Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine

Name: Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine
ISBN: 9780262537841

Norbert Wiener, Doug Hill, Sanjoy Mitter · 1948

Cybernetics describes the application of statistical mechanics methods to communications engineering. Its subject matter ranges from such control mechanisms as servo-mechanisms, mathematical calculators, and automatic pilots, to the nerves and brain of the human body. This is a study of human control functions and mechanico-electrical systems designed to replace them. As such it impinges on every branch of science. It is the outgrowth of extensive theoretical study and experimentation by Dr. Wiener and a group of outstanding scientists -- including physiologists, psychologists, mathematicians, and electrical engineers.

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ethanwillisApr 2020
You have one of the like, two good comments in this discussion. To add to this I'd broadly recommend in (loose order) for people interested in Cybernetics.
Maxwell, "On Governors": https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/maxwell1.pdf
Wiener, "Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine pdf" : https://sci-hub.tw/10.2307/1266498
Also the following is a very interesting read, "Cybernetics and Information Theory in the United States, France and the Soviet Union": https://www.infoamerica.org/documentos_word/shannon-wiener.h...
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carapaceApr 2018
"Introduction to Cybernetics" is technical and very much in the spirit of CS. A lot of what gets called "cybernetics" tends to be kind of "fluffy" and I personally avoid that stuff. I'd recommend Norbert Wiener's "Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics:_Or_Control_and_Co...
And "Behavior, Purpose and Teleology" by Rosenblueth, Wiener and Bigelow:
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/books/Wiener-teleology.pdf
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mrmyersSep 2017

Modeling the world generally (as in, why mathematics works and can apply to the real world):

  =Bertrand Russell=
  * An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth
  * A Theory of Knowledge
  * Logic and Knowledge
  =W.V. Quine=
  * Word and Object
  * Mathematical Logic
  =Norbert Weiner=
  * Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine
  =Smullyan=
  * Diagonalization and Self Reference

Squishy Human Things:

  Thomas Kuhn      - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
  Norbert Weiner   - The Human Use of Human-Beings
  Bertrand Russell - A History of Western Philosophy
  Karl Popper      - The Open Society and Its Enemies
  Daniel Dennet    - Consciousness Explained
  E. Abbot Abbot   - Flatland

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igraviousMay 2016
Would you also consider then:
_The Laws of Form_ by George Spencer Brown,
Anything about logic by Gotthard Günther :) (He's a rare bird.)
_Autopoiesis and Cognition: the Realization of the Living_ by Maturana and Varela
Anything by Niklass Luhmann about social systems: the economy, mass media, art, functional differentiation, … He was a student of Talcott Parsons
Norbert Wiener, _Cybernetics: Or Control And Communication in the Animal and the Machine_ and _The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society_
_An Introduction to Cybernetics_ by W. Ross Ashby
McCullogh and Pitts (You mention Minsky but not these dudes.) _A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity_
Basically, most of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberneticist
? :)
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olooneyJul 2026
A brief chronology of the extended mind thesis:
* Characteristica universalis, Leibniz (c. 1679) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characteristica_universalis
* As We May Think, Vannevar Bush (1945) - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-m...
* Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, Norbert Wiener (1948) - https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph-pdf/2254528/book_9...
* An Introduction to Cybernetics, Ashby (1956) - https://ashby.info/Ashby-Introduction-to-Cybernetics.pdf
* Man-Computer Symbiosis, J. C. R. Licklider, (1960) - https://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/psz/Licklider.html
* Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework, by Douglas Engelbart (1962) - https://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-3906.html
* Man and the Computer, John G. Kemeny - https://archive.org/details/mancomputerbyjoh0000john
* The Extended Mind Thesis, Andy Clark and David Chalmers (1998) - https://www.alice.id.tue.nl/references/clark-chalmers-1998.p...
* The Dream Machine (2002) - https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Machine-M-Mitchell-Waldrop/dp/1...
See also the Wikipedia article on "Intelligence Amplification", which gives a subset of the above list but also provides a great deal of context.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_amplification
I have these notes to hand because I've written about it in the context of the deep history of computer science:
https://www.oranlooney.com/post/history-of-computing-2/#appe...
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AnimatsMay 2025
This is not new ground. See Cybernetics: Or Control_and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948) by Norbert Wiener. Wiener wrote a popular version, "The Human Use of Human Beings".[2] There's a whole history of cybernetics as a field. This Wikipedia article has a good summary.[3] The beginnings of neural network work came from cybernetics. As with much of philosophy, areas in which someone got results split off to become fields of their own.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics:_Or_Control_and_Co...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Use_of_Human_Beings
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics
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