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Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular processes such as feedback systems where outputs are also inputs. It is concerned with general principles that are relevant across multiple contexts, [1] including in ecological, technological, economic, biological, cognitive and social systems and also in practical activities such as designing, [2] learning, and managing.
Second-order cybernetics, also known as the cybernetics of cybernetics, is the recursive application of cybernetics to itself and the reflexive practice of cybernetics according to such a critique. It is cybernetics where "the role of the observer is appreciated and acknowledged rather than disguised, as had become traditional in western ...
The word cybernetics refers to the theory of message transmission among people and machines. The thesis of the book is that: society can only be understood through a study of the messages and the communication facilities which belong to it; and that in the future development of these messages and communication facilities, messages between man and machines, between machines and man, and between ...
Cybernetical physics is a scientific area on the border of cybernetics and physics which studies physical systems with cybernetical methods. Cybernetical methods are understood as methods developed within control theory, information theory, systems theory and related areas: control design, estimation, identification, optimization, pattern recognition, signal processing, image processing, etc ...
The opening passage illustrates the effect of faulty feedback mechanisms by the example of patients with various forms of ataxia. He then discusses railway signalling, the operation of a thermostat, and a steam engine centrifugal governor. The rest of the chapter is mostly taken up with the development of a mathematical formulation of the ...
Richards' contributions can be sorted into three areas: (1) his development of constraint theory as an approach to the formulation of policy and technology strategy; (2) his advancement of the concepts associated with cybernetics as representing a new and powerful way of thinking; and (3) his application of cybernetic ideas to the design of a participative-dialogic society.
Cybernetics, according to Wiener's definition, is the science of "control and communication in the animal and the machine". Heinz von Foerster went on to distinguish a first order cybernetics, "the study of observed systems", and a second order cybernetics, "the study of observing systems".
A cybernetician or a cyberneticist is a person who applies cybernetics.. Heinz von Foerster once told Stuart Umpleby that Norbert Wiener preferred the term "cybernetician" rather than "cyberneticist", perhaps because Wiener was a mathematician rather than a physicist.