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Engineering Cybernetics
Engineering cybernetics also known as technical cybernetics or cybernetic engineering, is the branch of cybernetics concerned with applications in engineering, in fields such as control engineering and robotics. History Qian Xuesen (Hsue-Shen Tsien) defined engineering cybernetics as a theoretical field of "engineering science", the purpose of which is to "study those parts of the broad science of cybernetics which have direct engineering applications in designing controlled or guided systems". Published in 1954, Qian's published work "Engineering Cybernetics" describes the mathematical and engineering concepts of cybernetic ideas as understood at the time, breaking them down into granular scientific concepts for application. Qian's work is notable for going beyond model-based theories and arguing for the necessity of a new design principle for types of system the properties and characteristics of which are largely unknown. In the 2020s, concerns with the social consequences of cyb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Control Engineering
Control engineering or control systems engineering is an engineering discipline that deals with control systems, applying control theory to design equipment and systems with desired behaviors in control environments. The discipline of controls overlaps and is usually taught along with electrical engineering and mechanical engineering at many institutions around the world. The practice uses sensors and detectors to measure the output performance of the process being controlled; these measurements are used to provide corrective feedback helping to achieve the desired performance. Systems designed to perform without requiring human input are called automatic control systems (such as cruise control for regulating the speed of a car). Multi-disciplinary in nature, control systems engineering activities focus on implementation of control systems mainly derived by mathematical modeling of a diverse range of systems. Overview Modern day control engineering is a relatively new field of s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cybernetics Society
The Cybernetics Society is a UK-based learned society that exists to promote the understanding of Cybernetics. The core activity of the Cybernetics Society is the organization and facilitation of scientific meetings, conferences, and social events. The society's website provides information and news items for professionals in the field and the general audience in order to improve the understanding of cybernetics and associated disciplines. Among the activities of the Society are: * ''Annual Conference'': Annual conferences of the Cybernetics Society are held since 1973. * ''CYBCOM'': CYBCOM is a Cybernetics discussion group. * ''Fellows of the Cybernetics Society'': Some of the numerous fellows are Ranulph Glanville, Charles Hampden-Turner, Mick Ashby (Ethical regulator), Dr D.J. Stewart (Nudge theory), Dr James Wilk (Nudge theory), Dr Martin Smith and Dr David Dewhurst. * ''Honorary fellows'' : Among those awarded by the Cybernetics Society are: Eric Ash, Anthony Stafford Beer, Mar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viable System Model
The viable system model (VSM) is a model of the organizational structure of any autonomous system capable of producing itself. A viable system is any system organised in such a way as to meet the demands of surviving in the changing environment. One of the prime features of systems that survive is that they are adaptable. The VSM expresses a model for a viable system, which is an abstracted cybernetic (regulation theory) description that is claimed to be applicable to any organisation that is a viable system and capable of autonomy. Overview The model was developed by operations research theorist and cybernetician Stafford Beer in his book ''Brain of the Firm'' (1972). Together with Beer's earlier works on cybernetics applied to management, this book effectively founded management cybernetics. The first thing to note about the cybernetic theory of organizations encapsulated in the VSM is that viable systems are recursive; viable systems contain viable systems that can be modeled ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viable System Theory
Viable system theory (VST) concerns cybernetic processes in relation to the development/evolution of dynamical systems. They are considered to be living systems in the sense that they are complex and adaptive, can learn, and are capable of maintaining an autonomous existence, at least within the confines of their constraints. These attributes involve the maintenance of internal stability through adaptation to changing environments. One can distinguish between two strands such theory: formal systems and principally non-formal system. Formal viable system theory is normally referred to as viability theory, and provides a mathematical approach to explore the dynamics of complex systems set within the context of control theory. In contrast, principally non-formal viable system theory is concerned with descriptive approaches to the study of viability through the processes of control and communication, though these theories may have mathematical descriptions associated with them. Hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Variety (cybernetics)
In cybernetics, the term variety denotes the total number of distinguishable elements of a set, most often the set of states, inputs, or outputs of a finite-state machine or transformation, or the binary logarithm of the same quantity. Variety is used in cybernetics as an information theory that is easily related to deterministic finite automata, and less formally as a conceptual tool for thinking about organization, regulation, and stability. It is an early theory of complexity in automata, complex systems, and operations research. Overview The term "variety" was introduced by W. Ross Ashby to extend his analysis of machines to their set of possible behaviors. Ashby says: The word variety, in relation to a set of distinguishable elements, will be used to mean either (i) the number of distinct elements, or (ii) the logarithm to the base 2 of the number, the context indicating the sense used. In the second case, variety is measured in bits. For example, a machine with s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tektology
Tektology (sometimes transliterated as tectology) is a term used by Alexander Bogdanov to describe a new universal science that consisted of unifying all social, biological and physical sciences by considering them as systems of relationships and by seeking the organizational principles that underlie all systems. Tektology is now regarded as a precursor of systems theory and related aspects of synergetics. The word "tectology" was developed by Ernst Haeckel, but Bogdanov used it for a different purpose. Overview His work ''Tektology: Universal Organization Science'', published in Russia between 1912 and 1917, anticipated many of the ideas that were popularized later by Norbert Wiener in Cybernetics and Ludwig von Bertalanffy in the General Systems Theory. There are suggestions that both Wiener and von Bertalanffy might have read the German edition of ''Tektology'' which was published in 1928. In ''Sources and Precursors of Bogdanov's Tectology'', James White (1998) acknowledged ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Synergetics (Haken)
Synergetics is an interdisciplinary science explaining the formation and self-organization of patterns and structures in open systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. It is founded by Hermann Haken, inspired by the laser theory. Haken's interpretation of the laser principles as self-organization of non-equilibrium systems paved the way at the end of the 1960s to the development of synergetics. One of his successful popular books is ''Erfolgsgeheimnisse der Natur'', translated into English as ''The Science of Structure: Synergetics''. Self-organization requires a 'macroscopic' system, consisting of many nonlinearly interacting subsystems. Depending on the external control parameters (environment, energy fluxes) self-organization takes place. Order-parameter concept Essential in synergetics is the order-parameter concept which was originally introduced in the Ginzburg–Landau theory in order to describe phase transitions in thermodynamics. The order parameter concept is general ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Superorganism
A superorganism or supraorganism is a group of synergetically interacting organisms of the same species. A community of synergetically interacting organisms of different species is called a holobiont. Concept The term superorganism is used most often to describe a social unit of eusocial animals, where division of labour is highly specialised and where individuals are not able to survive by themselves for extended periods. Ants are the best-known example of such a superorganism. A superorganism can be defined as "a collection of agents which can act in concert to produce phenomena governed by the collective", phenomena being any activity "the hive wants" such as ants collecting food and avoiding predators, or bees choosing a new nest site. In challenging environments, micro organisms collaborate and evolve together to process unlikely sources of nutrients such as methane. This process called syntrophy ("eating together") might be linked to the evolution of eukaryote cells and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ratio Club
The Ratio Club was a small British informal dining club from 1949 to 1958 of young psychiatrists, psychologists, physiologists, mathematicians and engineers who met to discuss issues in cybernetics., p. 95. History The idea of the club arose from a symposium on animal behaviour held in July 1949 by the Society of Experimental Biology in Cambridge. The club was founded by the neurologist John Bates, with other notable members such as W. Ross Ashby. The name ''Ratio'' was suggested by Albert Uttley, it being the Latin root meaning "computation or the faculty of mind which calculates, plans and reasons". He pointed out that it is also the root of ''rationarium'', meaning a statistical account, and ''ratiocinatius'', meaning argumentative. The use was probably inspired by an earlier suggestion by Donald Mackay of the 'MR club', from ''Machina ratiocinatrix'', a term used by Norbert Wiener in the introduction to his then recently published book '' Cybernetics, or Control and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Principia Cybernetica
Principia Cybernetica is an international cooperation of scientists in the field of cybernetics and systems science, especially known for their website, Principia Cybernetica. They have dedicated their organization to what they call "a computer-supported evolutionary-systemic philosophy, in the context of the transdisciplinary academic fields of Systems Science and Cybernetics". Organisation Principia Cybernetica was initiated in 1989 in the USA by Cliff Joslyn and Valentin Turchin, and a year later broadened to Europe with Francis Heylighen from Belgium joining their cooperation. Major activities of the Principia Cybernetica Project are: * Principia Cybernetica Web: an online encyclopedia * Web Dictionary of Cybernetics and Systems; an online dictionary * Newsletter Principia Cybernetica News * Conferences and traditional publications The organization is associated with: * American Society for Cybernetics. * Evolution, Complexity and Cognition group: a transdisciplinary resea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Industrial Ecology
Industrial ecology (IE) is the study of material and energy flows through industrial systems. The global industrial economy can be modelled as a network of industrial processes that extract resources from the Earth and transform those resources into products and services which can be bought and sold to meet the needs of humanity. Industrial ecology seeks to quantify the material flows and document the industrial processes that make modern society function. Industrial ecologists are often concerned with the impacts that industrial activities have on the environment, with use of the planet's supply of natural resources, and with problems of waste disposal. Industrial ecology is a young but growing multidisciplinary field of research which combines aspects of engineering, economics, sociology, toxicology and the natural sciences. Industrial ecology has been defined as a "systems-based, multidisciplinary discourse that seeks to understand emergent behavior of complex integrated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gaia Hypothesis
The Gaia hypothesis (), also known as the Gaia theory, Gaia paradigm, or the Gaia principle, proposes that living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a synergistic and self-regulating, complex system that helps to maintain and perpetuate the conditions for life on the planet. The hypothesis was formulated by the chemist James Lovelock and co-developed by the microbiologist Lynn Margulis in the 1970s. Lovelock named the idea after Gaia, the primordial goddess who personified the Earth in Greek mythology. The suggestion that the theory should be called "the Gaia hypothesis" came from Lovelock's neighbour, William Golding. In 2006, the Geological Society of London awarded Lovelock the Wollaston Medal in part for his work on the Gaia hypothesis. Topics related to the hypothesis include how the biosphere and the evolution of organisms affect the stability of global temperature, salinity of seawater, atmospheric oxygen levels, the maintenance of a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
