What is Soft Computing? Bridging Gaps for 21st Century Science!

This contribution serves historical and philosophical reflecting cognitions on the role of Soft Computing in the 21(st) century. Referring to Magdalena's article in this issue, this paper considers the aspects of mixtures of techniques, the opposite pair "Hard Computing" and "Soft Computing", and Computational Intelligence. From the historical perspective the paper goes back to three articles by Warren Weaver that appeared after World War II. A concentrated study of these papers helps to understand that Soft Computing will be able to play a key role in the future development of science and technology.