Principia commonly refers to Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, a work in three books by Sir Isaac Newton, first published 5 July 1687. The Principia is considered as one of the most important works in the history of science.
The Principia Mathematica (PM) is a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics, written by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910, 1912, and 1913. PM is an attempt to derive all mathematical truths from a well-defined set of axioms and inference rules in symbolic logic.
The Principia Cybernetica Project is an attempt by a group of researchers to build a complete and consistent system of philosophy. Principia Cybernetica tries to tackle age-old philosophical questions with the help of the most recent cybernetic theories and technologies. Principia Cybernetica Web is one of the oldest, best organized, and largest, fully connected hypertexts on the Net. It contains over 2000 web pages (nodes), numerous papers, and even complete books.
The Principia Cybernetica Project was conceived by Valentin Turchin. With the help of Cliff Joslyn and Francis Heylighen, the first public activities started in 1989. An FTP server went online in March 1993 at the Free University of Brussels , followed a few months later by an hypertext server, which turned out to be the first one in Belgium.
The specific goals for the Principia Cybernetica Project are :
- Collaboration
- Constructivity
- Active
- Semantic Representations and Analysis
- Consensus
- Multiple Representational Forms
- Flexibility
- Publication
- Multi-Dimensionality