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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For organisms with both organic and mechanical parts, see cyborg.
For other uses, see Cybernetics (disambiguation).

This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key
points. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all
important aspects of the article. (June 2023)

Principle diagram of a cybernetic system with a feedback loop

Complex systems
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Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular processes such as feedback
systems where outputs are also inputs. It is concerned with general principles that
are relevant across multiple contexts,[1] including in ecological, technological,
biological, cognitive and social systems and also in practical activities such as
designing,[2] learning, and managing.

The field is named after an example of circular causal feedback—that of steering a

ship (the ancient Greek κυβερνήτης (kybernḗtēs) means "helmsperson"). In steering a
ship, the helmsperson adjusts their steering in continual response to the effect it
is observed as having, forming a feedback loop through which a steady course can be
maintained in a changing environment, responding to disturbances from cross winds
and tide.[3][4]

Cybernetics' transdisciplinary[5] character has meant that it intersects with a

number of other fields, leading to it having both wide influence and diverse
interpretations.

Definitions
Cybernetics has been defined in a variety of ways, reflecting "the richness of its
conceptual base."[6] One of the best known definitions is that of the American
scientist Norbert Wiener, who characterised cybernetics as concerned with "control
and communication in the animal and the machine."[7] Another early definition is
that of the Macy cybernetics conferences, where cybernetics was understood as the
study of "circular causal and feedback mechanisms in biological and social
systems."[8] Margaret Mead emphasised the role of cybernetics as "a form of cross-
disciplinary thought which made it possible for members of many disciplines to
communicate with each other easily in a language which all could understand."[9]

Other definitions include:[10] "the art of governing or the science of government"

(André-Marie Ampère); "the art of steersmanship" (Ross Ashby); "the study of
systems of any nature which are capable of receiving, storing, and processing
information so as to use it for control" (Andrey Kolmogorov); and "a branch of
mathematics dealing with problems of control, recursiveness, and information,
focuses on forms and the patterns that connect" (Gregory Bateson).

Etymology

Simple feedback model. AB < 0 for negative feedback.

The Ancient Greek term κυβερνητικός (kubernētikos, '(good at) steering') appears in
Plato's Republic[11] and Alcibiades, where the metaphor of a steersman is used to
signify the governance of people.[12] The French word cybernétique was also used in
1834 by the physicist André-Marie Ampère to denote the sciences of government in
his classification system of human knowledge.

According to Norbert Wiener, the word cybernetics was coined by a research group
involving himself and Arturo Rosenblueth in the summer of 1947.[7] It has been
attested in print since at least 1948 through Wiener's book Cybernetics: Or Control
and Communication in the Animal and the Machine.[note 1] In the book, Wiener
states:

After much consideration, we have come to the conclusion that all the existing
terminology has too heavy a bias to one side or another to serve the future
development of the field as well as it should; and as happens so often to
scientists, we have been forced to coin at least one artificial neo-Greek
expression to fill the gap. We have decided to call the entire field of control and
communication theory, whether in the machine or in the animal, by the name
Cybernetics, which we form from the Greek κυβερνήτης or steersman.

Moreover, Wiener explains, the term was chosen to recognize James Clerk Maxwell's
1868 publication on feedback mechanisms involving governors, noting that the term
governor is also derived from κυβερνήτης (kubernḗtēs) via a Latin corruption
gubernator. Finally, Wiener motivates the choice by steering engines of a ship
being "one of the earliest and best-developed forms of feedback mechanisms".[7]

History
First wave
See also: Macy conferences and Ratio Club

Norbert Wiener
The initial focus of cybernetics was on parallels between regulatory feedback
processes in biological and technological systems. Two foundational articles were
published in 1943: "Behavior, Purpose and Teleology" by Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert
Wiener, and Julian Bigelow – based on the research on living organisms that
Rosenblueth did in Mexico – and the paper "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent
in Nervous Activity" by Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts. The foundations of
cybernetics were then developed through a series of transdisciplinary conferences
funded by the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, between 1946 and 1953. The conferences
were chaired by McCulloch and had participants included Ross Ashby, Gregory
Bateson, Heinz von Foerster, Margaret Mead, John von Neumann, and Norbert Wiener.
In the UK, similar focuses were explored by the Ratio Club, an informal dining club
of young psychiatrists, psychologists, physiologists, mathematicians and engineers
that met between 1949 and 1958. Wiener introduced the neologism cybernetics to
denote the study of "teleological mechanisms" and popularized it through the book
Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine.[7]

During the 1950s, cybernetics was developed as a primarily technical discipline,

such as in Qian Xuesen's 1954 "Engineering Cybernetics". In the Soviet Union,
Cybernetics was initially considered with suspicion[14] but became accepted from
the mid to late 1950s.

By the 1960s and 1970s, however, cybernetics' transdisciplinarity fragmented, with

technical focuses separating into separate fields. Artificial intelligence (AI) was
founded as a distinct discipline at the Dartmouth workshop in 1956, differentiating
itself from the broader cybernetics field. After some uneasy coexistence, AI gained
funding and prominence. Consequently, cybernetic sciences such as the study of
artificial neural networks were downplayed.[15] Similarly, computer science became
defined as a distinct academic discipline in the 1950s and early 1960s.[16]

Second wave
The second wave of cybernetics came to prominence from the 1960s onwards, with its
focus inflecting away from technology toward social, ecological, and philosophical
concerns. It was still grounded in biology, notably Maturana and Varela's
autopoiesis, and built on earlier work on self-organising systems and the presence
of anthropologists Mead and Bateson in the Macy meetings. The Biological Computer
Laboratory, founded in 1958 and active until the mid-1970s under the direction of
Heinz von Foerster at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, was a major
incubator of this trend in cybernetics research.[17]

Focuses of the second wave of cybernetics included management cybernetics, such as

Stafford Beer's biologically inspired viable system model; work in family therapy,
drawing on Bateson; social systems, such as in the work of Niklas Luhmann;
epistemology and pedagogy, such as in the development of radical constructivism.
[18] Cybernetics' core theme of circular causality was developed beyond goal-
oriented processes to concerns with reflexivity and recursion. This was especially
so in the development of second-order cybernetics (or the cybernetics of
cybernetics), developed and promoted by Heinz von Foerster, which focused on
questions of observation, cognition, epistemology, and ethics.

The 1960s onwards also saw cybernetics begin to develop exchanges with the creative
arts, design, and architecture, notably with the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition
(ICA, London, 1968), curated by Jasia Reichardt,[19][20] and the unrealised Fun
Palace project (London, unrealised, 1964 onwards), where Gordon Pask was consultant
to architect Cedric Price and theatre director Joan Littlewood.[21]

Third wave
From the 1990s onwards, there has been a renewed interest in cybernetics from a
number of directions. Early cybernetic work on artificial neural networks has been
returned to as a paradigm in machine learning and artificial intelligence. The
entanglements of society with emerging technologies has led to exchanges with
feminist technoscience and posthumanism. Re-examinations of cybernetics' history
have seen science studies scholars emphasising cybernetics' unusual qualities as a
science, such as its "performative ontology".[22] Practical design disciplines have
drawn on cybernetics for theoretical underpinning and transdisciplinary
connections. Emerging topics include how cybernetics' engagements with social,
human, and ecological contexts might come together with its earlier technological
focus, whether as a critical discourse[23][24] or a "new branch of engineering".
[25]

Key concepts and theories

The central theme in cybernetics is feedback. Feedback is a process where the
observed outcomes of actions are taken as inputs for further action in ways that
support the pursuit, maintenance, or disruption of particular conditions, forming a
circular causal relationship. In steering a ship, the helmsperson maintains a
steady course in a changing environment by adjusting their steering in continual
response to the effect it is observed as having.[3]

Other examples of circular causal feedback include: technological devices such as

the thermostat, where the action of a heater responds to measured changes in
temperature regulating the temperature of the room within a set range, and the
centrifugal governor of a steam engine, which regulates the engine speed;
biological examples such as the coordination of volitional movement through the
nervous system and the homeostatic processes that regulate variables such as blood
sugar; and processes of social interaction such as conversation.[26]

Negative feedback processes are those that maintain particular conditions by

reducing (hence 'negative') the difference from a desired state, such as where a
thermostat turns on a heater when it is too cold and turns a heater off when it is
too hot. Positive feedback processes increase (hence 'positive') the difference
from a desired state. An example of positive feedback is when a microphone picks up
the sound that it is producing through a speaker, which is then played through the
speaker, and so on.

In addition to feedback, cybernetics is concerned with other forms of circular

processes including: feedforward, recursion, and reflexivity.

Other key concepts and theories in cybernetics include:

Autopoiesis
Black box
Conversation theory
Double bind theory: Double binds are patterns created in interaction between two or
more parties in ongoing relationships where there is a contradiction between
messages at different logical levels that creates a situation with emotional threat
but no possibility of withdrawal from the situation and no way to articulate the
problem.[27] The theory was first described by Gregory Bateson and colleagues in
the 1950s with regard to the origins of schizophrenia,[28] but it is also
characteristic of many other social contexts.[27]
Experimental epistemology[29]
Good regulator theorem
Perceptual control theory: A model of behavior based on the properties of negative
feedback (cybernetic) control loops. A key insight of PCT is that the controlled
variable is not the output of the system (the behavioral actions), but its input,
"perception". The theory came to be known as "perceptual control theory" to
distinguish from those control theorists that assert or assume that it is the
system's output that is controlled. Method of levels is an approach to
psychotherapy based on perceptual control theory where the therapist aims to help
the patient shift their awareness to higher levels of perception in order to
resolve conflicts and allow reorganization to take place.
Radical constructivism
Second-order cybernetics: Also known as the cybernetics of cybernetics, second-
order cybernetics is the recursive application of cybernetics to itself and the
practice of cybernetics according to such a critique.
Self-organisation
Social systems theory
Variety and Requisite Variety
Viable system model
Related fields and applications
Cybernetics' central concept of circular causality is of wide applicability,
leading to diverse applications and relations with other fields. Many of the
initial applications of cybernetics focused on engineering, biology, and exchanges
between the two, such as medical cybernetics and robotics and topics such as neural
networks, heterarchy.[30] In the social and behavioral sciences, cybernetics has
included and influenced work in anthropology, sociology, economics, family therapy,
[31] cognitive science, and psychology.[32][33]

As cybernetics has developed, it broadened in scope to include work in management,

design,[34] pedagogy, and the creative arts,[35] while also developing exchanges
with constructivist philosophies, counter-cultural movements,[36] and media
studies.[37] The development of management cybernetics has led to a variety of
applications, notably to the national economy of Chile under the Allende government
in Project Cybersyn. In design, cybernetics has been influential on interactive
architecture, human-computer interaction,[38] design research,[39] and the
development of systemic design and metadesign practices.

Project Cybersyn was an early form of cybernetic economic planning.

Cybernetics is often understood within the context of systems science, systems
theory, and systems thinking.[40][41] Systems approaches influenced by cybernetics
include critical systems thinking, which incorporates the viable system model;
systemic design; and system dynamics, which is based on the concept of causal
feedback loops.

Many fields trace their origins in whole or part to work carried out in
cybernetics, or were partially absorbed into cybernetics when it was developed.
These include artificial intelligence, bionics, cognitive science, control theory,
complexity science, computer science, information theory and robotics. Some aspects
of modern artificial intelligence, particularly the social machine, are often
described in cybernetic terms.[42]

Journals and societies

See also: List of systems sciences organizations and List of systems science
journals
Academic journals with focuses in cybernetics include:

Constructivist Foundations
Cybernetics and Human Knowing
Cybernetics and Systems
Enacting Cybernetics. An open access journal published by the Cybernetics Society
and hosted by Ubiquity Press.[43]
Biological Cybernetics
IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems
IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems
IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics
IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems
Kybernetes
Academic societies primarily concerned with cybernetics or aspects of it include:

American Society for Cybernetics (ASC), founded in 1964

British Cybernetics Society (CybSoc)
Metaphorum [d]: The Metaphorum group was set up in 2003 to develop Stafford Beer's
legacy in Organizational Cybernetics. The Metaphorum Group was born in a
Syntegration in 2003 and have every year after developed a Conference on issues
related to Organizational Cybernetics' theory and practice.
IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society
RC51 Sociocybernetics: RC51 is a research committee of the International
Sociological Association promoting the development of (socio)cybernetic theory and
research within the social sciences.[44]
SCiO (Systems and Complexity in Organisation) is a community of systems
practitioners who believe that traditional approaches to running organisations are
no longer capable of dealing with the complexity and turbulence faced by
organisations today and are responsible for many of the problems we see today. SCiO
delivers an apprenticeship on masters level and a certification in systems
practice.[45]
See also
Automation
Artificial intelligence
Autonomous agency theory
Complex systems
Gaia hypothesis
The Human Use of Human Beings
Industrial ecology
Principia Cybernetica
Superorganism
Synergetics (Haken)
Tektology
Viable system theory
Further reading
Ascott, Roy (1967). Behaviourist Art and the Cybernetic Vision. Cybernetica,
Journal of the International Association for Cybernetics (Namur), 10, pp. 25–56
Ashby, William Ross (1956). An introduction to cybernetics (PDF). Chapman & Hall.
Retrieved 3 June 2012.
Beer, Stafford (1974). Designing freedom. Chichester, West Sussex, England: Wiley.
ISBN 978-0471951650.
François, Charles (1999). "Systemics and cybernetics in a historical perspective".
In: Systems Research and Behavioral Science. Vol 16, pp. 203–219 (1999)
George, F. H. (1971). Cybernetics. Teach Yourself Books. ISBN 978-0-340-05941-8.
Gerovitch, Slava (2002). From newspeak to cyberspeak : a history of Soviet
cybernetics. Cambridge, Massachusetts [u.a.]: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0262-07232-8.
Hayles, N. Katherine (1999). How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in
Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
ISBN 9780226321462
Heims, Steve Joshua (1993). Constructing a social science for postwar America : the
cybernetics group, 1946-1953 (1st ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts u.a.: MIT Press.
ISBN 9780262581233.
Heylighen, Francis, and Cliff Joslyn (2002). "Cybernetics and Second Order
Cybernetics", in: R.A. Meyers (ed.), Encyclopedia of Physical Science & Technology
(3rd ed.), Vol. 4, (Academic Press, San Diego), p. 155-169.
Ilgauds, Hans Joachim (1980), Norbert Wiener, Leipzig.
Mariátegui, José-Carlos / Maulen, D. (eds.) Special issue on “Cybernetics in Latin
America: Contexts Developments, Perceptions and Impacts[46]”, AI & Society, 37,
2022.
Medina, Eden (2011). Cybernetic revolutionaries : technology and politics in
Allende's Chile. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-01649-0.
Pangaro, Paul. "Cybernetics — A Definition".
Pask, Gordon (1972). "Cybernetics". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the
original on 2011-09-28. Retrieved 2007-09-26.
Pickering, Andrew (2010). The cybernetic brain : sketches of another future
([Online-Ausg.] ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226667898.
von Foerster, Heinz, (1995), Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics Archived 2014-01-
28 at the Wayback Machine.
Wiener, Norbert (1948). Hermann & Cie (ed.). Cybernetics; or, Control and
communication in the animal and the machine. Paris: Technology Press. Retrieved 3
June 2012.
Wiener, Norbert (1950). Cybernetics and Society: The Human Use of Human Beings.
Houghton Mifflin.
Notes
While Wiener's book presents cybernetics in a scientific context, its subtitle
does not use the term science[13] and Wiener refers to cybernetics as a "field"
when defining it.[7] Ashby, however, refers to Wiener as defining cybernetics as
"the science of communication and control"[1] and many subsequent authors follow
Ashby.
References
Ashby, W. R. (1956). An introduction to cybernetics. London: Chapman & Hall.
"Design Cybernetics". Design Research Foundations. Cham: Springer International
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Understanding. New York, NY: Springer New York. pp. 287–304. doi:10.1007/0-387-
21722-3_14. ISBN 978-0-387-95392-2. It seems that cybernetics is many different
things to many different people. But this is because of the richness of its
conceptual base; and I believe that this is very good, otherwise cybernetics would
become a somewhat boring exercise. However, all of those perspectives arise from
one central theme; that of circularity
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roughly a de- cade, but by the mid-1960s, the proponents of symbolic ai gained
control of national funding conduits and ruthlessly defunded cybernetics research.
This effectively liquidated the subfields of self-organizing systems, neural
networks and adaptive machines, evolutionary programming, biological computation,
and bionics for several decades, leaving the workers in management, therapy and the
social sciences to carry the torch. i think some of the polemical pushing-and-
shoving between first-order control theorists and second-order crowds that i
witnessed in subsequent decades was the cumulative result of a shift of funding,
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psychological interventions.
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External links

Look up cybernetics in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

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General
Norbert Wiener and Stefan Odobleja - A Comparative Analysis
Reading List for Cybernetics
Principia Cybernetica Web
Web Dictionary of Cybernetics and Systems
Glossary Slideshow (136 slides) Archived 2015-07-05 at the Wayback Machine
"Basics of Cybernetics". Archived from the original on 2010-08-11. Retrieved 2016-
01-23.
What is Cybernetics? Livas short introductory videos on YouTube
Societies and Journals
American Society for Cybernetics
IEEE Systems, Man, & Cybernetics Society
International Society for Cybernetics and Systems Research
The Cybernetics Society
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Subfields of and cyberneticians involved in cybernetics
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Systems science
Portals:
Agronomy
icon Biology
icon Business and economics
icon Ecology
icon Science
diagram Systems science
Authority control databases Edit this at Wikidata
Categories: CyberneticsTranshumanismScience and technology studiesAutomation
This page was last edited on 16 October 2024, at 21:58 (UTC).
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