Cybernetics

Cybernetics is a theory of the communication and control of regulatory feedback. The term cybernetics stems from the Greek Κυβερνήτης (kybernetes - meaning steersman, governor, pilot, or rudder; the same root as government).

History

The modern study of cybernetics began at the intersection of neurology, electronic network theory and logic modelling around the time of WWII. The name 'cybernetics' was coined by Norbert Wiener to denote the study of "teleological mechanisms" and was popularized through his book Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and machine, (1948)

Related Topics:
Neurology - Network theory - Logic modelling - WWII - Norbert Wiener - 1948

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The word cybernetics ('cybernétique') had, unbeknownst to Wiener, also been used in 1834 by the physicist André-Marie Ampère (1775-1836) to denote the sciences of government in his classification system of human knowledge. It was also used by Plato in The Republic to signify the governance of people. The word governor and govern is also derived from the same Greek root.

Related Topics:
1834 - André-Marie Ampère - Plato - The Republic - Governor

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The study of "teleological mechanisms" in machinery (i.e. machines with corrective feedback) dates back at least to the late 1700s when James Watt's steam engine was equipped with a governor. In 1868 James Clerk Maxwell published a theoretical article on governors. In 1938 the Romanian scientist Stefan Odobleja published in Paris Psychologie consonantiste describing many cybernetic principles. In the 1940s the study and mathematical modelling of regulatory processes became a continuing research effort and two key articles were published in 1943. These papers were "Behavior, Purpose and Teleology" by Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener, and Julian Bigelow; and the paper "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity" by Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts.

Related Topics:
1700s - James Watt - Governor - 1868 - James Clerk Maxwell - Stefan Odobleja - 1940s - 1943 - Arturo Rosenblueth - Norbert Wiener - Julian Bigelow - Warren McCulloch - Walter Pitts

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Cybernetics as a discipline was firmly established by Wiener, McCulloch and others, such as William Ross Ashby and Grey Walter. Together with the US and UK, an important geographical locus of early cybernetics was France where Wiener's book was first published.

Related Topics:
William Ross Ashby - Grey Walter - US - UK - France

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In the spring of 1947, Wiener was invited to a congress on harmonic analysis, held in Nancy, France and organized by the bourbakist mathematician, Szolem Mandelbrot (1899-1983), uncle of the world famous mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot.

Related Topics:
1947 - Nancy - France - Bourbakist - Szolem Mandelbrot - Benoit Mandelbrot

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

During this stay in France, Wiener received the offer to write a manuscript on the unifying character of this part of applied mathematics, which is found in the study of Brownian motion and in telecommunication engineering. The following summer, back in the United States, Wiener decided to introduce the neologism cybernetics into his scientific theory.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Wiener popularized the social implications of cybernetics, drawing analogies between automatic systems such as a regulated steam engine and human institutions in his best-selling The Human Use of Human Beings : Cybernetics and Society (Houghton-Mifflin, 1950).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Cybernetics is somewhat erroneously associated in many people's minds with robotics, due to uses such as Douglas Adams' Sirius Cybernetics Corporation and the concept of a cyborg, a term first popularized by Clynes and Kline in 1960.

Related Topics:
Robotics - Douglas Adams - Sirius Cybernetics Corporation - Cyborg

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~