Cybernetics

3 definitions found

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  cybernetics
       n : (biology) the field of science concerned with processes of
           communication and control (especially the comparison of
           these processes in biological and artificial systems)

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:



  49 Moby Thesaurus words for "cybernetics":
     aerobiology, agrobiology, anatomy, astrobiology,
     automatic electronics, autonetics, bacteriology, biochemics,
     biochemistry, biochemy, bioecology, biological science, biology,
     biometrics, biometry, bionics, bionomics, biophysics, botany,
     cell physiology, circuit analysis, communication theory,
     cryobiology, cytology, ecology, electrobiology, embryology,
     enzymology, ethnobiology, exobiology, genetics, gnotobiotics,
     information theory, life science, microbiology, molecular biology,
     pharmacology, physiology, radio control, radiobiology,
     servo engineering, servomechanics, system engineering,
     systems analysis, systems planning, taxonomy, virology,
     xenobiology, zoology
  
  

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  cybernetics
       
           /si:`b*-net'iks/ The study of control and
          communication in living and man-made systems.
       
          The term was first proposed by {Norbert Wiener} in the book
          referenced below.  Originally, cybernetics drew upon
          electrical engineering, mathematics, biology, neurophysiology,
          anthropology, and psychology to study and describe actions,
          feedback, and response in systems of all kinds.  It aims to
          understand the similarities and differences in internal
          workings of organic and machine processes and, by formulating
          abstract concepts common to all systems, to understand their
          behaviour.
       
          Modern "second-order cybernetics" places emphasis on how the
          process of constructing models of the systems is influenced by
          those very systems, hence an elegant definition - "applied
          epistemology".
       
          Related recent developments (often referred to as {sciences of
          complexity}) that are distinguished as separate disciplines
          are {artificial intelligence}, {neural networks}, {systems
          theory}, and {chaos theory}, but the boundaries between those
          and cybernetics proper are not precise.
       
          See also {robot}.
       
          {The Cybernetics Society (http://www.cybsoc.org)} of the UK.
       
          {American Society for Cybernetics
          (http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/)}.
       
          {IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society
          (http://www.isye.gatech.edu/ieee-smc/)}.
       
          {International project "Principia Cybernetica"
          (http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/DEFAULT.html)}.
       
          {Usenet} newsgroup: {sci.systems (news:sci.systems)}.
       
          ["Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the
          machine", N. Wiener, New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1948]
       
          (2002-01-01)