cybernetic

Cybernetics is an interdisciplinary field that studies regulatory and informational processes in complex systems, focusing on how systems use feedback to maintain stability, adapt to changing conditions, and achieve goals. It covers biological, mechanical, and social systems and analyzes communication, control, and organization.

Core concepts include feedback loops, homeostasis, control theory, and the processing and transmission of information within and between parts of a system. Cybernetics emphasizes how systems regulate themselves through information exchange, rather than relying solely on mechanical description.

Historically, the term was popularized by Norbert Wiener in the late 1940s, notably in his book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948). Wiener and later researchers such as W. Ross Ashby, Margaret Mead, and Heinz von Foerster expanded the field, highlighting self-regulation, adaptive behavior, and the law of requisite variety.

Key ideas include negative and positive feedback, closed-loop control, autonomy, adaptability, and information flows. Cybernetics often uses models of computation and communication to describe regulatory architectures that span disciplines from engineering to biology.

Applications span automation, robotics, computer science, cognitive science, biology, and organizational theory. The framework provides tools for analyzing how systems sustain function, respond to perturbations, and coordinate components.

Some scholars view cybernetics as a foundational framework that informs related approaches such as general systems theory and the study of cyber-physical systems, illustrating its influence across technology, life sciences, and social science.