Cybernetic theory

Whiteley, J, R., Davis, J. F., Ahmet, M., and Ahalt, S. C.. Application of adaptive Resonance theory for qualitative interpretation of sensor data, Man, Machine and Cybernetics 26(7), July (1996). 

In our times, in addition to chemistry and biology, emergence has been discussed in quite a variety of research fields, such as cybernetics, the theory of... 

Logicians and philosophers are concerned with mathematics for its own sake. They are interested in pure thought and mathematics as a system of reasoning, unrelated to the physical structure of the world. The correspondence between language and mathematics pursued by this branch of study led to information theory and its outgrowths, cybernetics, and operations research. 

Woods, E. A., The Hybrid phenomena theory A framework integrating structural descriptions with state space modeling and simulation. Dr. Ing. Thesis, Department of Engineering Cybernetics, Norwegian Institute of Technology (1993). 

Top-down constraints - these are mostly consistent with the general system, cybernetic, and information theory constraints of how a system is assembled and behaves. For example, if a single set of data gives a two-valued observable output, this imposes certain restrictions on mechanistic solutions because not all operations can deliver this solution. 

The 1950s saw a change in emphasis from the analysis of bio-chemistry-as-kinetics to that of biochemistry-as-information. The theoretical rationale for this transition was provided by the growth of the new sciences associated with the development of computers. Theories of control , feedback , and information transfer were collated in 1948 by the American engineer and mathematician Norbert Wiener under the name of cybernetics. As more and more became known about the mechanisms of individual enzymic reactions, about their energy-requirements, and about the workings of series of enzymes in the harmony of metabolic pathways, biochemists seized on these new concepts in order to probe the ways in which the cell controlled and regulated its own metabolism how, so to speak, it decided at any one time... 

Great Ideas in Information Theory, Language and Cybernetics, Jagjit Singh... 

This analysis of living systems uses concepts of thermodynamics, information theory, cybernetics, and systems engineering, as well as the classical concepts appropriate to each level. The purpose is to produce a description of living structure and process in terms of input and output, flows through systems, steady states, and feedbacks, which will clarify and unify the facts of life. The approach generates hypotheses relevant to sin e individuals, types, and levels of living systems, or relevant across individuals, types, and levels. These hypotheses can be confirmed, disconfirmed, or evaluated by experiments and other empirical evidence. 

It may not be entirely vain, however, to search for common properties among diverse kinds of complex systems. The ideas that go by the name of cybernetics constitute, if not a theory, at least a point of view that has been proving fruitful over a wide range of applications. It has been useful to look at the behavior of adaptive systems in terms of the concepts of feedback and homeostasis, and to analyze adaptiveness in terms of the theory of selective information. The ideas of feedback and information provide a frame of reference for viewing a wide range of situations, just as do the ideas of evolution, of relativism, of axiomatic method, and of operational-ism. ... 

N. Wiener, Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, John Wiley and Sons, Ltd., New York, 1948 G. J. Murphy, Basic Automatic Control Theory, van Nostrand, Princeton (NJ), 1957 K. Goldner, Mathematische Grundlagen der Systemanalyse, Verlag Harri Deutsch, Thun, 1981 W. Hahn, F. L. Bauer, Physikalische und elektrotechnische Grundlagen fiir Information, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg New York 1975. 

Shankar, R., Z-Scheduler Integrating Theories of Scheduling Behavior into a Computational Model, in Proceedings of the IEEE International Confererute on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, pp. 1219-1223. 

A wide choice of conventions is available for drawing flow diagrams, based on control system theory, cybernetics, and information theory. The best conventions seem to be the simplest, in which one symbol designates an input or output, another an intervention, and a third a process. The same symbols are used throughout both the model and its constituent submodels. 

The link between control mechanisms studied in natural systems and those engineered in man-made systems was provided by a part of systems theory known as cybernetics. Checkland writes ... 

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