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Presents the scientific methodology from the enlarged cybernetical perspective that recognizes the anisotropy of time, the probabilistic character of natural laws, and the entry that the incomplete determinism in Nature opens to the occurrence of innovation, growth, organization, teleology communication, control, contest and freedom. The new tier to the methodological edifice that cybernetics provides stands on the earlier tiers, which go back to the Ionians (c. 500 BC). However, the new insights reveal flaws in the earlier tiers, and their removal strengthens the entire edifice. The new concepts of teleological activity and contest allow the clear demarcation of the military sciences as those whose subject matter is teleological activity involving contest. The paramount question “what ought to be done”, outside the empirical realm, is embraced by the scientific methodology. It also embraces the cognitive sciences that ask how the human mind is able to discover, and how the sequence of discoveries might converge to a true description of reality.

Nowadays, to design the information security mechanism for computing and communication systems, there are various approaches available like cryptographic approach, game-theoretic approach, quantitative–qualitative analysis-based approach, cognitive-behavioral approach, digital forensic-based approach and swarm computing-based approach. The contemporary research in these various fields is independent in nature. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between these various approaches to information security and cybernetics.

To investigate the relationship between information security mechanisms and cybernetics, Norbert Wiener’s concepts and philosophy of the cybernetics have been used in the present work. For a detailed study, concepts, techniques and philosophy of the cybernetics have been extracted from the books of Norbert Wiener titled “The human use of human beings” and “Cybernetics or control and communication in the animal and the machine”.

By revisiting the concepts of the cybernetics from the information security perspectives, it has been found that the aspects of information security and the aspects of cybernetics have great bonding.

The present paper demonstrates how bonding between cybernetics and information security can be used to solve some of the complex research challenges in information security area.

Aims to analyse the influence of Norbert Wiener’s ideas on the social sciences and on social systems, including society as a whole. Describes Wiener’s own attitudes regarding the applicability of cybernetics to social systems and his vision on the development of modern society. Highlights sociologists and political scientists who were inspired by his ideas and deals with researchers who tried to apply his ideas to social systems. Concludes by evaluating to what extent specific ideas of Wiener have impacted on the social sciences.

Explores critically the economic thought of Norbert Wiener with special reference to automatization, of which he was the father and philosopher. Considers the concept and theory in economic science and Wiener’s economics as an axiological science. Examines long‐time and short‐time (contest‐free) economic analysis as discussed by Wiener. Further considerations include the analysis of contest and Wiener’s militarology. Automatization is given special reference and Wiener’s analysis is presented and the humane resolution of the problem discussed. Wienierian ideas are further examined and related to the human condition in a final section: The mandate of heaven.

Published posthumously, presented in 1965 at the Wiener Memorial Meeting. Concerned with Norbert Wiener who, while rendering great services to engineering, always remained a pure mathematician. Considers that the principal achievement of Wiener is that he establishes the link between statistical phenomena and the arts of communication and control. Provides examples of Wiener’s method of treating random phenomena and considers it to be very characteristic of his approach to physical problems. Outlines much of Wiener’s works relating to communication and discusses what he believes to be even more important, his contribution to the art of communication. Looks at the relationship of Wiener’s work to Shannon’s, as it was then understood, and to their position in the whole vast field of information theory.

Describes some parts of Wiener’s significant contribution to mathematics in as simple and non‐technical a language as possible. Looks at Wiener’s early research and how he applied integration theory to potential theory, but not without first explaining the background to integration theory. Then describes one of Wiener’s most important works – that on Brownian motion, and how other theories such as harmonic analysis flowed from his study of Brownian motion. Concludes with a brief chronology of Wiener’s life.

This article discusses the foresight of philosopher/mathematician Norbert Wiener who, in the 1940s, founded Information Ethics as a research discipline. Wiener envisioned the coming of an “automatic age” in which information technology would have profound social and ethical impacts upon the world. He predicted, for example, machines that will learn, reason and play games; “automatic factories” that will replace assembly‐line workers and middle managers with computerized devices; workers who will perform their jobs over great distances with the aid of new communication technologies; and people who will gain remarkable powers by adding computerized “prostheses” to their bodies. To analyze the ethical implications of such developments, Wiener presented some principles of justice and employed a powerful practical method of ethical analysis.

A discussion and review of the important biography by Pesi R. Mansani of Norbert Wiener, with comment on the pre‐cybernetic era, Wiener's origins, his post‐doctoral studies, together with his achievements in mathematics, his connection with the USSR, his war‐time activities and, finally, his involvement with cybernetics.

The paper studies the participation of Gregory Bateson at the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics, that would prove to be a real turning point in his intellectual itinerary.

It bases itself on more or less known documents and on the newer studies on early cybernetics, focussing in particular on the earliest Macy meetings.

Being still an anthropologist, Bateson insisted on the importance and lack of theory in social sciences. Arriving at the first Macy meeting, he hoped that the new researches conducted by Norbert Wiener with others would have helped him to clarify the concept of circular causality that he believed to be a very central theoretical notion in social sciences. Indeed, Wiener was strongly sceptical about the inclusion of social sciences in the new cybernetic programs. Nevertheless, Bateson could learn about negative and positive feedback, about how negative feedback was able to explain finality in a non‐metaphysical way, and discovered the specificity of phenomena concerning information. In addition, he became acquainted with Russell's theory of logical types, which resonated in his mind with his ideas about deutero‐learning. Very quickly, his reasoning about circular processes in society began to include also problems of communication and self‐referentiality.

It wants to explain one of the most important moments in Bateson's scientific evolution, emphasizing theoretical problems in social sciences demanding still now a stable clarification.

When confronted with issues dealing with first and second order cybernetics, it seems that the manner of defining the former has been somewhat caricatured. The second appears to sometimes give rise to conclusions which are almost opposite to those of Wiener by questioning the possibility of a control for a system. We find in Wiener’s research a prefiguration of the autonomy concept, which, in our opinion, could bring an explanation – and a solution – in cases where control elicits some perverse effect; an acceptance of positive feedback if it serves a desired purpose; the central importance held for him by ergodic theory that we use in an addendum on imbalanced strange attractors control; the idea of a knowledge which may be the fruit of the control; an interest for logical paradoxes he put in relation to communication in nervous system; and already the notion of dialogue in the core of the relation man/man or man/machine. Of course, Wiener did not accord an equal development to all his insights, but we have not yet finished scrutinizing his writings. First and second order cybernetics perhaps form an agonistic/antagonistic couple of which neither element could overshadow the other.