ABSTRACT
Cybernetics was inaugurated in the 1940s expressly as a field of interdisciplinary research, in reaction to the specialization that already had begun to encumber the established sciences. Cybernetics’ early emphasis upon functional parallels between biological and mechanical control systems soon led, in industrial circles, to its identification with factory automation and other forms of robotics. All organic and most mechanical systems incorporate variables that must be restricted to a narrow range of values if the system is to remain operational. As entropy is a measure of a relative lack of information(t), so information(t) corresponds to a lack of entropy. Cybernetics has been conceived from the start as a unifying discipline, providing continuity across the borderlines of more specialized sciences. Morphological development is guided primarily by the genetic mechanisms of the individual organism. Cybernetics has been guided from the outset by the conviction that a wide range of human mental functions can be reproduced mechanically.
