Cybernetics Index

“The Helmsman” by Gordon Grant. The word “cybernetics” is derived from the ancient Greek word for the pilot of a ship, which Plato used as a metaphor for the head of state.

Defining Cybernetics:

“The scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine.” – Cybernetics by Norbert Wiener (1948)
“The science of communication and control theory that is concerned especially with the comparative study of automatic control systems (such as the nervous system and brain and mechanical-electrical communication systems).” – Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online
“Coined 1948 by U.S. mathematician Norbert Wiener (1894-1964), with -ics + Greek kybernetes ‘steersman’ (metaphorically ‘guide, governor’), from kybernan ‘to steer or pilot a ship, direct as a pilot,’ figuratively ‘to guide, govern,’ which is of uncertain origin. Beekes agrees that ‘the word has no cognates’ and concludes ‘Foreign origin is probable.’ The construction is perhaps based on 1830s French cybernétique ‘the art of governing.” – Online Etymological Dictionary

Cybernetics Quotes:

“As entropy increases, the universe, and all closed systems in the universe, tend naturally to deteriorate and lose their distinctiveness, to move from the least to the most probable state, from a state of organization and differentiation in which distinctions and forms exist, to a state of chaos and sameness. In Gibbs’ universe order is least probable, chaos most probable. But while the universe as a whole, if indeed there is a whole universe, tends to run down, there are local enclaves whose direction seems opposed to that of the universe at large and in which there is a limited and temporary tendency for organization to increase. Life finds its home in some of these enclaves. It is with this point of view at its core that the new science of Cybernetics began its development.” – Norbert Wiener
“Cybernetics treats, not things, but ways of behaving. It does not ask, ‘What is this thing?’ but ‘what does it do?’… It is thus essentially functional and behavioristic… The materiality is irrelevant, and so is the holding or not of the ordinary law of physics.” – W. Ross Ashby
“[Cybernetics was] the biggest bite out of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that mankind has taken in the last 2000 years.” – Gregory Bateson
“We have modified our environment so radically that we must now modify ourselves in order to exist in this new environment. We can no longer live in the old one. Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions.” – Norbert Wiener
“Cybernetics is about having a goal and taking action to achieve that goal.” – Paul Pangaro