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===The Fall and Rebirth of Cybernetics===
===The Fall and Rebirth of Cybernetics===
For a time during the past 20 years, the field of cybernetics followed a boom-bust cycle of becoming more and more dominated by the subfields of artificial intelligence and machine-biological interfaces(ie. cyborgs) and when this research fell out of favor, the field as a whole fell from grace. Recent endeavors into the true focus of cybernetics, systems of control and emergent bahavior, by such related fields as [[Game Theory]] (the analysis of group interaction), [[evolutionary stable strategy|systems of feedback in evolution]], and [[Metamaterials]] (the study of materials with properties beyond the newtonian properties of their constituent atoms), have lead to a revived interest in this increasingly relevent field.<ref name="Kelly"/>
For a time during the past 20 years, the field of cybernetics followed a boom-bust cycle of becoming more and more dominated by the subfields of artificial intelligence and machine-biological interfaces (ie. cyborgs) and when this research fell out of favor, the field as a whole fell from grace. Recent endeavors into the true focus of cybernetics, systems of control and emergent behavior, by such related fields as [[Game Theory]] (the analysis of group interaction), [[evolutionary stable strategy|systems of feedback in evolution]], and [[Metamaterials]] (the study of materials with properties beyond the newtonian properties of their constituent atoms), have lead to a revived interest in this increasingly relevant field.<ref name="Kelly"/>


==Notes==
==Notes==

Revision as of 13:32, 24 June 2007

For other uses, see Cybernetics (disambiguation).

Cybernetics is the study of feedback and derived concepts such as communication and control in living organisms, machines and organisations. Contrary to popular misconception, cybernetics is not about computers so much as computers are about cybernetics. Its focus is how anything (digital, mechanical or biological) processes information, reacts to information, and changes or can be changed to better accomplish the first two tasks.[1] A more philosophical definition, suggested in 1956 by Louis Couffignal, one of the pioneers of cybernetics, characterizes cybernetics as "the art of ensuring the efficacy of action".

Subdivisions of the field

The term cybernetics stems from the Greek Κυβερνήτης (kybernetes, steersman, governor, pilot, or rudder — the same root as government). It is an earlier but still-used generic term for many of the subject matters that are increasingly subject to specialization under the headings of:





History

The Roots of Cybernetic theory

The word cybernetics ('cybernétique') was first used in the context of "the study of self-governance" by Plato in The Laws to signify the governance of people. The words govern and governor are related to the same Greek root through the Latin cognates gubernare and gubernator. It was also used in 1834 by the physicist André-Marie Ampère (1775–1836) to denote the sciences of government in his classification system of human knowledge.

The study of teleological mechanisms (from the Greek τέλος or telos for end, goal, or purpose) in machines with corrective feedback dates from as far back as the late 1700s when James Watt's steam engine was equipped with a governor, a centripetal feedback valve for controlling the speed of the engine. In 1868 James Clerk Maxwell published a theoretical article on governors, one of the first to discuss and refine the principals of self-regulating devices.

The Early 20th century

Contemporary cybernetics began as an interdisciplinary study connecting the fields of control systems, electrical network theory, mechanical engineering, logic modeling, evolutionary biology and neuroscience in the 1940s.

The Romanian scientist Ştefan Odobleja published Psychologie consonantiste (Paris, 1938), describing many cybernetic principles. 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.

Cybernetics as a discipline was firmly established by Wiener, McCulloch and others, such as W. Ross Ashby and W. Grey Walter.

Walter was one of the first to build autonomous robots as an aid to the study of animal behaviour. Together with the US and UK, an important geographical locus of early cybernetics was France.

In the spring of 1947, Wiener was invited to a congress on harmonic analysis, held in Nancy, France. The event was organized by the bourbaki, a French scientific society, and mathematician Szolem Mandelbrojt (1899-1983), uncle of the world-famous mathematician Benoît 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. The name cybernetics was coined to denote the study of "teleological mechanisms" and was popularized through his book Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and Machine (1948). In the UK this became the focus for the Ratio Club.

In 1935 Russian physiologist P.K. Anokhin published a book in which the concept of feedback ("back afferentation") was studied.

John von Neumann, although better known for his work in mathematics and computer science, did contribute a unique and unusual addition to the world of cybernetics: Von Neumann cellular automata, and their logical follow up the Von Neumann Universal Constructor. The result of these deceptively simple thought-experiments was the concept of self replication which cybernetics adopted as a core concept. The concept that the same properties of genetic reproduction applied to social memes, living cells, and even computer viruses is further proof of the somewhat surprising universality of cybernetic study.

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).

While not the only instance of a research organization focused on cybernetics, the Biological Computer Lab at the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign, under the direction of Heinz von Foerster, was a major center of cybernetic research for almost 20 years, beginning in 1958.

The Fall and Rebirth of Cybernetics

For a time during the past 20 years, the field of cybernetics followed a boom-bust cycle of becoming more and more dominated by the subfields of artificial intelligence and machine-biological interfaces (ie. cyborgs) and when this research fell out of favor, the field as a whole fell from grace. Recent endeavors into the true focus of cybernetics, systems of control and emergent behavior, by such related fields as Game Theory (the analysis of group interaction), systems of feedback in evolution, and Metamaterials (the study of materials with properties beyond the newtonian properties of their constituent atoms), have lead to a revived interest in this increasingly relevant field.[1]

Notes

References

  1. ^ a b Kelly, Kevin (1994). Out of control: the new biology of machines, social systems and the economic world. Boston: Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-48340-8.

Uncited References

  • Ashby, W.R. (1956), Introduction to Cybernetics. Methuen, London, UK. PDF text.
  • Bluma, Lars (2005), Norbert Wiener und die Entstehung der Kybernetik im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Münster.
  • Couffignal, Louis, "Essai d’une définition générale de la cybernétique", The First International Congress on Cybernetics, Namur, Belgium, June 26-29, 1956, Gauthier-Villars, Paris, 1958, pp. 46-54.
  • Heims, Steve J. (1980), John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, 3. Aufl., Cambridge.
  • Heims, Steve J. (1993), Constructing a Social Science for Postwar America. The Cybernetics Group, 1946-1953, Cambridge University Press, London, UK.
  • Heylighen F., and Joslyn C. (2001), "Cybernetics and Second Order Cybernetics", in: R.A. Meyers (ed.), Encyclopedia of Physical Science & Technology (3rd ed.), Vol. 4, (Academic Press, New York), p. 155-170.
  • Ilgauds, Hans Joachim (1980), Norbert Wiener, Leipzig.
  • Masani, P. Rustom (1990), Norbert Wiener 1894-1964, Basel.
  • Medina, Eden, "Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in Allende's Chile." Journal of Latin American Studies 38 (2006):571-606.
  • Pangaro, Paul (1990), "Cybernetics — A Definition", Eprint.
  • Patten, B.C., and Odum, E.P. (1981), "The Cybernetic Nature of Ecosystems", The American Naturalist 118, 886-895.
  • von Foerster, Heinz (1995), "Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics", Eprint.
  • Norbert Wiener (1948), Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, Paris, Hermann et Cie - MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Related topics


External links

Look up cybernetics in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
(more related pdf documents)

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