the evolution of cybernetics from the beginning to our days curs 2

Fundamentals of cybernetics, 27 february 2015

1.The Evolution of Cybernetics from the Beginning to our Days

2.Definitions of Cybernetics. The Main Contributions to the

Progresses of Cybernetics


- Cybernetics is based on two underlying concepts – “information” and the

“system” - which are fundamental to all natural and social processes.

- One fundamental insight is that it is not the material and energy in a system

that are the decisive factors, but the information that orders and organizes

the basic elements.

- The component elements only become a system through the information.


The central discovery of cybernetics was that there are natural laws

that define and determine the control of all systems (Malik 1998).


Cybernetics conducts research into the same phenomenon in all areas,

whether in nature or society, that is, the creation and directing of

states.

• The behavior of a system can be described as a sequence of states

It concentrates on one aspect of the behaviour of dynamic systems:

steering and regulation processes.


- The circuit as a steering process describes a self-regulating system

(e.g. a company) in which a target value - an objective - is set. The

central characteristic of this concept is the existence of a regulator

that assesses the state of the system using certain target parameters.

- In the case of differences (from the normal states), the system

autonomously sets previously defined corrections in order to restore

the programmed target state.

- This feedback leads to the permanent maintenance of a state of

stability in the system.


Example: One frequently cited analogy for a self-regulating system is

the human body. The body temperature of a human being is defined as

normal within a relatively narrow range between 36 C and 37 C. lf the

temperature rises above the critical mark, the organism reacts by

sweating, which cools the surface temperature by evaporation and

ideally brings it back within the normal temperature range.

Conversely, if the organism falls below a critical temperature point, it

causes increased physical movement in the form of shivering, as a

result of which the body temperature rises again.


The described processes of steering, regulation and adjustment have

one thing in common: the intake, processing and communication of

information.

Information is the crucial factor for the activity of an element or a

system. To ensure that the elements of the system receive purpose-

related knowledge, processes for the transmission of information are

required.


- Since cybernetics is focused on complex, dynamic systems that

cannot be accurately described and whose behaviour is

unpredictable, the black box theory' is often applied

- With the help of the black box technique, the behaviour of real

systems can be simulated on the basis of models; this enables

complex reality not only to be explored, but also actuaIly to be

shaped (Beer 1962).


Example: An Enterprise's strategic options

The more complex an enterprise is, the greater are its strategic options,

and the more varied are the ways in which it can respond to

environmental changes in the market, or with customers or suppliers.

At the same time, it is a more difficult and demanding task to keep the

system under control and to choose and use the optimum options from

the many possibilities available.


- It is a logical conclusion that complex systems can be brought under

control only by complex means.

- The law of requisite variety developed by neurophysiologist and

cyberneticist W.R Ashby supplies the answer to this critical question.

In order to bring a system under control, at least as much variety

(complexity) is needed as the system itself possesses

- Complexity can be controlled only by complexity, or as Ashby puts it:

only variety can absorb variety.


- The law of requisite variety demands that the variety available for

directing the intended objectives has to be at least as high as the

variety of the system to be directed.


First order cybernetics, early cybernetics

Norbert Wiener founder of cybernetics (1948)

During World War II, Wiener worked on guided missile technology, and

studied how sophisticated electronics used the feedback principle -- as when a

missile changes its flight in response to its current position and direction. He

noticed that the feedback principle is also a key feature of life forms from the

simplest plants to the most complex animals, which change their actions in

response to their environment. Wiener developed this concept into the field of

cybernetics, concerning the combination of man and electronics, which he first

published in 1948 in the book Cybernetics.


First order cybernetics

- the systems sciences

- Cybernetics had from the beginning been interested in the similarities

between autonomous, living systems and machines

- an engineer, scientist, or "first-order" cyberneticist, will study a

system as if it were a passive, objectively given "thing", that can be

freely observed, manipulated, and taken apart.


Definitions

• Ampere: the science of government

• Norbert Wiener: the science of control and communication in

animal and machine

• Stafford Beer: the science of effective organization


First order cybernetics

- The law of requisite variety

- Self-organization

- Regulation


The law of requisite variety

• Information and selection

– “The amount of selection that can be performed is limited by

the amount of information available”

• Regulator and regulated

– “The variety in a regulator must be equal to or greater than the

variety in the system being regulated”


Examples

- A quantitative relationship between information and selection:

admitting students to a university

- The variety in the regulator must be at least as great as the variety in

the system being regulated: buying a computer


Ashby’s theory of adaptation

- A system can learn if it is able to acquire a pattern of behaviour that is

successful in a particular environment

- This requires not repeating unsuccessful actions and repeating

successful actions

- A system can adapt if it can learn a new pattern of behaviour after

recognizing that the environment has changed and that the old

pattern of behaviour is not working


Ashby’s principle of self-organization

• Any isolated, determinate, dynamic system obeying unchanging laws

will develop organisms that are adapted to their environments

• Organisms and environments taken together constitute the self-

organizing system


Stefan Odobleja- contribution to the foundations of cybernetics

https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Comp/CompJurc.htm

https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Comp/CompJurc.htm


Second order cybernetics (early 1970)

- exploring the "cybernetics of cybernetics", the "cybernetics of

observing systems", or "reflection on reflection on cybernetics"

- second-order cybernetics studies how observers construct models of

other cybernetic systems

- observer and observed cannot be separated, and the result of

observations will depend on their interaction.

- the observer too is a cybernetic system, trying to construct a model of

another cybernetic system - the philosophy of constructivism


Second order cybernetics

- the recognition that all our knowledge of systems is mediated by our

simplified representations-or models-of them, which necessarily ignore

those aspects of the system which are irrelevant to the purposes for

which the model is constructed.

- a biological view of epistemology ("theory of knowledge"): how

the brain functions


Autopoiesis (Maturana and Varela)

- The origin of the term was in biology: how to distinguish living from

non-living systems

- Refers to a system capable of reproducing and maintaining itself

- Autopoiesis means “self production”: the biological processes that

preserve life or the processes that maintain a corporation


Third order cybernetics

- in principle, represents the current state of the cybernetic science

- the observer is understood to be part of a coevolving system - the

focus is on how observers and systems co-evolve across different

social systems.

- in the enterprise as a system, all subsystems can be structured as

cybernetic control circuits

- the total system is a multi-level integrated control circuit with varying

degrees of complexity.


Third order cybernetics

- When cybernetic principles are transferred to a business system, the states of

a system must first be assessed. According to cybernetic thinking, target

values are needed for this purpose.

- Social and economic systems can survive for a long time only if they react

and adapt successfully to the disturbances (disasters, crisis, wars, radical

technological innovations, etc.) and threats

- Every social system: (i) is composed of a number of agents with different

individual features, social roles, economic motivations, different group

memberships, and so on, (ii) represents a complex entity, capable of adapting

to disturbances (which do not overwhelm the system).


COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS

Definition A CAS consists of inhomogeneous, interacting adaptive

agents. Adaptive means capable of learning.

- An emergent property of a CAS is a property of the system as a whole

which does not exist at the individual elements (agents) level.

- Therefore to understand a complex system one has to study the system

as a whole and not to decompose it into its constituents.


- CAS approach studies how complex systems interact and exchange

information with their environment in order to maintain over time

their internal structure and the network of vital processes

- The term CAS refers to a system (not exclusively of a social or

economic nature but of an organizational one as well) with the

following properties:

o It is composed of a large number of primitive components, or

“agents” different in nature (men, animals, plants, robots,

scientific theories, neurons, etc.);


o Their number is not always fixed, so that the system can often be

considered open; thus, it may be difficult or impossible to define

system boundaries;

o It produces many types of different interactions among the

agents and between the agents and their environment; these

interactions are in the form of reinforcing and balancing loops,

which make the interactions nonlinear since, as we know, small

actions can produce significant changes in the system;

o The agents are structurally coupled to other agents and to the

environment, and they are subject to many environmental

constraints;


o As a consequence of the interactions among the agents, the

system’s behaviour evolves over time;

o Unanticipated global properties or patterns emerge as a result of

often nonlinear spatial–temporal interactions among a large

number of component systems at different levels of organization

The Third Order Cybernetics is the cybernetics that studies societal

systems, that are the society, the economy, the population etc


The Main Contributions to the Progresses of Cybernetics

W. Ross Ashby

- psychiatrist; one of the founding fathers of cybernetics; law of requisite

variety,principle of self-organization, and law of regulating models.

Stafford Beer

- management cyberneticist; creator of the Viable System Model (VSM)

Gordon Pask

- creator of conversation theory: second order cybernetic concepts and

applications to education.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy

- biologist; founder of General System Theory.


John von Neumann

- mathematician; founding father in the domains of, game theory

Heinz von Foerster is well-known for many contributions of the Second

order Cybernetics:

• The mechanism of memory

• An equation describing population growth

• A thought experiment illustrating self-organization

Gregory Bateson

- anthropologist, he looked at parallels between mind and natural evolution.


Jay Forrester

- engineer; creator of system dynamics, applications to the modelling of

industry development, cities and the world

Humberto Maturana

- biologist; creator together with F. Varela of the theory of autopoiesis.

- Maturana and Varela are considered the main leaders of the second

order cybernetics.

Warren McCulloch

- neurophysiologist; first to develop mathematical models of neural networks.

Ilya Prigogine

- Nobel Prize in chemistry; studied thermodynamical self-organization,

irreversibility and dissipative structures.


Claude Shannon

- founder of information theory: Information is that which reduces uncertainty

Herbert A. Simon:

- Nobel prize in economics, made fundamental contributions to Artificial

Intelligence, Cognitive Psychology, Management, philosophy of science, and

complex systems.

Stuart Anspach Umpleby- helped to create social cybernetics


The variables and their variations are what interest the

systems thinker!

the evolution of cybernetics from the beginning to our days curs 2

Documents

definitions of cybernetics

evolution of cybernetics

selfregulating system

body temperature

normal temperature range

surface temperature

transmission of information

communication of information