ABSTRACT
Cybernetics is relatively recent; its original scope is indicated by the title of the 1961 germinal book1 by Norbert Wiener: Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. This deals with the relations between structure, interactions, and behavior in the living organism and in the machine, their common features, and their description. Although the philosophical consequences are dealt with in detail, the main impact of Wiener’s work has been through development of mathematical models of behavior and interaction, utilizing engineering methods of general systems control. Since its formulation, the understanding of what constitutes cybernetics has expanded and only shortly thereafter Turchin2 pointed out that it had become “the science of relationships, control, and organization in all types of objects. Cybernetics concepts describe physicochemical, biological, social, and technological phenomena with equal success.”
