WHAT IS NEW 1/5 



The biologist knows and uses the same principle when he gives 

 to Amphioxus, or to some extinct form, a detailed study quite out 

 of proportion lo its present-day ecological or economic importance. 



In the same way, cybernetics marks out certain types of mechan- 

 ism (S.3/3) as being of particular importance in the general theory; 

 and ii does this with no regard for whether terrestrial machines 

 happen to make this form common. Only after the study has 

 surveyed adequately the possible relations between machine and 

 machine does it turn to consider the forms actually found in some 

 particular branch of science. 



1/5. In keeping with this method, which works primarily with the 

 comprehensive and general, cybernetics typically treats any given, 

 particular, machine by asking not "whai individual act will it 

 produce here and now?" but "what are all the possible behaviours 

 that it can produce ?" 



It is in tliis way that information theory comes to play an essential 

 part in the subject ; for information theory is characterised essentially 

 by its dealing always with a set of possibilities; both its primary 

 data and its final statements are almost always about the set as 

 such, and not about some individual element in the set. 



This new point of view leads to the consideration of new types of 

 problem. The older point of view saw, say, an ovum grow into a 

 rabbit and asked "why does it do this ? — why does it not just stay 

 an ovum?" The attempts to answer this question led to the study 

 of energetics and to the discovery of many reasons why the ovum 

 should change — it can oxidise its fat, and fat provides free energy; 

 it has phosphorylating enzymes, and can pass its metabolites around 

 a Krebs' cycle; and so on. In these studies the concept of energy 

 was fundamental. 



Quite different, though equally valid, is the point of view of 

 cybernetics. It takes for granted that the ovum has abundant free 

 energy, and that it is so delicately poised metabolically as to be, in a 

 sense, explosive. Growth of some form there will be; cybernetics 

 asks "why should the changes be to the rabbit-form, and not to a 

 dog-form, a fish-form, or even to a teratoma-form ?" Cybernetics 

 envisages a set of possibilities much wider than the actual, and then 

 asks why the particular case should conform to its usual particular 

 restriction. In this discussion, questions of energy play almost no 

 part — the energy is simply taken for granted. Even whether the 

 system is closed to energy or open is often irrelevant; what is 

 important is the extent to which the system is subject to determining 

 and controlling factors. So no information or signal or determining 



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