Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine was written by Norbert Wiener and published in 1948. It is the first public usage of the term "cybernetics" to refer to self-regulating mechanisms. The book laid the theoretical foundation for servomechanisms (whether electrical, mechanical or hydraulic), automatic navigation, analog computing, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and reliable communications.

A second edition with minor changes and two additional chapters was published in 1961.

The book aroused a considerable amount of public discussion and comment at the time of publication, unusual for a predominantly technical subject.

The public interest aroused by this book inspired Wiener to address the sociological and political issues raised in a book targeted at the non-technical reader, resulting in the publication in 1950 of The Human Use of Human Beings.

Introduction

1. Newtonian and Bergsonian Time

2. Groups and Statistical Mechanics

3. Time Series, Information, and Communication

4. Feedback and Oscillation

5. Computing Machines and the Nervous System

6. Gestalt and Universals

7. Cybernetics and Psychopathology

8. Information, Language, and Society

9. On Learning and Self-Reproducing Machines

10. Brain Waves and Self-Organising Systems

Wiener recounts that the origin of the ideas in this book is a ten-year-long series of meetings at the Harvard Medical School where medical scientists and physicians discussed scientific method with mathematicians, physicists and engineers. He details the interdisciplinary nature of his approach and refers to his work with Vannevar Bush and his differential analyzer (a primitive analog computer), as well as his early thoughts on the features and design principles of future digital calculating machines. He traces the origins of cybernetic analysis to the philosophy of Leibniz, citing his work on universal symbolism and a calculus of reasoning.

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