cybernetics

Science dealing with mechanisms employed by natural and man-made systems to learn and evolve, and to organize, regulate, and reproduce themselves. Although the objectives of cybernetics are similar to those of the general systems theory (GST), it is concerned primarily with communication and control through feedback rather than with the 'wholeness' of a system or with complex interactions within and among systems. Cybernetics is a Greek word meaning steersmanship an opposite of 'dictatorship.' Borrowed from French by the US mathematician Dr. Norbert Weiner (1894-1964) and quoted in his 1948 book 'Cybernetics, Or Control And Communication In Animal And Machine' which is based on the concepts he co-developed with a Mexican physician, Dr. Arturo Rosenblueth (1900-70).