Cybernetics - Definitions

Definitions

Cybernetics has been defined in a variety of ways, by a variety of people, from a variety of disciplines. The Larry Richards Reader includes a list of definitions:

  • "Science concerned with the study of systems of any nature which are capable of receiving, storing and processing information so as to use it for control."—A. N. Kolmogorov
  • "The art of securing efficient operation."—L. Couffignal
  • "'The art of steersmanship': deals with all forms of behavior in so far as they are regular, or determinate, or reproducible: stands to the real machine -- electronic, mechanical, neural, or economic -- much as geometry stands to real object in our terrestrial space; offers a method for the scientific treatment of the system in which complexity is outstanding and too important to be ignored."—W. Ross Ashby
  • "A branch of mathematics dealing with problems of control, recursiveness, and information, focuses on forms and the patterns that connect."—Gregory Bateson
  • "The art of effective organization."—Stafford Beer
  • "The art and science of manipulating defensible metaphors."—Gordon Pask
  • "The art of creating equilibrium in a world of constraints and possibilities."—Ernst von Glasersfeld
  • "The science and art of understanding."—Humberto Maturana
  • "The ability to cure all temporary truth of eternal triteness."—Herbert Brun
  • "The science and art of the understanding of understanding."—Rodney E. Donaldson
  • "A way of thinking about ways of thinking of which it is one."—Larry Richards
  • "The art of interaction in dynamic networks." - Roy Ascott

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