See also: Macy conferences and Ratio Club Norbert Wiener Finally, Wiener motivates the choice by steering engines of a ship being "one of the earliest and best-developed forms of feedback mechanisms". 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. 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. In the book, Wiener states:Īfter 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. 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. 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.Īccording to Norbert Wiener, the word cybernetics was coined by a research group involving himself and Arturo Rosenblueth in the summer of 1947. The Ancient Greek term κυβερνητικός (kubernētikos, '(good at) steering') appears in Plato's Republic and Alcibiades, where the metaphor of a steersman is used to signify the governance of people. Other definitions include: "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).Įtymology Simple feedback model. Cybernetics' transdisciplinary character has meant that it intersects with a number of other fields, leading to it having both wide influence and diverse interpretations.Ĭybernetics has been defined in a variety of ways, reflecting "the richness of its conceptual base." One of the most well known definitions is that of Norbert Wiener who characterised cybernetics as concerned with "control and communication in the animal and the machine." 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." 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." Cybernetics is concerned with the principles of circular causal processes such as steering however they are embodied, including in ecological, technological, biological, cognitive and social systems and also in the context of practical activities such as designing, learning, managing, etc. 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. The field is named after an example of circular causal feedback-that of steering a ship (the ancient Greek κυβερνήτης ( kybernḗtēs) means "helmsperson"). Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causal processes such as feedback.
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