Cybernetics

CYBERNETICS. Cybernetics is the study of control and communication. Although it is often thought of as primarily the control systems in machines, cybernetic theory can also be applied to biological agents, to systems comprised of either mechanical or biological agents, or both. Of particular interest to cybernetics are systems that are complex, adaptive, and self-regulating through the use of feedback. Norbert Wiener coined the term in 1947 as a transliteration of the Greek kybernetes, which means "steersman," though it was originally used in a broader sense than merely locomotive. Plato used the term to denote the act of governing a populace as well as that of steering a boat. and the term governor derives from the same root. Both terms refer to the control and direction of complex systems.

Cybernetics describes the world in terms of systems and information. A mechanical or biological agent can be considered a hierarchy of interacting networks through which information is moved, created, or transformed. Similarly, a system of agents can also be described and studied through the same concepts of control and feedback. Cybernetics uses mathematical and logical models to describe the flow of information in a system. Since many systems are influenced by random factors, statistical methods are also used to forecast or describe information flow.

The goals of cybernetics are twofold. First, for any given system, cybernetics hopes to advance knowledge of that system by describing the processes that regulate its functioning. Second, the field of cybernetics also seeks to develop laws that describe control processes in general and that are applicable to all types of systems. Cybernetics focuses on the structure and functioning of any given system rather than on the physical makeup of its elements.

The earliest applications of cybernetics were predominantly in engineering and computer science (robotics, circuit design, aiming artillery). Early work by Wiener, Claude Shannon, and John von Neumann was closely allied with the fledgling field of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Since any system that evidences both complexity and self-adaptation can be studied using cybernetics, the basic concepts were soon applied in a variety of fields, including economics (Kenneth Boulding), political science, management and industrial theory (Jay Forrester, Stafford Beer), biology (Warren McCulloch, Humberto Maturana, William Ross Ashby), sociology and anthropology (Gregory Bateson, Stein Braten), and ethics (Valentin Turchin). As cybernetics moved into the social sciences in the 1960s and 1970s, descriptions in the field changed from those of an observer external to the system (e.g., a human observer of a mechanical system) to those of an internal participant (e.g., a human within a political or social community).

Whereas early cyberneticists thought of information as a commodity that flowed through systems, subsequent writers, such as Maturana, have viewed information as the product of a system. In a further step one can think of the system itself as consisting of information. The computer scientist Ray Kurzweil has applied this approach to his understanding of the human being, whereas the physicists Frank Tipler and Stephen Wolfram view information as the building block of the whole universe. For these writers the concept of information informs not only the system's outcomes or activities but is considered the very basis of the system itself.

This final understanding of both mechanical and biological agents as consisting essentially of information leads to the most important philosophical and theological implications of cybernetic theory. A cybernetic view of the human person sees that person as a system composed of information. The concept of cybernetic immortality is based on the assumption that thoughts, memories, feelings, and action define the human person. These are products of consciousness, which is considered an emergent property of the complex system of the brain. In other words, to the cyberneticist, human beings are basically biological machines whose unique identity is found in the patterns that arise and are stored in the neuronal structures of the brain. If these patterns could be replicated—in sophisticated computer technology, for example—the defining characteristics of the person would be preserved. In such an anthropology the soul is considered that part of consciousness that exerts the highest level of control on the system that makes up the human being.

The ability to isolate the cognitive part of the system and preserve its viability past the death of the body is held by some researchers as an alternative to the metaphysical immortality proposed by many religions. Kurzweil suggests the future possibility of a computer-based immortality, in which the contents of the human mind are downloaded to a silicon-based platform. Tipler envisions an eschatology in which the universe will contract to an "omega point" that will contain all the information that has ever existed, including that which makes up each human being. God is essentially the highest level of control in the cybernetic system of the universe, thus becoming identical with the omega point at the final contraction. Tipler notes that this omega point could allow for something not unlike the Christian concept of resurrection of the body, in that the information that makes up any given human being would be available, thus allowing for a reinstantiation of that individual. A cybernetic view of both God and the human person provides a way to maintain belief in a reductionistic materialism without giving up the hope of immortality.

Cybernetic theories have also been used to describe the origin of religion in societies and the development of ethical systems. In general, a cybernetic view of religion sees it as an adaptive mechanism for the survival of groups as they evolve and change in an atmosphere of physical and social competition. Religion becomes one of many feedback mechanisms for regulating the functioning of individuals within the social group.

Artificial Intelligence.

Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics (New York, 1948) introduced the term and the field. A more popular treatment of the field is in Wiener's The Human Use of Human Beings (New York, 1988). William Ross Ashby's An Introduction to Cybernetics (New York, 1956) remains the basic textbook in cybernetic theory. The Principia Cybernetica website, constructed by Frans Heylighen and available at http://pcp.lanl.gov, provides an excellent primer in both the theory and the philosophy of cybernetic thought. Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela, The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding (Boston, 1992), apply cybernetic concepts to human cognition and to human social systems. Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines (New York, 1999) explores the possibility of cybernetic immortality on a computer platform, whereas Frank J. Tipler's The Physics of Immortality (New York, 1994) combines cybernetics with modern physics to present an eschatological vision. Stephen Wolfram, in A New Kind of Science (Champaign, Ill., 2002), presents another view of the universe as cybernetic system.