Concept
Cybernetics
Overview
Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular causal processes such as feedback and recursion, where the outcomes of actions return as inputs for subsequent actions. It is concerned with general principles that are relevant across multiple contexts, including engineering, ecological, economic, biological, cognitive and social systems and also in practical activities such as designing, learning, and managing. Cybernetics' transdisciplinary character means that it intersects with a number of other fields, resulting in a wide influence and diverse interpretations.
The field is named after an example of circular causal feedback—that of steering a ship (the ancient Greek κυβερνήτης (kybernḗtēs) refers to the person who steers a ship). In steering a ship, the position of the rudder is adjusted 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.
Cybernetics has its origins in exchanges between numerous disciplines during the 1940s. Initial developments were consolidated through meetings such as the Macy conferences and the Ratio Club. Early focuses included purposeful behaviour, neural networks, heterarchy, information theory, and self-organisation. As cybernetics developed, it became broader in scope to include work in design, family therapy, management and organisation, pedagogy, sociology, the creative arts and the counterculture.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
87. Into this controversy of theologians on the origin of the human soul has entered the philosophic dispute on _the origin of forms._ Aristotle and scholastic philosophy after him called _Form_ that which is a [170] principle of action and is found in that which acts. This inward principle is either substantial, being then termed 'Soul', when it is in an organic body, or accidental, and customarily termed…
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Theodicy Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil
States what Cybernetics is; the author is tied to Cybernetics in the knowledge graph.
This law of nature is called, in dynamics, the principle of the Composition of Forces; and in imitation of that well-chosen expression, I shall give the name of the Composition of Causes to the principle which is exemplified in all cases in which the joint effect of several causes is identical with the sum of their separate effects.
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Cybernetics is.
And especially, as the result of these affections, all things whatever are mutually changing their positions;—for the numerous individuals of each class are distinguished according to their respective places through the motion of their receptacle, while those that are mutually dissimilar, but yet resemble others, are hurried on by the concussion [of other bodies] to the place occupied by the bodies they resemble…
Plato, The works of Plato
The author is tied to Cybernetics in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Cybernetics
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Claude Lévi-Strauss
- Alexander Bogdanov
- Gilbert Simondon
- Jakob Johann von Uexküll
- Nick Land
- Giorgio de Santillana
Related ideas
- Artificial intelligence
- Ancient Greek
- John von Neumann
- First Alcibiades
- Republic (Plato)
- Paradigm
- Learning
- Niklas Luhmann
- Nervous system
- Ontology
- Plato
- Intersection (set theory)
- Posthumanism
- Recursion
- Autopoiesis
- Schizophrenia
- James Clerk Maxwell
- Theory
- Computer science
- Cognitive science
- Cambridge, Massachusetts
- Norbert Wiener
- Governance
- MIT Press
Place in the tradition
Part of Philosophy of mind.