http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASC/CYBERNETICS.html (PC Press Internet CD, 03/1996)
CYBERNETICS
______________________________________________________Parent Node(s): ASC Glossary on Cybernetics
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CYBERNETICS
(1) The science of communication and control in
animal and machine. (2) Perhaps because the field is still
young, there are many definitions of cybernetics. Norbert
Wiener, a mathematician, engineer and social philosopher, coined
the word "cybernetics" from the Greek word meaning steersman. He
defined it as the science of communication and control in the
animal and the machine. Ampere, before, him, wanted cybernetics
to be the science of government. For philosopher Warren
McCulloch, cybernetics was an experimental epistemology concerned
with the communication within an observer and between the
observer and his environment. Stafford Beer, a management
consultant, defined cybernetics as the science of effective
organization. Anthropologist Gregory Bateson noted that whereas
previous sciences dealt with matter and energy, the new science
of cybernetics focuses on form and pattern. (3) A way of looking
at things and a language for expressing what one sees (Margaret
Mead)