economics, public administration and political science focus on the changes in institutions, organisation and mechanisms of social steering at various levels (sub-national, national, European, international) and in different sectors (including the private, semi-private and public sectors; the latter sector is emphasised).[63]
In mathematics and logic[edit]
Second-order cybernetics was influenced by George Spencer Brown's Laws of Form, which was later developed by Francisco Varela into a calculus for self-reference.[1] Mathematicians and logicians working in second-order cybernetics include Gotthard Günther, Lars Löfgren, and Louis Kauffman.
In sociocybernetics[edit]
Main article: Sociocybernetics
See also: Niklas Luhmann, Felix Geyer, and Hans van der Zouwen
In political science in the 1980s unlike its predecessor, the new cybernetics concerns itself with the interaction of autonomous political actors and subgroups and the practical reflexive consciousness of the subject who produces and reproduces the structure of political community. A dominant consideration is that of recursiveness, or self-reference of political action both with regard to the expression of political consciousness and with the ways in which systems build upon themselves.[64]
In 1978, Geyer and van der Zouwen discuss a number of characteristics of the emerging "new cybernetics". One characteristic of new cybernetics is that it views information as constructed by an individual interacting with the environment. This provides a new epistemological foundation of science, by viewing it as observer-dependent. Another characteristic of the new cybernetics is its contribution towards bridging the "micro-macro gap". That is, it links the individual with the society. Geyer and van der Zouten also noted that a transition from classical cybernetics to new cybernetics involves a transition from classical problems to new problems. These shifts in thinking involve, among other things, a change in emphasis on the system being steered to the system doing the steering, and the factors which guide the steering decisions. And a new emphasis on communication between several systems which are trying to steer each other.[65]
Geyer & J. van der Zouwen (1992) recognize four themes in both sociocybernetics and new cybernetics:[66]
An epistemological foundation for science as an observer-observer system. Feedback and feedforward loops are constructed not only between the observer, and the objects that are observed them and the observer.
The transition from classical, rather mechanistic first-order cybernetics to modern, second-order cybernetics, characterized by the differences summarized by Gordon Pask.[further explanation needed]
These problem shifts in cybernetics result from a thorough reconceptualization of many all too easily accepted and taken for granted concepts – which yield new notions of stability, temporality, independence, structure versus behaviour, and many other concepts.
The actor-oriented systems approach, promulgated in 1978 made it possible to bridge the "micro-macro" gap in social science thinking.
The reformulation of sociocybernetics as an "actor-oriented, observer-dependent, self-steering, time-variant" paradigm of human systems, was most clearly articulated by Geyer and van der Zouwen in 1978 and 1986.[67] They stated that sociocybernetics is more than just social cybernetics, which could be defined as the application of the general systems approach to social science. Social cybernetics is indeed more than such a one-way knowledge transfer. It implies a feed-back loop from the area of application – the social sciences – to the theory being applied, namely cybernetics; consequently, sociocybernetics can indeed be viewed as part of the new cybernetics: as a result of its application to social science problems, cybernetics, itself, has been changed and has moved from its originally rather mechanistic point of departure to become more actor-oriented and observer-dependent.[68]
In summary, the new sociocybernetics is much more subjective and uses a sociological approach more than classical cybernetics approach with its emphasis on control. The new approach has a distinct emphasis on steering decisions; furthermore, it can be seen as constituting a reconceptualization of many concepts which are often routinely accepted without challenge.[65]
Other applications and influence[edit]
Others associated with or influenced by second-order cybernetics include:
Henri Atlan, biophysicist influenced by Foerster.
Stewart Brand, associated with Bateson and Foerster. Some of the proceeds from Brand's Whole Earth Catalogue funded the publication of Foerster's Cybernetics of Cybernetics book.[69]
Nicholas Negroponte, for whose Architecture Machine Group Pask worked as a consultant.
William Irwin Thompson.[70]
Other areas of application include:
Artificial neural networks[71]
Living systems[72]
New robotic approaches[71]
Reflexive understanding[73]
Political communication[74]
Social dimensions of cognitive science[75]
Sustainable development[76]
Symbolic artificial intelligence[71]
Systemic group therapy[77]
Organisations[edit]
American Society for Cybernetics
Department of Contemporary History of the University of Vienna holds the archives of several second-order cyberneticians including those of Ranulph Glanville, Heinz von Foerster, Gordon Pask, and Stuart Umpleby, as well as the archive of the American Society for Cybernetics.
Journals[edit]
Journals with focuses on second-order cybernetics include:
Constructivist Foundations
Cybernetics and Human Knowing
Limitations and criticism[edit]
Andrew Pickering has criticised second-order cybernetics as a form of linguistic turn, moving away from the performative practices he finds valuable in earlier cybernetics.[78] Pickering does however approvingly reference the work of figures associated with second-order cybernetics, such as Bateson and Pask, and the idea of participant observers which fall within the scope of second-order cybernetics broadly considered.
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Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger (UK: /ˈʃrɜːdɪŋər/, US: /ˈʃroʊ-/;[3] German: [ˈɛɐ̯viːn ˈʃʁøːdɪŋɐ]; 12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961), sometimes written as Erwin Schrodinger or Erwin Schroedinger, was a Nobel Prize-winning Austrian-Irish physicist who developed a number of fundamental results in quantum theory: the Schrödinger equation provides a way to calculate the wave function of a system and how it changes dynamically in time.
In addition, he wrote many works on various aspects of physics: statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, physics of dielectrics, colour theory, electrodynamics, general relativity, and cosmology, and he made several attempts to construct a unified field theory. In his book What Is Life? Schrödinger addressed the problems of genetics, looking at the phenomenon of life from the point of view of physics. He paid great attention to the philosophical aspects of science, ancient, and oriental philosophical concepts, ethics, and religion.[4] He also wrote on philosophy and theoretical biology. In popular culture, he is most known for his "Schrödinger's cat" thought experiment.[5][6] Schrödinger's personal life caused him some problems as he lived with both a wife and mistress. In his journal, he also documented sexual liaisons with other women and his self-described "predilection for teenage girls".
Spending most of his life as an academic with positions at various universities, Schrödinger along with Paul Dirac won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933 for his work on quantum mechanics, the same year he left Germany due to his opposition to Nazism. In his personal life, he lived with both his wife and his mistress which may have led to problems causing him to leave his position at Oxford. Subsequently, until 1938, he had a position in Graz, Austria until the Nazi takeover, when he fled finally finding a longterm arrangement in Dublin where he remained until retirement in 1955. He died in Vienna of tuberculosis at the age of 73.
Biography[edit]
Early years[edit]
Schrödinger was born in Erdberg [de], Vienna, Austria, on 12 August 1887, to Rudolf Schrödinger [de][citation needed] (cerecloth producer, botanist[7]) and Georgine Emilia Brenda Schrödinger (née Bauer) (daughter of Alexander Bauer [de ],[citation needed] professor of chemistry, TU Wien). He was their only child.
His mother was of half Austrian and half English descent; his father was Catholic and his mother was Lutheran. Although he was raised in a religious household as a Lutheran, he himself was an atheist.[8] However, he had strong interests in Eastern religions and pantheism, and he used religious symbolism in his works.[9] He also believed his scientific work was an approach to Divinity, albeit in an intellectual sense.[10]
He was also able to learn English outside school, as his maternal grandmother was British.[11] Between 1906 and 1910 (the year he earned his doctorate) Schrödinger studied at the University of Vienna under the physicists Franz S. Exner (1849–1926) and Friedrich Hasenöhrl (1874–1915). He received his doctorate at Vienna under Hasenöhrl. He also conducted experimental work with Karl Wilhelm Friedrich "Fritz" Kohlrausch. In 1911, Schrödinger became an assistant to Exner.
Middle years[edit]
Erwin Schrödinger as a young man
In 1914 Schrödinger achieved habilitation (venia legendi). Between 1914 and 1918 he participated in war work as a commissioned officer in the Austrian fortress artillery (Gorizia, Duino, Sistiana, Prosecco, Vienna). In 1920 he became the assistant to Max Wien, in Jena, and in September 1920 he attained the position of ao. Prof. (ausserordentlicher Professor), roughly equivalent to Reader (UK) or associate professor (US), in Stuttgart. In 1921, he became o. Prof. (ordentlicher Professor, i.e. full professor), in Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland).[citation needed]
In 1921, he moved to the University of Zürich. In 1927, he succeeded Max Planck at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. In 1933, Schrödinger decided to leave Germany because he strongly disapproved of the Nazis' antisemitism. He became a Fellow of Magdalen College at the University of Oxford. Soon after he arrived, he received the Nobel Prize together with Paul Dirac. His position at Oxford did not work out well; his unconventional domestic arrangements, sharing living quarters with two women,[12] were not met with acceptance. In 1934, Schrödinger lectured at Princeton University; he was offered a permanent position there, but did not accept it. Again, his wish to set up house with his wife and his mistress may have created a problem.[13] He had the prospect of a position at the University of Edinburgh but visa delays occurred, and in the end he took up a position at the University of Graz in Austria in 1936. He had also accepted the offer of chair position at Department of Physics, Allahabad University in India.[14]
In the midst of these tenure issues in 1935, after extensive correspondence with Albert Einstein, he proposed what is now called the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment.[15]
Later years[edit]
In 1938, after the Anschluss, Schrödinger had problems in Graz because of his flight from Germany in 1933 and his known opposition to Nazism.[16] He issued a statement recanting this opposition (he later regretted doing so and explained the reason to Einstein).[17] However, this did not fully appease the new dispensation and the University of Graz dismissed him from his post for political unreliability. He suffered harassment and was instructed not to leave the country. He and his wife, however, fled to Italy. From there, he went to visiting positions in Oxford and Ghent University.[17][16]
Schrödinger (front row 2nd from right) and De Valera (front row 4th from left) at Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in 1942
In the same year he received a personal invitation from Ireland's Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera – a mathematician himself – to reside in Ireland and agree to help establish an Institute for Advanced Studies in Dublin.[18] He moved to Kincora Road, Clontarf, Dublin and lived modestly. A plaque was erected at his Clontarf residence and at the address of his workplace in Merrion Square.[19][20][21] He became the Director of the School for Theoretical Physics in 1940 and remained there for 17 years. He became a naturalized Irish citizen in 1948, but also retained his Austrian citizenship[citation needed]. He wrote around 50 further publications on various topics, including his explorations of unified field theory.[citation needed]
In 1944, he wrote What Is Life?, which contains a discussion of negentropy and the concept of a complex molecule with the genetic code for living organisms. According to James D. Watson's memoir, DNA, the Secret of Life, Schrödinger's book gave Watson the inspiration to research the gene, which led to the discovery of the DNA double helix structure in 1953. Similarly, Francis Crick, in his autobiographical book What Mad Pursuit, described how he was influenced by Schrödinger's speculations about how genetic information might be stored in molecules.[22]
Schrödinger stayed in Dublin until retiring in 1955.
A manuscript "Fragment from an unpublished dialogue of Galileo"[23] from this time recently resurfaced at The King's Hospital boarding school, Dublin[24] after it was written for the School's 1955 edition of their Blue Coat to celebrate his leaving of Dublin to take up his appointment as Chair of Physics at the University of Vienna.[25]
In 1956, he returned to Vienna (chair ad personam). At an important lecture during the World Energy Conference he refused to speak on nuclear energy because of his scepticism about it and gave a philosophical lecture instead. During this period Schrödinger turned from mainstream quantum mechanics' definition of wave–particle duality and promoted the wave idea alone, causing much controversy.[26][27]
Personal life[edit]
On 6 April 1920, Schrödinger married Annemarie (Anny) Bertel.[28] Schrödinger suffered from tuberculosis and several times in the 1920s stayed at a sanatorium in Arosa. It was there that he formulated his wave equation.[5] As has been noted above, Schrödinger had an unconventional personal life. When he migrated to Ireland in 1938, he obtained visas for himself, his wife and also another woman, Mrs. Hilde March. March was the wife of an Austrian colleague and Schrödinger had fathered a daughter with her in 1934.[29] Schrödinger wrote personally to the Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, to obtain the visa for Mrs. March. In October 1939 the ménage à trois duly took up residence in Dublin.[29]
Annemarie and Erwin Schrödinger's gravesite; above the name plate Schrödinger's quantum mechanical wave equation is inscribed:{\displaystyle i\hbar {\dot {\Psi }}=H\Psi }
On 4 January 1961, Schrödinger died of tuberculosis, aged 73, in Vienna.[1] He left Anny a widow, and was buried in Alpbach, Austria, in a Catholic cemetery. Although he was not Catholic, the priest in charge of the cemetery permitted the burial after learning Schrödinger was a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.[30] His wife, Anny (born 3 December 1896), died on 3 October 1965. One of Schrödinger's grandchildren, Terry Rudolph, has followed in his footsteps as a quantum physicist, and teaches at Imperial College London.[31][32]
Accusations of sexual abuse[edit]
Schrödinger kept a record of his sexual liaisons including children he may have sexually abused in a diary he called Ephemeridae, in it claiming a "predilection for teenage girls on the grounds that their innocence was the ideal match for his natural genius".[33]
At the age of 39, Schrödinger tutored 14-year-old "Ithi" Junger and, according to the Irish Daily Mail, he "allegedly [vied] for [her] affections".[34] As John Gribbin recounted in his 2012 biography of Schrödinger, "As well as the maths, the lessons included 'a fair amount of petting and cuddling' and Schrödinger soon convinced himself that he was in love with Ithi".[35] Junger became pregnant by Schrödinger at 17, and he eventually left her and moved on to other targets.[36]
Carlo Rovelli notes in his book Helgoland that Schrödinger "always kept a number of relationships going at once – and made no secret of his fascination with preadolescent girls." In Ireland, Rovelli writes, he had one child each from two students.[37] While carrying out research into a family tree, Bernard Biggar uncovered reports of Schrödinger grooming his mother, Barbara MacEntee, when she was 12 years old.[33] Apparently, her uncle, the mathematician and priest Pádraig de Brún, advised Schrödinger to no longer pursue her,[38] and Schrödinger later wrote in his journal that she was one of his "unrequited loves".[39] MacEntee died in 1995, with the accounts emerging posthumously.[40]
Kate Nolan, a pseudonym used by surviving family to protect the victim, was also impregnated by Schrödinger amid claims of a lack of consent. Walter Moore's biography of the scientist outlined that Schrödinger's attitude towards the women was "essentially that of a male supremacist",[41] an assessment corroborated by Helge Kragh in his review of Moore's biography, "The conquest of women, especially very young women, was the salt of life for this sincere romantic and male chauvinist."[42]
In a 2021 Irish Times article, Schrödinger's pattern of serial abuse was identified by the paper as a "behaviour [that] fitted the profile of a paedophile in the widely understood sense of that term."[33] The physics department of Trinity College Dublin announced in January 2022 that they would recommend a lecture theatre that had been named for Schrödinger since the 1990s be renamed in light of his history of sexual abuse,[43] while a picture of the scientist would be removed, and the renaming of an eponymous lecture series would be considered.[44]
Academic interests and life of the mind[edit]
Early in his life, Schrödinger experimented in the fields of electrical engineering, atmospheric electricity, and atmospheric radioactivity, but he usually worked with his former teacher Franz Exner. He also studied vibrational theory, the theory of Brownian motion, and mathematical statistics. In 1912, at the request of the editors of the Handbook of Electricity and Magnetism, Schrödinger wrote an article titled Dielectrism. That same year, Schrödinger gave a theoretical estimate of the probable height distribution of radioactive substances, which is required to explain the observed radioactivity of the atmosphere, and in August 1913 executed several experiments in Zeehame that confirmed his theoretical estimate and those of Victor Franz Hess. For this work, Schrödinger was awarded the 1920 Haitinger Prize (Haitinger-Preis) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.[45] Other experimental studies conducted by the young researcher in 1914 were checking formulas for capillary pressure in gas bubbles and the study of the properties of soft beta radiation produced by gamma rays striking metal surface. The last work he performed together with his friend Fritz Kohlrausch. In 1919, Schrödinger performed his last physical experiment on coherent light and subsequently focused on theoretical studies.[citation needed]
Quantum mechanics[edit]
New quantum theory[edit]
In the first years of his career Schrödinger became acquainted with the ideas of the old quantum theory, developed in the works of Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Arnold Sommerfeld, and others. This knowledge helped him work on some problems in theoretical physics, but the Austrian scientist at the time was not yet ready to part with the traditional methods of classical physics.[citation needed]
The first publications of Schrödinger about atomic theory and the theory of spectra began to emerge only from the beginning of the 1920s, after his personal acquaintance with Sommerfeld and Wolfgang Pauli and his move to Germany. In January 1921, Schrödinger finished his first article on this subject, about the framework of the Bohr-Sommerfeld effect of the interaction of electrons on some features of the spectra of the alkali metals. Of particular interest to him was the introduction of relativistic considerations in quantum theory. In autumn 1922 he analyzed the electron orbits in an atom from a geometric point of view, using methods developed by the mathematician Hermann Weyl (1885–1955). This work, in which it was shown that quantum orbits are associated with certain geometric properties, was an important step in predicting some of the features of wave mechanics. Earlier in the same year he created the Schrödinger equation of the relativistic Doppler effect for spectral lines, based on the hypothesis of light quanta and considerations of energy and momentum. He liked the idea of his teacher Exner on the statistical nature of the conservation laws, so he enthusiastically embraced the articles of Bohr, Kramers, and Slater, which suggested the possibility of violation of these laws in individual atomic processes (for example, in the process of emission of radiation). Although the experiments of Hans Geiger and Walther Bothe soon cast doubt on this, the idea of energy as a statistical concept was a lifelong attraction for Schrödinger and he discussed it in some reports and publications.[46]
Creation of wave mechanics[edit]
In January 1926, Schrödinger published in Annalen der Physik the paper "Quantisierung als Eigenwertproblem" (Quantization as an Eigenvalue Problem)[47] on wave mechanics and presented what is now known as the Schrödinger equation. In this paper, he gave a "derivation" of the wave equation for time-independent systems and showed that it gave the correct energy eigenvalues for a hydrogen-like atom. This paper has been universally celebrated as one of the most important achievements of the twentieth century and created a revolution in most areas of quantum mechanics and indeed of all physics and chemistry. A second paper was submitted just four weeks later that solved the quantum harmonic oscillator, rigid rotor, and diatomic molecule problems and gave a new derivation of the Schrödinger equation. A third paper, published in May, showed the equivalence of his approach to that of Heisenberg and gave the treatment of the Stark effect. A fourth paper in this series showed how to treat problems in which the system changes with time, as in scattering problems. In this paper he introduced a complex solution to the wave equation in order to prevent the occurrence of fourth and sixth order differential equations. (This was arguably the moment when quantum mechanics switched from real to complex numbers.) When he introduced complex numbers in order to lower the order of the differential equations, something magical happened, and all of wave mechanics was at his feet. (He eventually reduced the order to one.)[48] These papers were his central achievement and were at once recognized as having great significance by the physics community.[citation needed]
Schrödinger was not entirely comfortable with the implications of quantum theory referring to his theory as "wave mechanics."[49][50] He wrote about the probability interpretation of quantum mechanics, saying, "I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it." (Just in order to ridicule the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, he contrived the famous thought experiment called Schrödinger's cat paradox.)[51]
Work on a unified field theory[edit]
Following his work on quantum mechanics, Schrödinger devoted considerable effort to working on a unified field theory that would unite gravity, electromagnetism, and nuclear forces within the basic framework of General Relativity, doing the work with an extended correspondence with Albert Einstein.[52] In 1947, he announced a result, "Affine Field Theory,"[53] in a talk at the Royal Irish Academy, but the announcement was criticized by Einstein as "preliminary" and failed to lead to the desired unified theory.[52] Following the failure of his attempt at unification, Schrödinger gave up his work on unification and turned to other topics.[citation needed]
Color[edit]
Schrödinger had a strong interest in psychology, in particular color perception and colorimetry (German: Farbenmetrik). He spent quite a few years of his life working on these questions and published a series of papers in this area:
"Theorie der Pigmente von größter Leuchtkraft", Annalen der Physik, (4), 62, (1920), 603–22 (Theory of Pigments with Highest Luminosity)
"Grundlinien einer Theorie der Farbenmetrik im Tagessehen", Annalen der Physik, (4), 63, (1920), 397–456; 481–520 (Outline of a theory of colour measurement for daylight vision)
"Farbenmetrik", Zeitschrift für Physik, 1, (1920), 459–66 (Colour measurement).
"Über das Verhältnis der Vierfarben- zur Dreifarben-theorie", Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Klasse,[clarification needed Which academy?] 134, 471, (On The Relationship of Four-Color Theory to Three-Color Theory).
"Lehre von der strahlenden Energie", Müller-Pouillets Lehrbuch der Physik und Meteorologie, Vol 2, Part 1 (1926) (Thresholds of Color Differences).
His work on the psychology of color perception follows the step of Newton, Maxwell and von Helmholtz in the same area. Some of these papers have been translated into English and can be found in: Sources of Colour Science, Ed. David L. MacAdam, MIT Press (1970) and in Erwin Schrödinger's Color Theory, Translated with Modern Commentary, Ed. Keith K. Niall, Springer (2017). ISBN 978-3-319-64619-0 doi:10.1007/978-3-319-64621-3.
Interest in philosophy[edit]
Schrödinger had a deep interest in philosophy, and was influenced by the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and Baruch Spinoza. In his lecture "Mind and Matter", he said that "The world extended in space and time is but our representation." This is a repetition of the first words of Schopenhauer's main work. Schopenhauer's works also introduced him to Indian philosophy, more specifically to the Upanishads and Advaita Vedanta's interpretation. He once took on a peculiar line of thought: "If the world is indeed created by our act of observation, there should be billions of such worlds, one for each of us. How come your world and my world are the same? If something happens in my world, does it happen in your world, too? What causes all these worlds to synchronize with each other?".
"There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of minds or consciousnesses. Their multiplicity is only apparent, in truth there is only one mind. This is the doctrine of the Upanishads."[54]
Schrödinger discussed topics such as consciousness, the mind-body problem, sense perception, free will, and objective reality in his lectures and writings.[54][55][56]
Schrödinger's attitude with respect to the relations between Eastern and Western thought was one of prudence, expressing appreciation for Eastern philosophy while also admitting that some of the ideas did not fit with empirical approaches to natural philosophy.[57] Despite his prudence, some commentators have suggested that Schrödinger was so deeply immersed in a non-dualist Vedântic-like view that it may have served as a broad framework or subliminal inspiration for much of his work including that in theoretical physics.[57] Schrödinger expressed sympathy for the idea of tat tvam asi, stating "you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with the certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you."[58]
Schrödinger said that "Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else."[59]
Legacy[edit]
The philosophical issues raised by Schrödinger's cat are still debated today and remain his most enduring legacy in popular science, while Schrödinger's equation is his most enduring legacy at a more technical level. Schrödinger is one of several individuals who have been called "the father of quantum mechanics". The large crater Schrödinger,[60] on the far side of the Moon, is named after him. The Erwin Schrödinger International Institute for Mathematical Physics was established in Vienna in 1993.
Schrödinger's portrait was the main feature of the design of the 1983–97 Austrian 1000-schilling banknote, the second-highest denomination.[61]
A building is named after him at the University of Limerick, in Limerick, Ireland,[62] as is the 'Erwin Schrödinger Zentrum' at Adlershof in Berlin.[63]
Schrödinger also has a lecture hall in Trinity College Dublin dedicated to him. In January 2022, the head of the school of physics stated there would be a recommendation to drop Schrödinger lecture theatre name due to Schrödinger's "history of sexually abusing women and children".[64]
Schrödinger's 126th birthday anniversary in 2013 was celebrated with a Google Doodle.[65][66]
Schrödinger became significantly more well known by continued mention of Schrödinger's cat in The Big Bang Theory.[67]
Honors and awards[edit]
Erwin Schrödinger's Nobel Prize diploma
Nobel Prize in Physics (1933) for the formulation of the Schrödinger equation, shared with Paul Dirac[68]
Max Planck Medal (1937)
Elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1949[4]
Erwin Schrödinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (1956)
Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (1957)
Schrödinger's cat is named in his honour, see also: List of things named after Erwin Schrödinger.
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Vienna (/viˈɛnə/ ( listen) vee-EN-ə;[7][8] German: Wien [viːn] ( listen); Austro-Bavarian: Wean [veɐ̯n]) is the national capital, largest city, and one of nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's most populous city, with about 2 million inhabitants[9] (2.6 million within the metropolitan area,[10] nearly one third of the country's population), and its cultural, economic, and political center. It is the 6th-largest city by population within city limits in the European Union.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, Vienna was the largest German-speaking city in the world, and before the splitting of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I, the city had 2 million inhabitants.[11] Today, it is the second-largest German-speaking city after Berlin.[12][13] Vienna is host to many major international organizations, including the United Nations, OPEC and the OSCE. The city is located in the eastern part of Austria and is close to the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. These regions work together in a European Centrope border region. Along with nearby Bratislava, Vienna forms a metropolitan region with 3 million inhabitants. In 2001, the city center was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In July 2017 it was moved to the list of World Heritage in Danger.[14] Additionally, Vienna is known as the "City of Music"[15] due to its musical legacy, as many famous classical musicians such as Beethoven and Mozart called Vienna home. Vienna is also said to be the "City of Dreams" because it was home to the world's first psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud.[16] Vienna's ancestral roots lie in early Celtic and Roman settlements that transformed into a Medieval and Baroque city. It is well known for having played a pivotal role as a leading European music center, from the age of Viennese Classicism through the early part of the 20th century. The historic center of Vienna is rich in architectural ensembles, including Baroque palaces and gardens, and the late-19th-century Ringstraße lined with grand buildings, monuments and parks.[17]
Vienna is known for its high quality of life. In a 2005 study of 127 world cities, the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked the city first (in a tie with Vancouver and San Francisco) for the world's most livable cities. Between 2011 and 2015, Vienna was ranked second, behind Melbourne.[18] Monocle's 2015 "Quality of Life Survey" ranked Vienna second on a list of the top 25 cities in the world "to make a base within".[19] Monocle's 2012 "Quality of Life Survey" ranked Vienna fourth on a list of the top 25 cities in the world "to make a base within" (up from sixth in 2011 and eighth in 2010).[20] The UN-Habitat classified Vienna as the most prosperous city in the world in 2012–2013.[21] The city was ranked 1st globally for its culture of innovation in 2007 and 2008, and sixth globally (out of 256 cities) in the 2014 Innovation Cities Index, which analyzed 162 indicators in covering three areas: culture, infrastructure, and markets.[22][23][24] Vienna regularly hosts urban planning conferences and is often used as a case study by urban planners.[25] Between 2005 and 2010, Vienna was the world's number-one destination for international congresses and conventions.[26] It attracts over 6.8 million tourists a year.[27]
Etymology[edit]
See also Other names of Vienna
The English name Vienna is borrowed from the homonymous Italian name. The etymology of the city's name is still subject to scholarly dispute. Some claim that the name comes from vedunia, meaning "forest stream", which subsequently produced the Old High German uuenia (wenia in modern writing), the New High German wien and its dialectal variant wean.[28]
Others believe that the name comes from the Roman settlement name of Celtic extraction Vindobona, probably meaning "fair village, white settlement" from Celtic roots, vindo-, meaning "bright" or "fair" – as in the Irish fionn and the Welsh gwyn –, and -bona "village, settlement".[29] The Celtic word vindos may reflect a widespread prehistorical cult of Vindos, a Celtic deity who survives in Irish Mythology as the warrior and seer Fionn mac Cumhaill.[30][31] A variant of this Celtic name could be preserved in the Czech, Slovak and Polish names of the city (Vídeň, Viedeň and Wiedeń respectively) and in that of the city's district Wieden.[32]
Another theory suggests the name comes from the Wends (Old English: Winedas; Old Norse: Vindr; German: Wenden, Winden; Danish: vendere; Swedish: vender; Polish: Wendowie, Czech: Wendové) which is a historical name for Slavs living near Germanic settlement areas.
The name of the city in Hungarian (Bécs), Serbo-Croatian (Beč; Cyrillic: Беч) and Ottoman Turkish (Beç) has a different, probably Slavonic origin, and originally referred to an Avar fort in the area.[33] Slovene-speakers call the city Dunaj, which in other Central European Slavic languages means the river Danube, on which the city stands.
History[edit]
Main articles: History of Vienna and Timeline of Vienna
Early history[edit]
Depiction of Vienna in the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493
Vienna in 1683
Evidence has been found of continuous habitation in the Vienna area since 500 BC, when Celts settled the site on the Danube.[34] In 15 BC, the Romans fortified the frontier city they called Vindobona to guard the empire against Germanic tribes to the north.
Close ties with other Celtic peoples continued through the ages. The Irish monk Saint Colman (or Koloman, Irish Colmán, derived from colm "dove") is buried in Melk Abbey and Saint Fergil (Virgil the Geometer) served as Bishop of Salzburg for forty years. Irish Benedictines founded twelfth-century monastic settlements; evidence of these ties persists in the form of Vienna's great Schottenstift monastery (Scots Abbey), once home to many Irish monks.
Vienna from Belvedere by Bernardo Bellotto, 1758
In 976, Leopold I of Babenberg became count of the Eastern March, a district centered on the Danube on the eastern frontier of Bavaria. This initial district grew into the duchy of Austria. Each succeeding Babenberg ruler expanded the march east along the Danube, eventually encompassing Vienna and the lands immediately east. In 1145, Duke Henry II Jasomirgott moved the Babenberg family residence from Klosterneuburg in Lower Austria to Vienna. From that time, Vienna remained the center of the Babenberg dynasty.[35]
In 1440, Vienna became the resident city of the Habsburg dynasty. It eventually grew to become the de facto capital of the Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) in 1437 and a cultural center for arts and science, music and fine cuisine. Hungary occupied the city between 1485 and 1490.
In the 16th and 17th centuries Christian forces twice stopped Ottoman armies outside Vienna, in the 1529 Siege of Vienna and the 1683 Battle of Vienna. The Great Plague of Vienna ravaged the city in 1679, killing nearly a third of its population.[36]
Austrian Empire and the early 20th century[edit]
Vienna's Ringstraße and the State Opera in around 1870
In 1804, during the Napoleonic Wars, Vienna became the capital of the newly formed Austrian Empire. The city continued to play a major role in European and world politics, including hosting the Congress of Vienna in 1814–15. The city also saw major uprisings against Hapsburg rule in 1848, which were suppressed. After the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, Vienna remained the capital of what became the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The city functioned as a center of classical music, for which the title of the First Viennese School (Haydn/Mozart/Beethoven) is sometimes applied.
Color lithograph of Vienna, 1900
During the latter half of the 19th century, Vienna developed what had previously been the bastions and glacis into the Ringstraße, a new boulevard surrounding the historical town and a major prestige project. Former suburbs were incorporated, and the city of Vienna grew dramatically. In 1918, after World War I, Vienna became capital of the Republic of German-Austria, and then in 1919 of the First Republic of Austria.
From the late-19th century to 1938, the city remained a center of high culture and of modernism. A world capital of music, Vienna played host to composers such as Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler and Richard Strauss. The city's cultural contributions in the first half of the 20th century included, among many, the Vienna Secession movement in art, psychoanalysis, the Second Viennese School (Schoenberg, Berg, Webern), the architecture of Adolf Loos and the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle. In 1913 Adolf Hitler, Leon Trotsky, Josip Broz Tito, Sigmund Freud and Joseph Stalin all lived within a few kilometers of each other in central Vienna, some of them becoming regulars at the same coffeehouses.[37] Austrians came to regard Vienna as a center of socialist politics, sometimes referred to as "Red Vienna" (Das rote Wien). In the Austrian Civil War of 1934 Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss sent the Austrian Army to shell civilian housing such as the Karl Marx-Hof occupied by the socialist militia.
Anschluss and World War II[edit]
Main article: Anschluss
Crowds greet Adolf Hitler as he rides in an open car through Vienna in March 1938
In 1938, after a triumphant entry into Austria, the Austrian-born German Chancellor Adolf Hitler spoke to the Austrian Germans from the balcony of the Neue Burg, a part of the Hofburg at the Heldenplatz. In the ensuing days the new Nazi authorities oversaw the harassment of Viennese Jews, the looting of their homes, and their on-going deportation and murder.[38][39] Between 1938 (after the Anschluss) and the end of the Second World War in 1945, Vienna lost its status as a capital to Berlin, because Austria ceased to exist and became part of Nazi Germany.
During the November pogroms on November 9, 1938, 92 synagogues in Vienna were destroyed. Only the city temple in the 1st district was spared, as the data of all Jews in Vienna were collected in the adjacent archives. Adolf Eichmann held office in the expropriated Palais Rothschild and organized the expropriation and persecution of the Jews. Of the almost 200,000 Jews in Vienna, around 120,000 were driven to emigrate and around 65,000 were killed. After the end of the war, the Jewish population of Vienna was about only 5,000.[40][41][42][43]
Vienna was also the center of the important resistance group around Heinrich Maier, which provided the Allies with plans for V-1, V-2 rockets, Peenemünde, Tiger tanks, Messerschmitt Bf 109, Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet and other aircraft. The information was important to Operation Crossbow and Operation Hydra, both preliminary missions for Operation Overlord. In addition, factory locations for war-essential products were communicated as targets for the Allied Air Force. The group was exposed and most of its members were executed after months of torture by the Gestapo in Vienna.[44][45][46][47] The group around the later executed Karl Burian even tried to blow up the Gestapo headquarters in the Hotel Metropole.[48]
On 2 April 1945, the Soviet Red Army launched the Vienna Offensive against the Germans holding the city and besieged it. British and American air-raids, as well as artillery duels between the Red Army and the SS and Wehrmacht, crippled infrastructure, such as tram services and water- and power-distribution, and destroyed or damaged thousands of public and private buildings. The Red Army was helped by an Austrian resistance group in the German Wehrmacht. The group tried under the code name Radetzky to prevent the destruction and fighting in the city. Vienna fell eleven days later.[49] At the end of the war, Austria again became separated from Germany, and Vienna regained its status as the capital city of the Republic of Austria, but the Soviet hold[citation needed] on the city remained until 1955, when Austria regained full sovereignty.
Four-power Vienna[edit]
Further information: Allied-occupied Austria
Occupation zones in Vienna, 1945–55
After the war, Vienna was part of Soviet-occupied Eastern Austria until September 1945. As in Berlin, Vienna in September 1945 was divided into sectors by the four powers: the US, the UK, France, and the Soviet Union and supervised by an Allied Commission. The four-power occupation of Vienna differed in one key respect from that of Berlin: the central area of the city, known as the first district, constituted an international zone in which the four powers alternated control on a monthly basis. The control was policed by the four powers on a de facto day-to-day basis, the famous "four soldiers in a jeep" method.[50] The Berlin Blockade of 1948 raised Western concerns that the Soviets might repeat the blockade in Vienna. The matter was raised in the UK House of Commons by MP Anthony Nutting, who asked: "What plans have the Government for dealing with a similar situation in Vienna? Vienna is in exactly a similar position to Berlin."[51]
There was a lack of airfields in the Western sectors, and authorities drafted contingency plans to deal with such a blockade. Plans included the laying down of metal landing mats at Schönbrunn. The Soviets did not blockade the city. The Potsdam Agreement included written rights of land access to the western sectors, whereas no such written guarantees had covered the western sectors of Berlin. Also, there was no precipitating event to cause a blockade in Vienna. (In Berlin, the Western powers had introduced a new currency in early 1948 to economically freeze out the Soviets.) During the 10 years of the four-power occupation, Vienna became a hotbed for international espionage between the Western and Eastern blocs. In the wake of the Berlin Blockade, the Cold War in Vienna took on a different dynamic. While accepting that Germany and Berlin would be divided, the Soviets had decided against allowing the same state of affairs to arise in Austria and Vienna. Here, the Soviet forces controlled districts 2, 4, 10, 20, 21, and 22 and all areas incorporated into Vienna in 1938.
Barbed wire fences were installed around the perimeter of West Berlin in 1953, but not in Vienna. By 1955, the Soviets, by signing the Austrian State Treaty, agreed to relinquish their occupation zones in Eastern Austria as well as their sector in Vienna. In exchange they required that Austria declare its permanent neutrality after the allied powers had left the country. Thus they ensured that Austria would not be a member of NATO and that NATO forces would therefore not have direct communications between Italy and West Germany.
The atmosphere of four-power Vienna is the background for Graham Greene's screenplay for the film The Third Man (1949). Later he adapted the screenplay as a novel and published it. Occupied Vienna is also depicted in the 1991 Philip Kerr novel, A German Requiem.
Austrian State Treaty and afterwards[edit]
Vienna in 1966
The four-power control of Vienna lasted until the Austrian State Treaty was signed in May 1955. That year, after years of reconstruction and restoration, the State Opera and the Burgtheater, both on the Ringstraße, reopened to the public. The Soviet Union signed the State Treaty only after having been provided with a political guarantee by the federal government to declare Austria's neutrality after the withdrawal of the allied troops. This law of neutrality, passed in late October 1955 (and not the State Treaty itself), ensured that modern Austria would align with neither NATO nor the Soviet bloc, and is considered one of the reasons for Austria's delayed entry into the European Union in 1995.
In the 1970s, Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky inaugurated the Vienna International Center, a new area of the city created to host international institutions. Vienna has regained much of its former international stature by hosting international organizations, such as the United Nations (United Nations Industrial Development Organization, United Nations Office at Vienna and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Demographics[edit]
Historical population
Year
Pop.
±%
1637
60,000
—
1683
90,000
+50.0%
1710
113,800
+26.4%
1754
175,460
+54.2%
1783
247,753
+41.2%
1793
271,800
+9.7%
1830
401,200
+47.6%
1840
469,400
+17.0%
1850
551,300
+17.4%
1857
683,000
+23.9%
1869
900,998
+31.9%
1880
1,162,591
+29.0%
1890
1,430,213
+23.0%
1900
1,769,137
+23.7%
1910
2,083,630
+17.8%
1916
2,239,000
+7.5%
1923
1,918,720
−14.3%
1934
1,935,881
+0.9%
1939
1,770,938
−8.5%
1951
1,616,125
−8.7%
1961
1,627,566
+0.7%
1971
1,619,885
−0.5%
1981
1,535,145
−5.2%
1990
1,492,636
−2.8%
2000
1,548,537
+3.7%
2005
1,632,569
+5.4%
2010
1,689,995
+3.5%
2015
1,797,337
+6.4%
2020
1,911,728
+6.4%
2020 data[52]
Significant foreign resident groups[53]
Nationality
Population as of
1 January 2021
Serbia
77,691
Germany
51,900
Turkey
45,708
Poland
44,173
Bosnia and Herzegovina
40,409
Romania
38,373
Syria
26,540
Hungary
25,966
Croatia
24,453
Bulgaria
20,507
Because of the industrialization and migration from other parts of the Empire, the population of Vienna increased sharply during its time as the capital of Austria-Hungary (1867–1918). In 1910, Vienna had more than two million inhabitants, and was the third largest city in Europe after London and Paris.[54] Around the start of the 20th century, Vienna was the city with the second-largest Czech population in the world (after Prague).[55] After World War I, many Czechs and Hungarians returned to their ancestral countries, resulting in a decline in the Viennese population. After World War II, the Soviets used force to repatriate key workers of Czech, Slovak and Hungarian origins to return to their ethnic homelands to further the Soviet bloc economy.[citation needed] The population of Vienna generally stagnated or declined through the remainder of the 20th century, not demonstrating significant growth again until the census of 2000. In 2020, Vienna's population remained significantly below its reported peak in 1916.
Under the Nazi regime, 65,000 Jews were deported and murdered in concentration camps by Nazi forces; approximately 130,000 fled.[56]
By 2001, 16% of people living in Austria had nationalities other than Austrian, nearly half of whom were from former Yugoslavia;[57][58] the next most numerous nationalities in Vienna were Turks (39,000; 2.5%), Poles (13,600; 0.9%) and Germans (12,700; 0.8%).[59]
As of 2012, an official report from Statistics Austria showed that more than 660,000 (38.8%) of the Viennese population have full or partial migrant background, mostly from Ex-Yugoslavia, Turkey, Germany, Poland, Romania and Hungary.[9][60]
From 2005 to 2015 the city's population grew by 10.1%.[61] According to UN-Habitat, Vienna could be the fastest growing city out of 17 European metropolitan areas until 2025 with an increase of 4.65% of its population, compared to 2010.[62]
Religion[edit]
Karlskirche, located on the south side of Karlsplatz in the 4th city district
According to the 2001 census, 49.2% of Viennese were Catholic, while 25.7% were of no religion, 7.8% were Muslim, 6.0% were members of an Eastern Orthodox Christian denomination, 4.7% were Protestant (mostly Lutheran), 0.5% were Jewish and 6.3% were either of other religions or did not reply.[59] A 2011 report by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis showed the proportions had changed, with 41.3% Catholic, 31.6% no affiliation, 11.6% Muslim, 8.4% Eastern Orthodox, 4.2% Protestant, and 2.9% other.[63]
Based on information provided to city officials by various religious organizations about their membership, Vienna's Statistical Yearbook 2019 reports in 2018 an estimated 610,269 Roman Catholics, or 32.3% of the population, and 195,000 (10.3%) Muslims, 70,298 (3.7%) Orthodox, 57,502 (3.0%) other Christians, and 9,504 (0.5%) other religions.[64] A study conducted by the Vienna Institute of Demography estimated the 2018 proportions to be 34% Catholic, 30% unaffiliated, 15% Muslim, 10% Orthodox, 4% Protestant, and 6% other religions.[65]
Vienna is the seat of the Metropolitan Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vienna, in which is also vested the exempt Ordinariate for Byzantine-rite Catholics in Austria; its Archbishop is Cardinal Christoph Schönborn. Many Catholic churches in central Vienna feature performances of religious or other music, including masses sung to classical music and organ. Some of Vienna's most significant historical buildings are Catholic churches, including the St. Stephen's Cathedral (Stephansdom), Karlskirche, Peterskirche and the Votivkirche. On the banks of the Danube, there is a Buddhist Peace Pagoda, built in 1983 by the monks and nuns of Nipponzan Myohoji.
Geography[edit]
Satellite image of Vienna (2018)
Vienna is located in northeastern Austria, at the easternmost extension of the Alps in the Vienna Basin. The earliest settlement, at the location of today's inner city, was south of the meandering Danube while the city now spans both sides of the river. Elevation ranges from 151 to 542 m (495 to 1,778 ft). The city has a total area of 414.65 square kilometers (160.1 sq mi), making it the largest city in Austria by area.
Climate[edit]
Vienna has an oceanic climate (Köppen classification Cfb). The city has warm summers, with periodical precipitations that can reach its yearly peak in July and August (66.6 and 66.5 mm respectively) and average high temperatures from June to September of approximately 21 to 27 °C (70 to 81 °F), with a record maximum exceeding 38 °C (100 °F) and a record low in September of 5.6 °C (42 °F). Winters are relatively dry and cold with average temperatures at about freezing point. Spring is variable and autumn cool, with possible snowfalls already in November. Precipitation is generally moderate throughout the year, averaging around 550 mm (21.7 in) annually, with considerable local variations, the Vienna Woods region in the west being the wettest part (700 to 800 mm (28 to 31 in) annually) and the flat plains in the east being the driest part (500 to 550 mm (20 to 22 in) annually). Snow in winter is common, even if not so frequent compared to the Western and Southern regions
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