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Cybernetics - Dictionary Definition and Overview |
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Cybernetics : (noun)
1: (biology) the field of science concerned with processes of
communication and control (especially the comparison of
these processes in biological and artificial systems)
Based on WordNet 2.0
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Cybernetics :
/si:`b*-net'iks/ The study of control and
communication in living and man-made systems.
The term was first proposed by Norbert Wiener in the book
referenced below. Originally, cybernetics drew upon
electrical engineering, mathematics, biology, neurophysiology,
anthropology, and psychology to study and describe actions,
feedback, and response in systems of all kinds. It aims to
understand the similarities and differences in internal
workings of organic and machine processes and, by formulating
abstract concepts common to all systems, to understand their
behaviour.
Modern "second-order cybernetics" places emphasis on how the
process of constructing models of the systems is influenced by
those very systems, hence an elegant definition - "applied
epistemology".
Related recent developments (often referred to as sciences of
complexity) that are distinguished as separate disciplines
are artificial intelligence, neural networks, systems
theory, and chaos theory, but the boundaries between those
and cybernetics proper are not precise.
See also robot.
http://www.cybsoc.org)">The Cybernetics Society (http://www.cybsoc.org) of the UK.
American Society for Cybernetics
http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/)">(http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/).
IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society
http://www.isye.gatech.edu/ieee-smc/)">(http://www.isye.gatech.edu/ieee-smc/).
International project "Principia Cybernetica"
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/DEFAULT.html)">(http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/DEFAULT.html).
Usenet newsgroup: sci.systems (news:sci.systems).
["Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the
machine", N. Wiener, New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1948]
(2002-01-01)
Based on WordNet (r) 2.0 (August 2003)
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