Historical Roots Relational Concepts and Information Theory

The term \Cybernetics" was proposed by Norbert Wiener in 1948 39]. Derived from the Greek \kybernetes", or \steersman", it was deened as \the study of control and communication in the animal and machine". Over time, the meaning has been broadened substantially, and while many speciic senses persist, Cybernetics can be generally understood as the study of the abstract principles of organization in complex systems. Thus, Cybernetics stands as a crucial component of the Systems Sciences, a collection of elds which examine the common properties of complex, evolving systems. These are currently best manifested in the schools of Evolutionary Systems, Inspired by wartime and prewar results in mechanical control systems such as servomechanisms and artillery targeting mechanisms, Wiener set out to develop a general theory of organizational and control relations in systems. Of course, Control Theory and Control Systems Engineering have since developed into full disciplines. What distinguishes Cybernetics is its emphasis on control and communication not only in engineered, artiicial systems, but also in evolved, natural systems such as organisms and societies. Thus Cybernetics makes a conscious attempt to work interdisciplinarily, searching for isomorphisms among systems of diierent types. Cybernetics grew out of a series of interdisciplinary meetings held from 1946 to 1953 that brought together a number of noted postwar intellectuals, Hosted by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, these became known as the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics 11]. Through the 1950s, Cybernetic thinkers came to cohere with the school of General Systems Theory (GST), founded at about the same time by Ludwig von Bertalanny 12, 33], as an attempt to build a uniied science by uncovering the common principles that govern open, evolving systems. GST studies systems at all levels of generality, whereas Cybernetics focuses more speciically on control processes in systems. While there remain arguments over the relative scope of these domains, nevertheless each can be seen as part of an overall attempt to forge a transdisciplinary \Systems Science" 15]. Cybernetics had a crucial innuence on the birth of Computer Science, in particular in Infor-rst proposed and explored by Cyberneticians during the 1940's and 1950's. Examples include von Neumann's computer architectures, game theory, and cellular automata 4], and the work of McCulloch, who introduced artiicial neural models, neural nets, perceptrons, and classiiers 17]. A central concern for Cybernetics is the search for properties which can be measured across systems of diierent types: how can we determine whether two …