ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the methods mainly used in cybernetics and also lay some considerable emphasis on their philosophical foundations. Cybernetics has tackled its modelling activities in a piecemeal fashion where the overlapping and often ill-fitting pieces are linked together by a fairly general theory, often as in the case of Wiener's original approach a mathematical theory. A cybernetic model involves at least simulation. Simulation the construction of models that purport to achieve the same ends as human beings and by the same means. By contrast, 'synthesis' involves the construction of models that purport to achieve the same, and similar, ends as human beings but not claiming that this is achieved by the same means. Apart from the series called Machine Intelligence and the journal Artificial Intelligence, a vast number of papers, especially in Cybernetica, Kybernetes and spread throughout many other journals and collections of conference papers.
