Talk:Cybernetics/Archive 2

Ştefan Odobleja not mentioned
I see there is no mention of the Romanian Scientist Ştefan Odobleja. Quoting his Wiki page, "His major work, Psychologie consonantiste, first published in 1938 and 1939, in Paris, had established many of the major themes of cybernetics regarding cybernetics and systems thinking ten years before the work of Norbert Wiener was published in 1948.". However, because of the outbreak of World War 2, his book was largely ignored. So I figure he should be given the honorary mention he deserves. Vlad.teo (talk) 15:50, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Homeostasis and Claude Bernard
No mention of his early concept in the history section, visits to Homeostasis and Claude Bernard, even if shorts, are welcomed.

See also "The French biologist Claude Bernard introduces the idea of homeostasis as well as attention to the maintenance of constant state(s) in the body. (1855) "

from American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) Foundations: History: Timeline http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/foundations/timeline.htm

Utopiah (talk) 23:34, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Cybernetics is made up
I don't think cybernetics exists, it's a conglomerate of some subjects which span across completely unrelated areas and it really isn't treating anything in particular. The article for this should be removed and all references to it because it's really just a prank. I mean just look at what it studies "control systems, electrical network theory, mechanical engineering, logic modeling, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, anthropology, and psychology", you can't be serious ... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.26.60.59 (talk) 15:19, 18 March 2010 (UTC) Couldn't agree more, it is junk pseudo-science occupied by people who talk about legitimate fields of study, but don't actually contribute to or belong in any of them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.232.32.90 (talk) 15:42, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

You both have been mislead by the article and i strongly suggest you and others that may share your opinions to look the matter elsewhere, from a more 'pratical' point of view.

Cybernetics, or 'the study of self-regulating systems', or even better 'the study of systems', definitely "exists". Most definitely.

It span across the whole set of human knowledge, obviously. Because, well, the universe is a system of systems. And we happen to like to study their dynamics. Ergo, cybernetics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.13.255.122 (talk) 02:17, 28 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Language is made up and that too is useful. Cybernetics doesn't exist and isn't treating anything in particular because you don't understand it. Many concepts span several areas of study, for example logic is used in, mathematics, computing, electronics, psychology and more. In your world only someone who specializes in something can contribute.Jonpatterns (talk) 10:34, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Justification for inclusion of John von Neumann
I take issue with the inclusion of John von Neumann, especially the notion that cellular automata are an example of a cybernetic system. Thus, I seek others who can demonstrate by means of published citations that von Neumann was a contributor to cybernetic theory. Without such citable publications, this section must be removed from this article. William R. Buckley (talk) 22:23, 19 November 2010 (UTC)


 * If you look for John von Neumann and cybernetics in Googlebooks, see for example here, you will find many references. -- Mdd (talk) 23:19, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * My question would be, is von Neumann considered to be associated with cybernetics, by workers outside cybernetics? I have observed prior to this that cybernetics has a bit of an "expansionist" tendency, that it tends to make claims on work in other fields whether or not workers in those fields think they're doing cybernetics.  At one point I had to clean up categories that were (by transitivity) implicitly taking ergodic theory to be part of cybernetics. --Trovatore (talk) 01:33, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I think you are right about that by that "expansionist" tendency. On the other hand the workers outside cybernetics don't talk about cybernetics, and that is a thing you see in all sciences. I think that with the paradigm shift in the 1970s in the systems sciences John von Neumann was among the scientists who became a new inspiration. Cyberneticists since then have been refering to his work and that is what we are representing here. -- Mdd (talk) 14:08, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Might you give a representative sample of references to cyberneticians who by their writings reference von Neumann, and particularly that work of von Neumann which such authors claim to be applicable to cybernetic theory? William R. Buckley (talk) 06:46, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Biologists will agree von Neumann was a physicist; chemists will agree he was a mathematician. I think the problem is that physicists, mathematicians, biologists, chemists may all have questions about whether cybernetics is even a "science", per se, as opposed to more of an ideology.  If it's an ideology, then it's questionable to drag in von Neumann without evidence that he agreed with the ideology. --Trovatore (talk) 20:41, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Von Neumann held degrees in mathematics and chemical engineering (an area of applied physics). So, he was by training both a mathematician and a physicist.  This has nothing to do with cybernetics, though I will admit his musings on (a) the construction of reliable systems from unreliable components, and (b) the comparison of brain and electronic digital computing devices both impinge upon what is properly to be considered cybernetics.  Ultimately, the work of Wiener was specifically concerned with the mechanics that is concomitant with analog computation, and so is in direct opposition with the digital computational systems work of von Neumann; they are, in short, polar opposite approaches to problems within engineering, not science.  I suggest that inclusion of von Neumann as a researcher within cybernetics is stretching much too far; it is conflation beyond justification.  William R. Buckley (talk) 22:34, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Cybernetics Science
Have noticed that there isn't mentioned definitions in cybernetics affecting the human psyche. One definition of cybernetics is: the science of communications and control in machines (e.g. computers) and living things (e.g. by the nervous system) Oxford Dictionary. The human psyche can be affected in ways technologies are utilized. A person's attention span can be improved, and modern media, films, and television has affected attenuation of human psyche, and how well perceptions are used. Sending information affects atmospheres, travels, and education or training.75.204.32.251 (talk) 23:47, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Cybernetics as Control Theory in drag
How can a reader distinguish between cybernetics, system dynamics, and control theory? The first sentence introduction by User:Mdd is a good and well-sourced start. However, the overview previously written by others fails to carry through on this. I imagine that User:Mdd cringed back when he read the Overview, which reads to me like Gamer-Crank Nonsense. The IEEE Transactions on Computers, Man, and Cybernetics provides up-to-date peer-reviewed research in cybernetics. In order to understand the results in that high-impact journal, the reader must know some math. Not surprisingly, that math falls squarely in the realm of control theory. It makes more sense to merge the article on cybernetics into control theory than it would to go through the feckless and entropic exercise of creating a WikiProject:Cybernetics and WikiPortal:Cybernetics. Vonkje (talk) 17:16, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Cybernetics originated as more or less a synthesis of nonlinear control theory, statistical physics and information theory. As such it is an extension of and bridges the gap between them and covers topics not covered by any.  Furthermore, one or the other would more properly constitute a subset of cybernetics than the other way around.  i.e. it would make more sense to merge control theory into cybernetics than vice-versa.  (but that would be historically inaccurate because control theory predates cybernetics.)  cybernetics is broader, deeper, and more comprehensive.  and, as i said before, it deals with things that e.g. control theory simply does not.  Kevin Baastalk 21:13, 11 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Yah, well, I know all that stuff and do cutting-edge research in it. And I don't give a hoot if it's called one thing or the other, up to the point where pedantic reviewers start being precious about labels.137.205.100.252 (talk) 08:41, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Please add information about Stefan Obobleja to this article. It's only fair that readers be aware that he pioneered the research into cybernetics and developed fundamental theories years before Wiener but his work did not achieve recognition because of the Second World War. I know that the issue has been raised before on the Wiener page, but I'm sure it's not only my belief that giving credit where credit's due is extremely important when elaborating on a subject on a source of information easily accessible to the whole world.

Category American Invention
Hi

I have removed the category as it is not an American invention.

We have Plato, André-Marie Ampère, Alfred Russel Wallace, James Clerk Maxwell, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, and the ratio club, well, many are involved in teleological mechanisms prior to the use of the term. The article even state "Cybernetics as a discipline was firmly established by McCulloch and others, such as W. Ross Ashby and W. Grey Walter." Chaosdruid (talk) 05:25, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

History of cybernetics during 1960-1980s
Peter Cariani, in "On the Importance of Being Emergent"(2010), a review of book on cybernetics, "Emergence and Embodiment", writes "Artificial intelligence was born at a conference at Dartmouth in 1956 that was organized by McCarthy, Minsky, Rochester, and Shannon, three years after the Macy conferences on cybernetics had ended (Boden 2006; McCorduck 1972). The two movements coexisted for roughly a decade, but by the mid-1960s, the proponents of symbolic AI gained control of national funding conduits and ruthlessly defunded cybernetics research. This effectively liquidated the subfields of self-organizing systems, neural networks and adaptive machines, evolutionary programming, biological computation, and bionics for several decades, leaving the workers in management, therapy and the social sciences to carry the torch." Full article available at http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/5/2/086.cariani.pdf 124.170.27.91 (talk) 12:04, 13 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi, thanks for this link. I created a new section under "History" titled "Split from artificial intelligence". A more positively framed title would perhaps be preferable. I put Bateson and Mead's names in there... but there's a lot more work to be done on this section. love, groupuscule (talk) 18:32, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

PRINCIPLES of cybernetics
I think it would be great to have a section (placed either after history or after definitions) on principles (or similar) of cybernetics. This section would be fun to create and would give the reader more of a sense of what the hell this word means.

One principle might come from this Bateson article titled "Cybernetic Explanation" :


 * Causal explanation is usually positive. We say that billiard ball B moved in such and such a direction because billiard ball A hit it at such and such an angle. In contrast to this, cybernetic explanation is always negative. We consider what alternative possibilities could conceivably have occurred and then ask why many of the alternatives were not followed, so that the particular event was one of those few which could, in fact, occur.

We might also include ideas about holism and social relevance, expressed by Mary Catherine Bateson in 2011 :


 * Many of you will have read the essay by my father, Gregory Bateson, called “From Versailles to Cybernetics,”*in which he traces much of the madness of the 20th century, still ongoing, to violations of communication. He ends by declaring that there is “…latent within cybernetics the means of achieving a new and perhaps more human outlook, a means of changing our philosophy of control and a means of seeing our own follies in wider perspective.” This hope rests on the potential offered by cybernetics for thinking in terms of whole systems rather than in terms of separate and competing interests and specializations, a potential that must be explored and expressed.
 * We are at a time of great danger, when the planetary cycles on which life depends and the long term patterns of climate are being severely disrupted. Meeting this danger and the humanitarian disasters that lie ahead requires a whole new order of cooperation. Yet researchers in the earth systems sciences have limited understanding of social systems, while some politicians deny what is happening, and non-specialists around the world simply do not recognize the larger picture. One day of cool weather leads to comments like, “See, the climate isn’t changing after all.” At the same time, the danger is amplified by an ideology that idealizes competition and accepts deception as a means to winning. Human beings do not always behave well when they believe that their “share of the pie” may be reduced, and modern weapons can turn the habit of zero-sum thinking into a lose-lose outcome for the entire planet.
 * We are at a time of great danger, when the planetary cycles on which life depends and the long term patterns of climate are being severely disrupted. Meeting this danger and the humanitarian disasters that lie ahead requires a whole new order of cooperation. Yet researchers in the earth systems sciences have limited understanding of social systems, while some politicians deny what is happening, and non-specialists around the world simply do not recognize the larger picture. One day of cool weather leads to comments like, “See, the climate isn’t changing after all.” At the same time, the danger is amplified by an ideology that idealizes competition and accepts deception as a means to winning. Human beings do not always behave well when they believe that their “share of the pie” may be reduced, and modern weapons can turn the habit of zero-sum thinking into a lose-lose outcome for the entire planet.

See more at this collection of particularly interesting articles on cybernetics.

Vocabulary of cybernetics would also be a great page to create and develop. (See Web Dictionary of Cybernetics and Systems?)

Salaam, groupuscule (talk) 10:09, 15 August 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree that there are some notable ideas that can be drawn from the literature, but if these are presented as a common set of principles this could easily stray into WP:OR or WP:SYN. RichardVeryard (talk) 08:39, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Images
Interesting choices for images reflecting "cybernetics" over at Wikimedia Commons.
 * That image was in old editions, e.g., why was it removed? trylks (talk) 00:54, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Cybernetics and Human Enhancement
User added the following to the history of Cybernetics-

In popular culture Cybernetics seems to be used for any type of Human enhancement. This may be a confusion of the meaning of the word. Which is about the scientific study of communication and control processes in biological, mechanical, and electronic systems. Maybe this material belongs on the Human enhancement article? Finally, Not sure if the Lifeboat Foundation is a reliable source. Jonpatterns (talk) 09:48, 27 April 2014 (UTC)


 * To be fair, transhumanity was a major theme in Wiener's 1948 book. I'm not saying that his book should be the lodestone for what is and isn't cybernetics today, but this cluster of ideas was certainly associated with the subject right from the start.137.205.100.252 (talk) 09:48, 28 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Well, an organism with cybernetically designed attachments, hopefully as good as new or better, is a CYBernetic-ORGanism. The six million dollar man was the first notable cyborg in popular culture (the show would have been called "The Cyborg" but the network felt that the word was too little known at the time). Cyborg was shortened to "Borg" in the Star Trek TV show. In the UK we have an academic who stuffs CPUs under his skin and goes around telling impressionable young people he is a dinkum cyborg. You reap what you sow. In other words, it's a sexy word that one and all like to appropriate. And then conversely, "proper" cyberneticists will not mind the spurious association too much if it means their research stands a higher chance of being funded. A fable: a young man used to do fundamental research in neural science, and explain at length at cocktail parties how that did not make him a brain surgeon - until it finally dawned on him that he was boring his interlocutors and spoiling his chances of getting laid...137.205.100.252 (talk) 08:48, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Who is Taylor Kirkland?
The "Larry Richards Reader" in reference 6 makes no mention of this person named in the list of definitions. The rest of the list should be reviewed to verify that it matches what's in the linked document. -- ScratchMonkey (talk) 05:46, 26 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for noticing. His quote was also not part of the initial listing added June 15, 2012 (see here), but added Feb. 26, 2013 (see here). Now I cannot find a reliable source mentioning the quote before 2013, and indeed cannot identify Taylor Kirkland, so that quote has been removed. -- Mdd (talk) 11:37, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

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Mexico City origins of cybernetics
Currently the article does not mention the wartime community of Allied researchers in Mexico, described as the origin of cybernetics by Stafford Beer here. Wiener's work on anti-aircraft guns is the best known part of this and should be easy to verify, are there any other sources for the rest? Beer mentions Ross Ashby being present at times, but there is no mention of this in Ashby's biography; his military service was in India.


 * Hi Anonymous user, you can use 4 tilde special characters in a row e.g. (~.~.~.~) to comment your name so we can reply back to that to start a proper discussion for the future. In reference to your point, Cybernetics is a multi-disciplinary science that covers many different disciplines from Technology+Medicine, to Governance and speech. We cannot say for certain when Cybernetics originated for a specific discipline as it covers many disciplines and the origin of the word “Cybernetics” comes from a Greek word meaning “the art of steering” and first used by Plato to refer to a general terminology for science of governance systems. Its clarified colloquial definition was only solidified during the Macy conferences or by Norbert Wiener in his works during 1940's. Therefore we cannot include your request as it's disingenuous. SumeetJi (talk) 12:56, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Improving the structure
I've been working to improve the structure of this page in response to the 'too long' flag. 2A00:23C7:60A4:5601:6D4F:329F:E668:A659 (talk) 11:28, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I have condensed where possible, and added more hierarchy where before there was a long list of 'subdivisions' that were not very informative.
 * I've added a 'central concepts' section, in response to a comment on the talk page that this was missing, and I hope this can help the page be more informative of what is involved in cybernetics. This could be expanded.
 * I have added structure to distinguish between established subfields ('notable subfields and theories') like autopoiesis, PCT, etc., and application areas and fields influenced.
 * I've added some hierarchy into the applications and influence section, so that one off applications are listed at a lower hierarchy. I have tried to summarise the relations to systems fields, AI, etc. succinctly without getting into the details of exactly where the boundaries are (which is hard to be precise about, because the historic relations are so intertwined).
 * I wonder whether the overview, definitions, and etymology sections might become one section with subsections?

---no more discussion here, so have removed flag following the restructuring. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C7:60A9:5301:2041:5D49:2CF6:FD2E (talk) 11:17, 5 December 2021 (UTC)