ABSTRACT
In 1948, C. E. Shannon and W. Weaver (1963) initiated a new research trail that became successively known as information theory. The interest of these scientists essentially was in signals communication. However, research in this new field soon found application in many other fields of science. From the cybernetics of Shannon’s precursors Wiener and von Neumann (Wiener, 1999), in which the concept of feedback is central, to the theory of Eigen’s hyper cycles (Eigen, 1971), to the theory of autopoiesis,* or the “Santiago theory” of Maturana and Varela (1980), concepts such as information, network, cyclical processes, cognitive processes, feedback, autopoiesis, and self-organization entered with full rights into the heritage of technical terms shared by many areas of scientific research.
