Today, during a conversation with my mother, the word “cybernetics” came up, and I realized that I don’t know what it is. Turns out, I indeed don’t know. I think 99% of you don’t know either.
It turns out, cybernetics is a field of science about systems, studying systems with circular cause-and-effect connections, whose outputs are also inputs, like feedback systems, and these systems can be anything – from living organisms to computer programs, as well as ecological, technological, biological, cognitive, and social systems, and also in the context of practical activities, such as design, education, and management. Overall, like any definition, it’s somewhat vague, but essentially clear.
One of the most well-known definitions belongs to the American mathematician Norbert Wiener, one of the founders of cybernetics and artificial intelligence theory. He characterized cybernetics as the science concerned with “control and communication in animals and machines.”
According to the Ozhegov dictionary, “Cybernetics is the science of the general laws of control processes and information transmission in machines, living organisms, and society.”
Another early definition emerged at the Macy conferences on cybernetics, where this science was understood as the study of “circular causality and feedback in biological and social systems,” which actually became the definition for Wikipedia. American anthropologist Margaret Mead emphasized the role of cybernetics as “a form of interdisciplinary thinking that allowed representatives from many disciplines to easily communicate with each other in a language understandable to all.” Another definition is offered by the American mathematician Lewis Kaufman: “Cybernetics is the study of systems and processes that interact with themselves and reproduce themselves.”
In general, they made it even more confusing.
By the way, the word κυβερνητικός is quite ancient, and the word cyber/кибер never related to robots. κυβερνητικός indicated the art of a helmsman, who must steer in response to the ship’s behavior – that is, to use negative feedback. Later, it was used metaphorically to denote the art of a statesman governing a city. In this sense, it is notably used by Plato in “Laws.”
The ancient Romans adapted this word to “governor,” which initially also denoted the helmsman on a ship, and then its meaning expanded to “ruler.”
This was further picked up by André-Marie Ampère, who essentially introduced it into scientific use. Ampère’s cybernetics is the science of how to govern society, people. The aforementioned Norbert Wiener then extended it to machines, while leaving scope for its use anywhere.
The illustration shows how Generative AI sees cybernetics. It’s either a diver who hanged himself or a new robot from Boston Dynamics.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 