1/6 AN INTRODUCTION TO CYBERNETICS 



factor may pass from part to part without its being recorded as a 

 significant event. Cybernetics might, in fact, be defined as the 

 study of systems that are open to energy hut closed to information and 

 control — systems that are "information-tight" (S.9/19.). 



1/6. The uses of cybernetics. After this bird's-eye view of cyber- 

 netics we can turn to consider some of the ways in which it promises 

 to be of assistance. I shall confine my attention to the applications 

 that promise most in the biological sciences. The review can only 

 be brief and very general. Many applications have aheady been 

 made and are too well known to need description here; more will 

 doubtless be developed in the future. There are, however, two 

 peculiar scientific virtues of cybernetics that are worth explicit 

 mention. 



One is that it offers a single vocabulary and a single set of concepts 

 suitable for representing the most diverse types of system. Until 

 recently, any attempt to relate the many facts known about, say, 

 servo-mechanisms to what was known about the cerebellum was 

 made unnecessarily difficult by the fact that the properties of servo- 

 mechanisms were described in words redolent of the automatic 

 pilot, or the radio set, or the hydraulic brake, while those of the 

 cerebellum were described in words redolent of the dissecting room 

 and the bedside — aspects that are irrelevant to the similarities 

 between a servo-mechanism and a cerebellar reflex. Cybernetics 

 offers one set of concepts that, by having exact correspondences 

 with each branch of science, can thereby bring them into exact 

 relation with one other. 



It has been found repeatedly in science that the discovery that 

 two branches are related leads to each branch helping in the develop- 

 ment of the other. (Compare S. 6/8.) The result is often a markedly 

 accelerated growth of both. The infinitesimal calculus and astro- 

 nomy, the virus and the protein molecule, the chromosomes and 

 heredity are examples that come to mind. Neither, of course, can 

 give proofs about the laws of the other, but each can give suggestions 

 that may be of the greatest assistance and fruitfulness. The subject 

 is returned to in S.6/8. Here I need only mention the fact that 

 cybernetics is likely to reveal a great number of interesting and 

 suggestive parallelisms between machine and brain and society. 

 And it can provide the common language by which discoveries in 

 one branch can readily be made use of in the others. 



1/7. The complex system. The second peculiar virtue of cyber- 

 netics is that it offers a method for the scientific treatment of the 



