Cybernetics by Norbert Wiener

CYBERNETICS or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine MIT Press 1948, 1961. Dedicated to Arturo Rosenblueth for many years companion in science

	CONTENTS
	Preface to the Second Edition	vii
	PART I
	ORIGINAL EDITION
	1948
	Introduction	1
I	Newtonian and Bergsonian Time	30
II	Groups and Statistical Mechanics	45
III	Time Series, Information, and Communication	60
IV	Feedback and Oscillation	95
V	Computing Machines and the Nervous System	116
VI	Gestalt and Universals	133
VII	Cybernetics and Psychopathology	144
VIII	Information, Language, and Society	155
	PART II
	SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTERS
	1961
IX	On Learning and Self-Reproducing Machines	169
X	Brain Waves and Self-Organizing Systems	181
	Index	205

So where does the word Cybernetics come from?

"Thus, as far back as four years ago, the group of scientists about Dr. Rosenblueth and myself had already become aware of the essential unity of the set of problems centering about communication, control, and statistical mechanics, whether in the machine or living tissue. On the other hand, we were seriously hampered by the lack of unity in the literature concerning these problems, and by the absence of common terminology, or even of a single name for the field. After much consideration, we have come to the conclusion that all the existing terminology has too heavy a bias to one side or another to serve the future development of the field as well as it should; and as happens so often to scientists, we have been forced to coin at least one artificial neo-Greek expression to fill the gap. We have decided to call the entire field of control and communication theory, whether in the machine or the animal, by the same Cybernetics, which we form from the Greek or steersman. In choosing this term we wish to recognize that the first significant paper on feedback mechanisms is an article on governors, which was published by Clerk Maxwell in 1868*, and that governor is derived from a Latin corruption of . We also wish to refer to the fact that the steering engines of a ship are indeed one of the earliest and best-developed forms of feedback mechanisms."

(...)

"At this point there enters an element which occurs repeatedly in the history of cybernetics -- the influence of mathematical logic. If I were to choose a patron saint for cybernetics out of the history of science, I should have to choose Leibniz. The philosophy of Leibniz centers about two closely related concepts -- that of a universal symbolism and that of a calculus of reasoning. From these are descended the mathematical notation and the symbolic logic of the present day. Now, just as the calculus of arithmetic lends itself to a mechanization progressing through the abacus and the desk computing machine to the ultra-rapid computing machines of the present day, so the calculus ratiocinator of Leibniz contains the germs of the machina ratiocinatrix, the reasoning machine. Indeed, Leibniz himself, like his predecessor Pascal, was interested in the construction of computing machines in the metal. It is therefore not in the least surprising that the same intellectual impulse which has led to the development of mathematical logic has at the same time led to the ideal or actual mechanization of processes of thought."

* Maxwell, J. C., Proc. Roy. Soc. (London), 16, 270-283, (1868).

You've read enough for now because...

"As a final remark, let me point out that a large computing machine, whether in the form of mechanical or electric apparatus or in the form of the brain itself, uses up a considerable amount of power, all of which is wasted and dissipated in heat. The blood leaving the brain is a fraction of a degree warmer than that entering it. No other computing machine approaches the economy of energy of the brain. In a large apparatus like the Eniac or the Edvac, the filaments of the tubes consume a quantity of energy which may well be measured in kilowatts, and unless adequate ventilating and cooling apparatus is provided, the system will suffer from what is the mechanical equivalent of pyrexia, until the constants of the machine are radically changed by the heat, and its performance breaks down."

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