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76-425: A viable system is any system organised in such a way as to meet the demands of surviving in the changing environment. One of the prime features of systems that survive is that they are adaptable. The VSM expresses a model for a viable system, which is an abstracted cybernetic (regulation theory) description that is claimed to be applicable to any organisation that is a viable system and capable of autonomy. The model

152-506: A solution space . The heuristic is derived by using some function that is put into the system by the designer, or by adjusting the weight of branches based on how likely each branch is to lead to a goal node . Heuristics refers to the cognitive shortcuts that individuals use to simplify decision-making processes in economic situations. Behavioral economics is a field that integrates insights from psychology and economics to better understand how people make decisions. Anchoring and adjustment

228-462: A text that Polya dubs Heuristic . Pappus' heuristic problem-solving methods consist of analysis and synthesis . The study of heuristics in human decision-making was developed in the 1970s and the 1980s, by the psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman , although the concept had been originally introduced by the Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon . Simon's original primary object of research

304-482: A Latin corruption gubernator . Finally, Wiener motivates the choice by steering engines of a ship being "one of the earliest and best-developed forms of feedback mechanisms". The initial focus of cybernetics was on parallels between regulatory feedback processes in biological and technological systems. Two foundational articles were published in 1943: "Behavior, Purpose and Teleology" by Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener, and Julian Bigelow  – based on

380-466: A cognitive style "heuristic versus algorithmic thinking", which can be assessed by means of a validated questionnaire . The adaptive toolbox contains strategies for fabricating heuristic devices. The core mental capacities are recall (memory) , frequency , object permanence , and imitation . Gerd Gigerenzer and his research group argued that models of heuristics need to be formal to allow for predictions of behavior that can be tested. They study

456-856: A companion volume to "Brain...", Beer applies Ashby's concept of (Requisite) Variety : the number of possible states of a system or of an element of the system. There are two aphorisms that permit observers to calculate Variety; four Principles of Organization; the Recursive System Theorem; three Axioms of Management and a Law of Cohesion. These rules ensure the Requisite Variety condition is satisfied, in effect that resources are matched to requirement. These aphorisms are: (Principles are 'primary sources of particular outcome') These principles are: This theorem states: (Axioms are statements 'worthy of belief') These axioms are: This law ('something invariant in nature') states: In Brain of

532-405: A larger experiential processing system that is often adaptive, but vulnerable to error in situations that require logical analysis. In 2002, Daniel Kahneman and Shane Frederick proposed that cognitive heuristics work by a process called attribute substitution , which happens without conscious awareness. According to this theory, when somebody makes a judgement (of a "target attribute") that

608-411: A mental shortcut to assess everything from the social status of a person (based on their actions), to classifying a plant as a tree based on it being tall, having a trunk, and that it has leaves (even though the person making the evaluation might never have seen that particular type of tree before). Stereotypes, as first described by journalist Walter Lippmann in his book Public Opinion (1922), are

684-403: A number of directions. Early cybernetic work on artificial neural networks has been returned to as a paradigm in machine learning and artificial intelligence. The entanglements of society with emerging technologies has led to exchanges with feminist technoscience and posthumanism. Re-examinations of cybernetics' history have seen science studies scholars emphasising cybernetics' unusual qualities as

760-469: A number of other fields, leading to it having both wide influence and diverse interpretations. Cybernetics has been defined in a variety of ways, reflecting "the richness of its conceptual base." One of the best known definitions is that of the American scientist Norbert Wiener , who characterised cybernetics as concerned with "control and communication in the animal and the machine." Another early definition

836-426: A science, such as its "performative ontology". Practical design disciplines have drawn on cybernetics for theoretical underpinning and transdisciplinary connections. Emerging topics include how cybernetics' engagements with social, human, and ecological contexts might come together with its earlier technological focus, whether as a critical discourse or a "new branch of engineering". The central theme in cybernetics

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912-429: A ship (the ancient Greek κυβερνήτης ( kybernḗtēs ) means "helmsperson"). In steering a ship, the helmsperson adjusts their steering in continual response to the effect it is observed as having, forming a feedback loop through which a steady course can be maintained in a changing environment, responding to disturbances from cross winds and tide. Cybernetics' transdisciplinary character has meant that it intersects with

988-647: A small business all these functions might be done by one person or shared between the participants. In larger enterprises roles can differentiate and become more specialized emphasizing one or more aspects of the VSM. Local conditions, the environment and nature of the service or product, determines where warehousing, sales, advertising, promotion, dispatch, taxation, finance, salaries etc., fit into this picture. Not all enterprises charge for their transactions (e.g. some schools and medical services, policing) and voluntary staff may not be paid. Advertising or shipping might not be part of

1064-504: Is feedback . Feedback is a process where the observed outcomes of actions are taken as inputs for further action in ways that support the pursuit, maintenance, or disruption of particular conditions, forming a circular causal relationship. In steering a ship, the helmsperson maintains a steady course in a changing environment by adjusting their steering in continual response to the effect it is observed as having. Other examples of circular causal feedback include: technological devices such as

1140-465: Is able to audit (via 3*) past performance so "bad times" for production can be compared to "good times". If things go wrong and levels of risk increase the System 3 asks for help or puts it to colleagues for a remedy. This is the pain of an algedonic alert, which can be automatic when performance fails to achieve capability targets. The autonomic 3–2–1 homeostatic loop's problem is absorbed for solution within

1216-405: Is also often used as a noun to describe a rule of thumb , procedure, or method. Philosophers of science have emphasised the importance of heuristics in creative thought and the construction of scientific theories. Seminal works include Karl Popper 's The Logic of Scientific Discovery and others by Imre Lakatos , Lindley Darden , and William C. Wimsatt . In legal theory , especially in

1292-419: Is any approach to problem solving that employs a pragmatic method that is not fully optimized , perfected, or rationalized , but is nevertheless "good enough" as an approximation or attribute substitution . Where finding an optimal solution is impossible or impractical, heuristic methods can be used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution. Heuristics can be mental shortcuts that ease

1368-530: Is based on the key term: Justification (epistemology) . One-reason decisions are algorithms that are made of three rules: search rules, confirmation rules (stopping), and decision rules A class that's function is to determine and filter out superfluous things. Tracking heuristics is a class of heuristics. Social heuristics  – Decision-making processes in social environments George Polya studied and published on heuristics in 1945. Polya (1945) cites Pappus of Alexandria as having written

1444-421: Is computationally complex, a more easily calculated "heuristic attribute" is substituted. In effect, a cognitively difficult problem is dealt with by answering a rather simpler problem, without being aware of this happening. This theory explains cases where judgements fail to show regression toward the mean . Heuristics can be considered to reduce the complexity of clinical judgments in health care. A heuristic

1520-418: Is concerned with other forms of circular processes including: feedforward , recursion , and reflexivity . Other key concepts and theories in cybernetics include: Cybernetics' central concept of circular causality is of wide applicability, leading to diverse applications and relations with other fields. Many of the initial applications of cybernetics focused on engineering , biology , and exchanges between

1596-473: Is developed via a collection of papers to learned bodies, including UK Police and Hospitals, to produce a visualization of the "Total System". Here a "Relevant ethic" evolves from "Experimental ethics" and the "Ethic with a busted gut" to produce a sustainable earth with reformed "old institutions" becoming "new institutions" driven by approval (eudemonic criteria "Questions of Metric" in Platform... pp 163– 179) from

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1672-403: Is one of the most extensively researched heuristics in behavioural economics. Anchoring is the tendency of people to make future judgements or conclusions based too heavily on the original information supplied to them. This initial knowledge functions as an anchor, and it can influence future judgements even if the anchor is entirely unrelated to the decisions at hand. Adjustment, on the other hand,

1748-464: Is stored in the memory . Heuristics are inherently phenomenological, e.g., I and Thou . A heuristic device is used when an entity X exists to enable understanding of, or knowledge concerning, some other entity Y . A good example is a model that, as it is never identical with what it models , is a heuristic device to enable understanding of what it models. Stories, metaphors, etc., can also be termed heuristic in this sense. A classic example

1824-452: Is sufficiently mature for society to trust them with that kind of responsibility. Some proposed changes, however, have included the completion of an alcohol education course rather than the attainment of 21 years of age as the criterion for legal alcohol possession. This would put youth alcohol policy more on a case-by-case basis and less on a heuristic one, since the completion of such a course would presumably be voluntary and not uniform across

1900-502: Is that of the Macy cybernetics conferences , where cybernetics was understood as the study of "circular causal and feedback mechanisms in biological and social systems." Margaret Mead emphasised the role of cybernetics as "a form of cross-disciplinary thought which made it possible for members of many disciplines to communicate with each other easily in a language which all could understand." Other definitions include: "the art of governing or

1976-566: Is the notion of utopia as described in Plato 's best-known work, The Republic . This means that the "ideal city" as depicted in The Republic is not given as something to be pursued, or to present an orientation-point for development. Rather, it shows how things would have to be connected, and how one thing would lead to another (often with highly problematic results), if one opted for certain principles and carried them through rigorously. Heuristic

2052-625: Is the process through which individuals make gradual changes to their initial judgements or conclusions. Anchoring and adjustment has been observed in a wide range of decision-making contexts, including financial decision-making, consumer behavior, and negotiation. Researchers have identified a number of strategies that can be used to mitigate the effects of anchoring and adjustment, including providing multiple anchors, encouraging individuals to generate alternative anchors, and providing cognitive prompts to encourage more deliberative decision-making. Other heuristics studied in behavioral economics include

2128-444: Is the transdisciplinary study of circular processes such as feedback systems where outputs are also inputs. It is concerned with general principles that are relevant across multiple contexts, including in ecological, technological, biological , cognitive and social systems and also in practical activities such as designing, learning, and managing . The field is named after an example of circular causal feedback—that of steering

2204-926: Is trial and error, which can be used in everything from matching nuts and bolts to finding the values of variables in algebra problems. In mathematics, some common heuristics involve the use of visual representations, additional assumptions, forward/backward reasoning and simplification. Dual process theory concerns embodied heuristics . In psychology , heuristics are simple, efficient rules, either learned or inculcated by evolutionary processes. These psychological heuristics have been proposed to explain how people make decisions, come to judgements, and solve problems. These rules typically come into play when people face complex problems or incomplete information. Researchers employ various methods to test whether people use these rules. The rules have been shown to work well under most circumstances, but in certain cases can lead to systematic errors or cognitive biases . Lakatosian heuristics

2280-570: Is under uncertainty, heuristics can achieve higher accuracy with lower effort. This finding, known as a less-is-more effect , would not have been found without formal models. The valuable insight of this program is that heuristics are effective not despite their simplicity – but because of it. Furthermore, Gigerenzer and Wolfgang Gaissmaier found that both individuals and organisations rely on heuristics in an adaptive way. Heuristics, through greater refinement and research, have begun to be applied to other theories, or be explained by them. For example,

2356-405: The anchoring effect and utility maximization problem . These strategies depend on using readily accessible, though loosely applicable, information to control problem solving in human beings, machines and abstract issues. When an individual applies a heuristic in practice, it generally performs as expected. However it can alternatively create systematic errors. The most fundamental heuristic

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2432-440: The cognitive load of making a decision . Heuristic reasoning is often based on induction , or on analogy   ... Induction is the process of discovering general laws   ... Induction tries to find regularity and coherence   ... Its most conspicuous instruments are generalization , specialization , analogy.   [...] Heuristic discusses human behavior in the face of problems [... that have been] preserved in

2508-442: The cognitive-experiential self-theory (CEST) is also an adaptive view of heuristic processing. CEST breaks down two systems that process information. At some times, roughly speaking, individuals consider issues rationally, systematically, logically, deliberately, effortfully, and verbally. On other occasions, individuals consider issues intuitively, effortlessly, globally, and emotionally. From this perspective, heuristics are part of

2584-406: The decision problem ) is the subject of Chaitin 's metamathematical conjecture algorithmic information theory and provides a potentially rigorous theoretical basis for a general management heuristic. If a process is not producing the agreed product more information, if applicable, will correct this, resolve ambiguity, conflict or undecidability. In "Platform for Change" (Beer 1975) the thesis

2660-426: The recognition heuristic , the take-the-best heuristic and fast-and-frugal trees – have been shown to be effective in predictions, particularly in situations of uncertainty. It is often said that heuristics trade accuracy for effort but this is only the case in situations of risk. Risk refers to situations where all possible actions, their outcomes and probabilities are known. In the absence of this information, that

2736-472: The representativeness heuristic , which refers to the tendency of individuals to categorize objects or events based on how similar they are to typical examples, and the availability heuristic , which refers to the tendency of individuals to judge the likelihood of an event based on how easily it comes to mind. Stereotyping is a type of heuristic that people use to form opinions or make judgements about things they have never seen or experienced. They work as

2812-575: The thermostat , where the action of a heater responds to measured changes in temperature regulating the temperature of the room within a set range, and the centrifugal governor of a steam engine, which regulates the engine speed; biological examples such as the coordination of volitional movement through the nervous system and the homeostatic processes that regulate variables such as blood sugar; and processes of social interaction such as conversation. Negative feedback processes are those that maintain particular conditions by reducing (hence 'negative')

2888-500: The wisdom of proverbs . Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier (2011) state that sub-sets of strategy include heuristics , regression analysis , and Bayesian inference . A heuristic is a strategy that ignores part of the information, with the goal of making decisions more quickly, frugally, and/or accurately than more complex methods (Gigerenzer and Gaissmaier [2011], p. 454; see also Todd et al. [2012], p. 7). Heuristics are strategies based on rules to generate optimal decisions , like

2964-416: The "software milieu" while culture adopts the systems approach and " Homo faber " (man the maker) becomes "Homo Gubernator" (self-steering). In applying the VSM variety measures are used to match people, machines and money to jobs that produce products or services. In a set of processes some jobs are done by one person. Some are done by many and often many processes are done by the same person. Throughout

3040-410: The 'here and now' of the organization's operations, System 4 is concerned with the 'there and then' – strategical responses to the effects of external, environmental and future demands on the organization. System 5 is concerned with balancing the 'here and now' and the 'there and then' to give policy directives which maintain the organization as a viable entity. In addition to the subsystems that make up

3116-529: The 1950s, cybernetics was developed as a primarily technical discipline, such as in Qian Xuesen 's 1954 "Engineering Cybernetics". In the Soviet Union , Cybernetics was initially considered with suspicion but became accepted from the mid to late 1950s. By the 1960s and 1970s, however, cybernetics' transdisciplinarity fragmented, with technical focuses separating into separate fields. Artificial intelligence (AI)

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3192-449: The 1960s onwards, with its focus inflecting away from technology toward social, ecological, and philosophical concerns. It was still grounded in biology, notably Maturana and Varela 's autopoiesis , and built on earlier work on self-organising systems and the presence of anthropologists Mead and Bateson in the Macy meetings. The Biological Computer Laboratory, founded in 1958 and active until

3268-514: The Animal and the Machine . In the book, Wiener states: After much consideration, we have come to the conclusion that all the existing terminology has too heavy a bias to one side or another to serve the future development of the field as well as it should; and as happens so often to scientists, we have been forced to coin at least one artificial neo-Greek expression to fill the gap. We have decided to call

3344-516: The Firm (p. 163) Beer describes a triple vector to characterize activity in a System 1. The components are: Beer adds "It would help a lot to fix these definitions clearly in the mind." System 4's job is essentially to realize potential. He then defines Consider the management of a process with cash earnings or savings for a company or government: These methods (also known as normalisations) can be similarly applied in general e.g. to hours worked in

3420-1436: The Firm to his colleagues past and present with the words " absolutum obsoletum " which he translated as "If it works it's out of date". Cybernetic Collective intelligence Collective action Self-organized criticality Herd mentality Phase transition Agent-based modelling Synchronization Ant colony optimization Particle swarm optimization Swarm behaviour Social network analysis Small-world networks Centrality Motifs Graph theory Scaling Robustness Systems biology Dynamic networks Evolutionary computation Genetic algorithms Genetic programming Artificial life Machine learning Evolutionary developmental biology Artificial intelligence Evolutionary robotics Reaction–diffusion systems Partial differential equations Dissipative structures Percolation Cellular automata Spatial ecology Self-replication Conversation theory Entropy Feedback Goal-oriented Homeostasis Information theory Operationalization Second-order cybernetics Self-reference System dynamics Systems science Systems thinking Sensemaking Variety Ordinary differential equations Phase space Attractors Population dynamics Chaos Multistability Bifurcation Rational choice theory Bounded rationality Cybernetics

3496-512: The UK, similar focuses were explored by the Ratio Club , an informal dining club of young psychiatrists, psychologists, physiologists, mathematicians and engineers that met between 1949 and 1958. Wiener introduced the neologism cybernetics to denote the study of "teleological mechanisms" and popularized it through the book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine . During

3572-513: The United States the legal drinking age for unsupervised persons is 21 years, because it is argued that people need to be mature enough to make decisions involving the risks of alcohol consumption. However, assuming people mature at different rates, the specific age of 21 would be too late for some and too early for others. In this case, the somewhat arbitrary delineation is used because it is impossible or impractical to tell whether an individual

3648-405: The United States, the length of this temporary monopoly is 20 years from the date the patent application was filed, though the monopoly does not actually begin until the application has matured into a patent. However, like the drinking age problem above, the specific length of time would need to be different for every product to be efficient. A 20-year term is used because it is difficult to tell what

3724-536: The autonomy of its metasystem. Development (the System 4 role of research and marketing) is asked for recommendations. If more resources are required System 5 has to make the decision on which is the best option from System 4. Escalation to higher management (up the metalinguistic levels of recursion) will be needed if the remedy requires more resources than the current level of capability or variety can sustain. The pleasure of an algedonic alert which are performance improving innovations can also be handled in this way. In

3800-449: The business or they might be the principal activity. Whatever the circumstances, all enterprises are required to be useful to their users if they are to remain viable. For all participants the central question remains: "Do I do what I always do for this transaction or do I innovate?" It is embodied in the calls on System 4. The VSM describes the constraints: a knowledge of past performance and how it may be improved. Beer dedicated Brain of

3876-544: The creative arts, while also developing exchanges with constructivist philosophies, counter-cultural movements, and media studies. The development of management cybernetics has led to a variety of applications, notably to the national economy of Chile under the Allende government in Project Cybersyn . In design, cybernetics has been influential on interactive architecture , human-computer interaction, design research, and

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3952-468: The creative arts, design, and architecture, notably with the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition (ICA, London, 1968), curated by Jasia Reichardt , and the unrealised Fun Palace project (London, unrealised, 1964 onwards), where Gordon Pask was consultant to architect Cedric Price and theatre director Joan Littlewood. From the 1990s onwards, there has been a renewed interest in cybernetics from

4028-546: The development of systemic design and metadesign practices. Cybernetics is often understood within the context of systems science, systems theory , and systems thinking . Systems approaches influenced by cybernetics include critical systems thinking , which incorporates the viable system model ; systemic design ; and system dynamics , which is based on the concept of causal feedback loops. Many fields trace their origins in whole or part to work carried out in cybernetics, or were partially absorbed into cybernetics when it

4104-486: The development of radical constructivism. Cybernetics' core theme of circular causality was developed beyond goal-oriented processes to concerns with reflexivity and recursion. This was especially so in the development of second-order cybernetics (or the cybernetics of cybernetics), developed and promoted by Heinz von Foerster, which focused on questions of observation, cognition, epistemology, and ethics. The 1960s onwards also saw cybernetics begin to develop exchanges with

4180-443: The difference from a desired state, such as where a thermostat turns on a heater when it is too cold and turns a heater off when it is too hot. Positive feedback processes increase (hence 'positive') the difference from a desired state. An example of positive feedback is when a microphone picks up the sound that it is producing through a speaker, which is then played through the speaker, and so on. In addition to feedback, cybernetics

4256-461: The entire field of control and communication theory, whether in the machine or in the animal, by the name Cybernetics , which we form from the Greek κυβερνήτης or steersman . Moreover, Wiener explains, the term was chosen to recognize James Clerk Maxwell 's 1868 publication on feedback mechanisms involving governors , noting that the term governor is also derived from κυβερνήτης ( kubernḗtēs ) via

4332-446: The fast and frugal heuristics in the "adaptive toolbox" of individuals or institutions, and the ecological rationality of these heuristics; that is, the conditions under which a given heuristic is likely to be successful. The descriptive study of the "adaptive toolbox" is done by observation and experiment, while the prescriptive study of ecological rationality requires mathematical analysis and computer simulation. Heuristics – such as

4408-450: The first level of recursion, the environment is represented in the model. The presence of the environment in the model is necessary as the domain of action of the system and without it there is no way in the model to contextualize or ground the internal interactions of the organization. Algedonic alerts (from the Greek αλγος, pain and ηδος, pleasure) are alarms and rewards that escalate through

4484-544: The higher (and lower) level systems in the containment hierarchy (Beer expresses this property of viable systems as cybernetic isomorphism ). A development of this model has originated the theoretical proposal called viable systems approach . Here we give a brief introduction to the cybernetic description of the organization encapsulated in a single level of the VSM. A viable system is composed of five interacting subsystems which may be mapped onto aspects of organizational structure. In broad terms Systems 1–3. are concerned with

4560-420: The levels of recursion when actual performance fails or exceeds capability, typically after a timeout . The model is derived from the architecture of the brain and nervous system. Systems 3-2-1 are identified with the ancient brain or autonomic nervous system . System 4 embodies cognition and conversation. System 5, the higher brain functions, include introspection and decision making. In "Heart of Enterprise"

4636-438: The management itself need not be, but the routine response functions must be ordered to reflect best known heuristic practice. These heuristics are constantly monitored for improvement by the organization's System 4s. Pay structures reflect these constraints on performance when capability or potential is realized with, for example, productivity bonuses , stakeholder agreements and intellectual property rights. In ascending

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4712-525: The metaphor of a steersman is used to signify the governance of people. The French word cybernétique was also used in 1834 by the physicist André-Marie Ampère to denote the sciences of government in his classification system of human knowledge. According to Norbert Wiener, the word cybernetics was coined by a research group involving himself and Arturo Rosenblueth in the summer of 1947. It has been attested in print since at least 1948 through Wiener's book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in

4788-509: The mid-1970s under the direction of Heinz von Foerster at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign , was a major incubator of this trend in cybernetics research. Focuses of the second wave of cybernetics included management cybernetics, such as Stafford Beer's biologically inspired viable system model ; work in family therapy, drawing on Bateson; social systems, such as in the work of Niklas Luhmann ; epistemology and pedagogy, such as in

4864-447: The number should be for any individual patent. More recently, some, including University of North Dakota law professor Eric E. Johnson, have argued that patents in different kinds of industries – such as software patents – should be protected for different lengths of time. The bias–variance tradeoff gives insight into describing the less-is-more strategy. A heuristic can be used in artificial intelligence systems while searching

4940-407: The performance of tasks or products in a production process of some kind. When actuality deviates from capability, because someone did something well or something badly, an algedonic alert is sent to management. If corrective action, adoption of a good technique or correction of an error, is not taken in a timely manner the alert is escalated. Because the criteria are applied in an ordered hierarchy

5016-399: The population. The same reasoning applies to patent law . Patents are justified on the grounds that inventors must be protected so they have incentive to invent. It is therefore argued that it is in society's best interest that inventors receive a temporary government-granted monopoly on their idea, so that they can recoup investment costs and make economic profit for a limited period. In

5092-639: The recursions of the viable system the context of each autonomous 5-4-3-2 metasystem enlarges and acquires more variety . This defines a metalanguage stack of increasing capability to resolve undecidability in the autonomous lower levels. If someone near process level needs to innovate to achieve potential, or restore capability, help can be secured from management of higher variety. An algedonic alert, sent when actuality deviates by some statistically significant amount from capability, makes this process automatic. The notion of adding more variety or states to resolve ambiguity or undecidability (also known as

5168-781: The research on living organisms that Rosenblueth did in Mexico ;– and the paper "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity" by Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts . The foundations of cybernetics were then developed through a series of transdisciplinary conferences funded by the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, between 1946 and 1953. The conferences were chaired by McCulloch and had participants included Ross Ashby , Gregory Bateson , Heinz von Foerster , Margaret Mead , John von Neumann , and Norbert Wiener . In

5244-553: The science of government" ( André-Marie Ampère ); "the art of steersmanship" ( Ross Ashby ); "the study of systems of any nature which are capable of receiving, storing, and processing information so as to use it for control" ( Andrey Kolmogorov ); and "a branch of mathematics dealing with problems of control, recursiveness, and information, focuses on forms and the patterns that connect" ( Gregory Bateson ). The Ancient Greek term κυβερνητικός (kubernētikos, '(good at) steering') appears in Plato 's Republic and Alcibiades , where

5320-438: The theory of law and economics , heuristics are used in the law when case-by-case analysis would be impractical, insofar as "practicality" is defined by the interests of a governing body. The present securities regulation regime largely assumes that all investors act as perfectly rational persons. In truth, actual investors face cognitive limitations from biases, heuristics, and framing effects. For instance, in all states in

5396-401: The two, such as medical cybernetics and robotics and topics such as neural networks , heterarchy . In the social and behavioral sciences, cybernetics has included and influenced work in anthropology , sociology , economics , family therapy , cognitive science, and psychology . As cybernetics has developed, it broadened in scope to include work in management, design, pedagogy, and

5472-454: The working day a participant, in completing a task, may find the focus shifts between internal and external Systems 1–5 from moment to moment. The choices, or decisions discriminated, and their cost (or effort) defines the variety and hence resources needed for the job. The processes (Systems 1) are operationally managed by System 3 by monitoring performance and assuring (System 2) the flow of product between System 1s and out to users. System 3

5548-490: Was developed by operations research theorist and cybernetician Stafford Beer in his book Brain of the Firm (1972). Together with Beer's earlier works on cybernetics applied to management, this book effectively founded management cybernetics . The first thing to note about the cybernetic theory of organizations encapsulated in the VSM is that viable systems are recursive ; viable systems contain viable systems that can be modeled using an identical cybernetic description as

5624-1837: Was developed. These include artificial intelligence , bionics , cognitive science , control theory , complexity science , computer science , information theory and robotics . Some aspects of modern artificial intelligence , particularly the social machine , are often described in cybernetic terms. Academic journals with focuses in cybernetics include: Academic societies primarily concerned with cybernetics or aspects of it include: Heuristic Collective intelligence Collective action Self-organized criticality Herd mentality Phase transition Agent-based modelling Synchronization Ant colony optimization Particle swarm optimization Swarm behaviour Social network analysis Small-world networks Centrality Motifs Graph theory Scaling Robustness Systems biology Dynamic networks Evolutionary computation Genetic algorithms Genetic programming Artificial life Machine learning Evolutionary developmental biology Artificial intelligence Evolutionary robotics Reaction–diffusion systems Partial differential equations Dissipative structures Percolation Cellular automata Spatial ecology Self-replication Conversation theory Entropy Feedback Goal-oriented Homeostasis Information theory Operationalization Second-order cybernetics Self-reference System dynamics Systems science Systems thinking Sensemaking Variety Ordinary differential equations Phase space Attractors Population dynamics Chaos Multistability Bifurcation Rational choice theory Bounded rationality A heuristic or heuristic technique ( problem solving , mental shortcut , rule of thumb )

5700-517: Was founded as a distinct discipline at the Dartmouth workshop in 1956, differentiating itself from the broader cybernetics field. After some uneasy coexistence, AI gained funding and prominence. Consequently, cybernetic sciences such as the study of artificial neural networks were downplayed. Similarly, computer science became defined as a distinct academic discipline in the 1950s and early 1960s. The second wave of cybernetics came to prominence from

5776-475: Was problem solving that showed that we operate within what he calls bounded rationality . He coined the term satisficing , which denotes a situation in which people seek solutions, or accept choices or judgements, that are "good enough" for their purposes although they could be optimised. Rudolf Groner analysed the history of heuristics from its roots in ancient Greece up to contemporary work in cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence , proposing

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