To read this content please select one of the options below:

About cybernetics, its roots and future

Robert Vallée (Université Paris‐Nord, Paris, France)

Kybernetes

ISSN: 0368-492X

Article publication date: 1 July 2000

382

Abstract

Norbert Wiener and Warren S. McCulloch are presented as the main contemporary initiators of cybernetics. Wiener chose Leibniz as “patron saint” of cybernetics because of his works on general logics and binary arithmetics. On the contrary McCulloch chose Descartes, having observed the intervention of a feedback in his conceptions about perception and consecutive action. The two paradigmatic views of Wiener and McCulloch may indicate two streams of evolution for cybernetics, leading, on the one side, to general views about perception and action or “epistemo‐praxiology” and, on the other side, to considerations about interacting systems such as a generalized world‐wide network comparable to a “creature of gigantic dimensions” covering the globe.

Keywords

Citation

Vallée, R. (2000), "About cybernetics, its roots and future", Kybernetes, Vol. 29 No. 5/6, pp. 573-575. https://doi.org/10.1108/03684920010333053

Publisher

:

MCB UP Ltd

Copyright © 2000, MCB UP Limited

Related articles