Source/credit

Shared by Sean Manion, @TheUnjournaling:
https://x.com/TheUnjournaling/status/2096067877493211220

His accompanying framing:

“Cybernetics is interested in matter and energy only insofar as they are bearers of information.”

In 1951, Barrett and Shepard of MIT did a rather comprehensive bibliography of cybernetics with hundreds of citations across half a dozen subcategories. Interesting framing.

A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CYBERNETICS

by F. Dermot Barrett and Herbert A. Shepard
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Introduction

Norbert Wiener defines cybernetics as “the study of messages, and in particular of the effective messages of control,” and as “the entire field of control and communication theory, whether in the machine or in the animal.” His book, Cybernetics, is the central work to which other items in this bibliography are related.

Cybernetics owes many of its elements to the practical science of communication engineering. In recent years the demand for complex communication devices such as television, automatic control systems, and large-scale computing machines made the need for an adequate theory of communication evident. Wiener, Shannon, and many others have contributed to a general theory of communication and control, which Wiener calls cybernetics. For communications engineers, therefore, there is nothing revolutionary in cybernetics as it applies to their own work. For biological and social scientists, however, cybernetics presents a new point of view and system of concepts for studying the organism and its relations with other organisms and the inorganic environment.

The prime concept in cybernetics is information. The term information refers to the representation of an event. If information is transmitted without loss from a transmitter to a receiver, then the pattern which existed among the elements at the transmitter will be represented in the arrangement of other elements at the receiver. Patterns, not elements, are transmitted. Most physical sciences are primarily concerned with the transmission of matter and energy. Cybernetics is interested in matter and energy only insofar as they are bearers of information.

[Page 2]

The central interest of cybernetics is in the way information is used for controlling processes. A control mechanism is a system which uses information from other systems for continuously determining its own action relative to them. Control systems include all those which can be called adjustive or adaptive: servomechanisms, organisms, and social organizations. Thus cybernetics provides conceptual apparatus applicable to an enormous range of phenomena.

In addition, cybernetics provides a new frame of reference for considering some longstanding philosophical problems. The construction of machines which reproduce a set of functions hitherto restricted to organisms has called for a re-examination of such matters as free will, teleology, consciousness and scientific method. Some of the most noteworthy explorations of the metascientific aspects and philosophical implications of cybernetics have been those undertaken by Karl W. Deutsch and by D. M. MacKay.

The bibliography has been selected with the interests of social scientists in mind and engineering applications have been omitted, except for general material on servomechanisms and communication systems. For convenience, the bibliography has been classified under six headings, although some works properly belong in more than one category. The first class, “Popular Expositions” is intended for the casual or lay reader who seeks a non-technical treatment. The core literature is included under the heading “Cybernetics.” The third and fourth categories, “Information Theory and Communication Theory” and “Servomechanisms” represent two major foundations or branches of the science. The fifth class, “Cybernetics Concepts in the Biological and Social Sciences” consists of the literature concerned with applying the viewpoint of cybernetics to the life sciences.

[Page 3]

The rate of output of such literature is increasing rapidly, but the total quantity is still small enough that most of it could be included. It is likely, however, that within a short time some of the material included here will be seen as inferior in quality and of secondary importance. The sixth class, “Relevant Works in Social Science, Biology, and Philosophy” represents a somewhat arbitrary selection. The very relevance of cybernetic notions to many scientific fields has made this necessary. Thus Cannon’s The Wisdom of the Body, written nearly thirty years ago, is undoubtedly a “relevant” work since its viewpoint is in such close harmony with that of cybernetics, whereas Barnard’s Functions of the Executive is a much less clear-cut case, and has been included for the sake of scattered insights, rather than for its general approach.

https://criticalsystemsthinking.com

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/652023

Join the full conversation on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_publicservicetransformation-activity-7500448806606397440-VkuW?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAACuq-oBecVFDW6PCf3lkoG-peMeuLBeoho

Back to term with an inspiring example of #publicservicetransformation that shows how hard the work is!

A lot of public service reform still has a bad habit; it takes a model from somewhere else, gives it a local name, adds a diagram, runs a few workshops, and then does a mishmash of ‘what we were doing anyway’ and whatever they understand of the imported model. And, guess what, it doesn’t stick…

That’s one reason talking to Lee Tillman and Damian Allen from Doncaster Council was so interesting; they weren’t trying to sell me a model.

In fact, they were careful not to. Their Thrive work isn’t presented as a five-step method, a branded product, or a heroic example. It’s much more serious than that – it’s a long-term attempt to change how the council and its partners work with places.

The important word is ‘with’.

Not doing things to places, designing services for places in a meeting room, or importing a success story and hoping the local conditions are roughly similar.

Doncaster has built a nested approach. There’s a ten-year borough strategy, the Team Doncaster partnership, five localities, locality partnerships, delivery networks, six regenerative neighbourhoods, and then work that gets right down to particular streets, schools, parks, landlords, GP practices and households. Inspired by a raft of brilliant thinkers and theories, a synthesis all about right action in context.

That’s what I think matters; a two-way connection of strategy to reality.
In Edlington, the work involved a very specific set of conditions: three streets, absentee landlords, derelict housing, crime, schools with deep relationships, and a need to rebuild trust through visible action. In Highfields, the conditions were different: weaker community capacity, a need for a gathering space, a new CIC, a community house, and even a pump track because that’s what local people and young people said would make a difference.
Same broad principles. Quite different work.

This is what too many discussions of ‘scaling’ (and ‘learning’) miss. You can transfer method, posture, and discipline. You can’t transfer the answer. And the mechanisms for both are quite different!

There is a tendency in public service reform to tidy things up too quickly. We turn situated practice into a model, then turn the model into a presentation, and fret when it doesn’t change the world.

The Doncaster story is more useful because it’s less tidy. It suggests that the real work isn’t to find a better model, but to build the capacity to understand a place, act with the people who have trust there, learn as you go, and keep enough political and organisational authorisation around the work for it to last. If you don’t understand the place, you’re not transforming it. You’re working for your own ego.

I recorded this interview some weeks ago; release delayed as unfortunately we’ve been unable to recover the video from Microsoft Teams! Full audio at link in comments.

What do you take from this story?

The Viable Operating Model: Organisation, Constraint and Human Development

Daniel Nemenyi · Robot Makes Free: The Leibnizian cryptowar of Norbert Wiener (2023)

https://transduction.systems/prior-maps/systemic-evolution/?node=n1&view=full&depth=1&realm=all&status=all

The map was originated by Eric Schwarz in 1996; extended in 1998 with material from Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy; elaborated in 2000–01 for the International Institute for General Systems Studies; and extended in 2016 by Benjamin Hadorn with Beat Hirsbrunner.

Main site

https://transduction.systems

​John A Challoner on facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/ISARC51Sociocybernetics/?multi_permalinks=10167637583268709&notif_id=1787904672000000&notif_t=group_activity&ref=notif

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New paper and course modules: Foundational Causality

Causality is fundamental to systems thinking, explanation, diagnosis and intervention. Yet causal relationships are often represented in highly compressed form: A → B.

My latest General Systems Theory paper, Foundational Causality, asks what lies behind that arrow.

Beginning with processes and physical transfers of matter, energy and embodied information, the paper progressively examines multiple causal contributions, causal chains and networks, PTP and TPT perspectives, recurring causal structures, persistent causal organisation, conditions and constraints, systems and emergence, causal leverage, and the development of causal knowledge.

A central idea is causal decompression: progressively exposing the processes, transfers, conditions and constraints concealed within apparently simple causal relationships.

The paper is accompanied by eleven free course modules (GST 81–91). These take the learner from elementary cause-and-effect reasoning through causal networks and systems to leverage, causal knowledge and the interaction between hypotheses, explanations and theories.

A single flooding example develops throughout the modules so that learners can see a simple causal representation progressively become a systems-level causal analysis.

Recent research in science education has highlighted the importance of mechanistic reasoning, while other recent work has explicitly explored its relationship with systems thinking. The paper approaches that territory from a General Systems Theory perspective.

I would particularly welcome comments, criticisms and suggestions from systems thinkers, educators and researchers.

Alongside the paper I have also published a new set of General Systems Theory course modules featuring plain-English explanations, diagrams, examples, and practical exercises.

Both the paper and the course modules are open access. The paper is available at:

The course materials are available in two ways:

 Open access (self-paced): https://rational-understanding.com/gst-course/

 Supported learning: via Google Classroom through the ISSS Student SIG

Those in full-time or part-time education are especially encouraged to join the Student SIG, where they can benefit from guidance by experienced systems scientists, discussion with fellow learners, and access to a wider international community. To join go to: