Cybernetics—"the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine” Norbert Wiener.
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Stafford Beer “the science of effective organization” “… cybernetics studies the flow of information round a system, and the way in which this information is used by the system as a means of controlling itself: it does this for animate and inanimate systems indifferently. For cybernetics is an interdisciplinary science, owing as much to biology as to physics, as much to the study of the brain as to the study of computers, and owing also a great deal to the formal languages of science for providing tools with which the behaviour of all these systems can be objectively described.” “Probably the first clear insight into the deep nature of control … was that it is not about pulling levers to produce intended and inexorable results. This notion of control applies only to trivial machines. It never applies to a total system that includes any kind of probabilistic element — from the weather, to people; from markets, to the political economy. No: the characteristic of a non-trivial system that is under control, is that despite dealing with variables too many to count, too uncertain to express, and too difficult even to understand, something can be done to generate a predictable goal. Wiener found just the word he wanted in the operation of the long ships of ancient Greece. At sea, the long ships battled with rain, wind and tides — matters in no way predictable. However, if the man operating the rudder kept his eye on a distant lighthouse, he could manipulate the tiller, adjusting continuously in real-time towards the light. This is the function of steersmanship. As far back as Homer, the Greek word for steersman was kubernetes, which transliterates into English as cybernetes.” “The subject to which I have devoted my professional life is cybernetics. I am all too well aware that most people have no more than a hazy idea of what it is all about. I have often been assured that it is about freezing people — but they were thinking of cryogenics. The more informed realize that it is concerned with systems and their regulation. But even then, there are so many ways in which that notion can be approached.” “The shocking thing is that there is truth in every one of these notions, and the reason is because cybernetics is an interdisciplinary subject. It must be complicated.”
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“Cybernetics, the art and science of communication for Peace” JMP Cybernetics of Peace
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Stafford Beer has called cybernetics the **science of effective organization**, a more general and easier to grasp definition than Norbert Weiner’s "**communication and control in the animal and the machine**". Its root is a Greek word meaning steersman and that has the right flavor. A steersman in a sailing vessel makes no claim to control of the winds or the tide. His skill depends on sensing and using the natural forces and movements to reach his own goal. His **focus is on what this environment is doing right now and what it seems likely to do in the future, not what it is supposed to do or what it did yesterday**.
Cybernetics as a science began in the 1940's when scientists studying control in disparate disciplines began to work together, first in connection with the Second World War and later at a series of conferences called to explore further the common threads that they had each been following. The language used in cybernetics reflects its multidisciplinary origins. To give just a few examples, phenomena in physics, such as entropy, were found to apply also to information theory and biology; implications of Godel's theorem were found in management: and findings in neurophysiology were used in the design of computers.
The cybernetic approach differs from that of traditional science because it studies the **behavior of wholes and parts in interaction** rather than of parts isolated and measured. As such, it can be used to **handle situations of great complexity** which operate on the basis of probability and include large areas of **uncertainty**. In addition, it rejects the claim of complete 'objectivity' in favor of the embedment of the **observer in the situation** being observed, through the choice of models and measurements and the **ethical implications** of the choices which are made.
A considerable - some would say complete - overlap exists between cybernetics and general systems theory. Such distinctions which are made are characteristic of new scientific fields and the establishment of their boundaries and need not trouble those who wish to utilize theoretical and practical insights under either name. In its early years, operations research was considered to be closely associated with cybernetics with the former providing the theoretical base and the later the multidisciplinary problem-solving strategies. More recently, operations research has focused more on the application of its tools, such as Markoff processes and linear programming, to problem situations.
# SOURCE Wiener, N. (1961). Cybernetics; or, Control and communication in the animal and the machine. New York: M.I.T. Press. Ashby, W. R. (1956). Introduction to Cybernetics. London: Meuthen & Company. McCulloch, W. (1965). Embodiments of Mind. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Beer, S. (1959). Cybernetics and Management London: English Universities Press.
# EXAMPLES • the study of self organization in biological communities • control devices such as Watt's steam governor or the standard thermostat that come back under control in the very process of going out of control as compared to, say, a prison governor • the use of a continuous flow of information to guide goal directed activities.
# NON-EXAMPLES • deterministic models of situations • accounts of systems that look at one part at a time, ignoring the interrelationships between them (the reductionist model)
# PROBABLE ERROR • Failure to recognize the organic nature of viable systems in, for instance and inexcusably - the practice of medicine • More excusably, but still wrongly - social systems • Ignorance of the cybernetic laws that govern the behavior of large, complex, probabilistic systems, thereby accepting that instead they are governed by chance.
# SEE System; Metasystem; Observer; Model; Feedback