Advances in Cybernetics Provide a Foundation for the Future

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Advances in Cybernetics Provide a Foundation for the Future

• S. Umpleby, Xiao-hui Wu, Elise Hughes
• Published 2017
• Engineering

Interest in cybernetics declined in North America from the mid 1970s to 2010, as measured by the number of journal articles by North American authors, but increased in Europe and Asia. Since 2010 the number of books on cybernetics in English has increased significantly. Whereas the social science disciplines create descriptions based on either ideas, groups, events or variables, cybernetics provides a multi-disciplinary theory of social change that uses all four types of descriptions. Cyberneticians use models with three structures – regulation, selforganization and reflexivity. These models can be used to describe any systemic problem. Furthermore, cybernetics adds a third approach to philosophy of science. In addition to a normative or a sociological approach to knowledge, cybernetics adds a biological approach. One implication of the biological approach is additional emphasis on ethics.