Chapter 



WHAT IS NEW 



1/1. Cybernetics was defined by Wiener as "the science of control 

 and conununication, in the animal and the machine" — in a 

 word, as the art of steermanship, and it is to this aspect that the 

 book will be addressed. Co-ordination, regulation and control 

 will be its themes, for these are of the greatest biological and practical 

 interest. 



We must, therefore, make a study of mechanism; but some 

 introduction is advisable, for cybernetics treats the subject from a 

 new, and therefore unusual, angle. Without introduction. Chapter 

 2 might well seem to be seriously at fault. The new point of view 

 should be clearly understood, for any unconscious vacillation be- 

 tween the old and the new is apt to lead to confusion. 



1/2. The peculiarities of cybernetics. Many a book has borne the 

 title "Theory of Machines", but it usually contains information 

 about mechanical things, about levers and cogs. Cybernetics, too, 

 is a "theory of machines", but it treats, not things but ways of 

 behaving. It does not ask "what is this thing?" but ''what does it 

 do?" Thus it is very interested in such a statement as "this variable 

 is undergoing a simple harmonic oscillation", and is much less 

 concerned with whether the variable is the position of a point on a 

 wheel, or a potential in an electric circuit. It is thus essentially 

 functional and behaviouristic. 



Cybernetics started by being closely associated in many ways with 

 physics, but it depends in no essential way on the laws of physics or 

 on the properties of matter. Cybernetics deals with all forms of 

 behaviour in so far as they are regular, or determinate, or repro- 

 ducible. The materiahty is irrelevant, and so is the holding or not 

 of the ordinary laws of physics. (The example given in S.4/15 will 

 make this statement clear.) The truths of cybernetics are not 

 conditional on their being derived from some other branch of science. 

 Cybernetics has its own foundations. It is partly the aim of this 

 book to display them clearly. 



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