cybernetics

cybernetics [Gr.,=steersman], term coined by American mathematician Norbert Wiener to refer to the general analysis of control systems and communication systems in living organisms and machines. In cybernetics, analogies are drawn between the functioning of the brain and nervous system and the computer and other electronic systems. The science overlaps the fields of neurophysiology, information theory , computing machinery, and automation . See servomechanism .

See N. Wiener, Cybernetics (rev. ed. 1961) and The Human Use of Human Beings (1967) F. H. Fuchs, The Brain as a Computer (1973).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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