vol 3: Development
5 Cybernetics
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Introduction
The transfinite computer network describes an enormous space of possibility. model In applying this model to the real world, we may see that the 'laws' of physics and biology represent symmetries in this gigantic space. The idea in this section is to integrate the pictures emerging from physics and biology using the general formalism of cybernetics.
Cybernetics (from the Greek word for steering,government or control) is the study of control and communication in the animal and the machine. Wiener Since control and communication are present everywhere, and every level of complexity, cybernetics applies to the whole world. Lovelock. Cybernetics has much to teach us about guiding ourselves toward peace and prosperity.
Living things are clearly capable of effective control of themselves and parts of their environment. Their survival depends upon it. Controlled biological processes range from molecular events (typical duration 1 picosecond) to the evolution of creatures like ourselves (typical duration 3 billion years).
Cybernetics looks at control and communication in a formal abstract way that applies to any entity, be it a physical particle, a person or a galaxy. Ashby Cybernetics began, we might say, when James Watt (1736-1819) sought a way to control the speed of his steam engines in the face of varying loads and boiler pressures. His answer was the mechanical governor. Centrifugal governor - Wikipedia
The governor measures the speed of the engine. If the speed is too low, it provides more steam to speed the engine up. If the speed is too high, the governor reduces steam to slow the engine down. James Clerk Maxwell made a mathematical analysis of the governor, and determined the conditions under which it would be stable. This was the formal beginning of cybernetics. (ASC)
A common fault with controlled systems is that they oscillate in an undesirable fashion and sometime break down entirely. When the engine is going to fast, the governor may shut the steam down so much that the engine begins to run slow. This causes the governor to turn the steam up so much that it goes too fast. If the demand for power is too great, the engine may not be able to meet it even at full throttle. Control theory seeks to discover whether, under what conditions stable control is possible, and where possible how best it may be achieved.
Human societies thrive on stability. We seek to damp out the cycles of feast/famine, wealth/poverty, war/peace etc, and replace them with a steady and predictable environment that enables us to lie in peace. Of course, the chances of life upset our best laid plans, but cybernetic methods help to reveal how much control is possible, and how to improve the governance of our selves and our communities. Barnes
We also enjoy change, but change without disaster, controlled change. We enjoy the excitement riding a roller coaster, but the vast majority of us don't want the pain of a crash. Here the control system must allow the desired changes while preventing the undesirable.
It is clear that much of the current human situation is in need of change. How can we achieve such change without disasters like the war, famine and disease which often accompany revolutions? Gaddis This is the cybernetic question at the theological scale.
As elsewhere on this site, the jump from the study of machines to the study of human communities is accommodated mathematically by the jump from finite to transfinite numbers. This matter is explained in more detail under the heading model.
(revised 3 August 2007)
Further reading
Books
| Ashby, W Ross, An Introduction to Cybernetics, Methuen 1964 'This book is intended to provide [an introduction to cybernetics]. It starts from common-place and well understood concepts, and proceeds step by step to show how these concepts can be made exact, and how they can be developed until they lead into such subjects as feedback, stability, regulation, ultrastability, information, coding, noise and other cybernetic topics' Amazon back |
| Axelrod, Robert, The Complexity of Cooperation: Agent-Based Models of Competition and Collaboration, Princeton University Press 1997 Amazon back |
| Barnes, Peter, Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons, Berrett-Koehler Publishers 2006 Amazon Editorial Reviews Book Description 'In Capitalism 3.0, Peter Barnes redefines the debate about the costs and benefits of the operating system known as the free market. Despite clunky features, early versions of capitalism were somewhat successful. The current model, however, is packed with proprietary features that benefit a lucky few while threatening to crash the system for everyone else. Far from being "free," the market is accessible only to huge corporations that reap the benefits while passing the costs on to the consumer. Barnes maps out a better way. Drawn from his own career as a highly successful entrepreneur, the author's vision of capitalism includes alternatives to the current profit-driven corporate approach, new legal entities, and a more responsible use of markets and property rights. Capitalism 3.0 offers viable solutions to some of the country's most pressing economic, environmental, and social concerns.' Amazon back |
| Barnett, S, and R G Cameron, Introduction to Mathematical Control Theory, Clarendon Press 1985 Jacket: '... This book remains the concise readable account of some basic mathematical aspects of control, concentrating on state-space methods, and emphasizing points of mathematical interest. ... ' Amazon back |
| Beale, R, and T Jackson, Neural Computing: An Introduction, Adam Hilger 1991 Jacket: '... starts from basics and goes on to cover all the most important approaches to the subject. ... The capabilities, advantages and disadvantages of each model are discussed as are possible applications of each. The relationship of the models developed to the brain and its functions are also explored." http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0852742622/tnrp">Amazon back |
| Brillouin, Leon, Science and Information Theory, Academic 1962 Introduction: 'A new territory was conquered for the sciences when the theory of information was recently developed. ... Physics enters the picture when we discover a remarkable likeness between information and entropy. ... The efficiency of an experiment can be defined as the ratio of information obtained to the associated increase in entropy. This efficiency is always smaller than unity, according to the generalised Carnot principle. ... ' Amazon back |
| Dalenoort, G J, and (editor), The Paradigm of Self-Organisation: Current Trends in Self Organisation, Gordon and Breach 1989 Jacket: 'This volume discusses the principles and mechanisms of self-organisation in a range of processes and disciplines, providing a unique and characteristic multidisciplinary approach. Amazon back |
| Gaddis, John Lewis, The Cold War: A New History, The Penguin Press 2005 Jacket: 'Many will remember what it was like to live under the shadow of the Cold War: the ever-present anxiety that at some point, because of some miscalculation or act of hubris, we might find ourselve sin the middle of a nuclear holocaust ... How did this terrible conflict arise? How did wartime allies so quickly become deadly foes after 1945 and divide the world into opposing camps, each armed to the teeth? And how, suddenly, did it all come to an end? Only now that the Cold War has been over for fifteen years can we begin to find a convincing perspective on it. John Lewis Gaddis's masterly book is the first full, major history of the whole conflict and explains not just what happened, but why it happened ... Gaddis has synthesized all the most recent scholarship, but has also used minutes from Politburo meetings, startling information from recently opened Soviet and Asian archives, ... and above all the words of the leading participants themselves -- showing what was realy on the mind of each, with a very dramatic immediacy. ...' Amazon back |
| Kauffman, Stuart, At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Complexity, Oxford University Press 1995 Preface: 'As I will argue in this book, natural selection is important, but it has not laboured alone to craft the fine architectures of the biosphere ... The order of the biological world, I have come to believe ... arises naturally and spontaneously because of the principles of self organisation - laws of complexity that we are just beginning to uncover and understand.' Amazon back |
| Lovelock, James, Ages of Gaia: A Biography of our Living Earth, W W Norton 1995 'This book describes a set of observations about the life of our planet which may, one day, be recognised as one of the major discontinuities in human thought. If Lovelock turns out to be right in his view of things, as I believe he is, we will be viewing the Earth as a coherent system of life, self regulating and self-changing, a sort of immense living organism.' Lewis Thomas Amazon back |
| Sigmund, Karl, Games of Life: Explorations in Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour, Oxford UP 1993 Jacket: 'This book takes us on a tour through the games and computer simulations that are helping us to understand the ecology, evolution and behaviour of real life - from cat and mouse to cellular automata, from the battle of the sexes to artificial life, from poker to prisoner's dilemma.' Amazon back |
| Smolin, Lee, The Life of the Cosmos, Oxford University Pres 1997 Jacket: 'Smolin posits that a process of self-organisation like that of biological evolution shapes the universe, as it developes and eventually reproduces through black holes, each of which may result in a big bang and a new universe. Natural selection may guide the appearance of the laws of physics, favouring those universes which best reproduce. ... Smolin is one of the leading cosmologists at work today, and he writes with an expertise and a force of argument that will command attention throughout the world of physics.' Amazon back |
| Tanenbaum, Andrew S, Computer Networks, Prenctice Hall International 1996 Preface: 'The key to designing a computer network was first enunciated by Julius Caesar: Divide and Conquer. The idea is to design a network as a sequence of layers, or abstract machines, each one based upon the previous one. ... This book uses a model in which networks are divided into seven layers. The structure of the book follows the structure of the model to a considerable extent.' Amazon back |
| Wiener, Norbert, Cybernetics or control and communication in the animal and the machine, MIT Press 1996 The classic founding text of cybernetics. Amazon back |
Papers
| Arthur, W Brian, "Positive feedbacks in the economy", Scientific American, 262, 2, February 1990, page 80-85. 'A new economic theory elucidates mechanisms whereby small chance events early in the history of an industry or technology can tilt the competitive balance.'. back |
| Glatzmaier, Gary A and et al, "The role of the Earth's mantle in controlling the frequency of geomagnetic reversals", Nature, 401, 6756, 28 October 1999, page 885-890. back |
| Gottesman, Daniel and Isaac L. Chuang, "Demonstrating the viability of universal quantum computation using teleportation and single-qubit operations", Nature, 402, 6760, 23 November 1999, page 390-393. back |
| Mayr, Otto, "The Origins of Feedback Control", Scientific American, 223, 4, October 1970, page 110-118. back |
| Schnellnhuber, H J, "'Earth system' analysis and the second Copernican revolution", Nature, 402 supplement, 6761, 2 December 1999, page C19-C23. Impacts of forseeable science: 'Optical magnification instruments once brought about the Copernical revolution that put the Earth in its correct astrophyscial context. Sophisticated information compression techniques including simulation modelling are now ushering in a second 'Copernican' revolution. The latter strives to understand the 'Earth system' as a whole, and to develop, on this cognitive basis, concepts for global environmental management.'. back |
| Smith, H Jesse and et al, "Dual modes of the carbon cycle since the Last Glacial Maximum", Nature, 400, 6741, 15 July 1999, page 248-250. 'The most conspicuous feature of the record of past climate contained in polar ice is the rapid warming which occurs after long intervals of gradual cooling. Here ... [the] global carbon cycle is shown to have operated in two distinct primary modes on the timescale of thousands of years, once when climate was changing relatively slowly and another when warming was rapid ...'. back |
| Watts, Duncan J, Steven H Strogatz, "Collective dynamics of 'small-world' networks", Nature, 393, , 4 June 1998, page 440. 'Networks of coupled dynamical systems have been used to model ... many ... self organising systems. Ordinarily, the connection topology is assumed to be either completely regular or completely random. But many biological, technological and social networks lie somewhere between these two extremes. Here we explore simple models of networks that can be tuned through this middle ground. ... We call them 'small world' networks by analogy with the small-world phenomenon (popularly known as six degrees of separation). ... Models of dynamical systems with small-world coupling display enhanced aignal-propagation seed, computational power, and synchonizability. ...'. back |
Links
| American Society for Cybernetics Origin of Cybernetics 'Many of the concepts included today in cybernetics had their origins long before the word "cybernetics" was associated with them. Self-regulating devices were constructed as early as several hundred years B.C. In the late 1700s Watt's steam engine had a governor. In 1868 James Clerk Maxwell published an article on governors. In the 1940s the study of regulatory processes became a continuing research effort. Two key articles were published in 1943 -- "Behavior, Purpose and Teleology" by Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener, and Julian Bigelow and "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity" by Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts. ' back |
| ASC American Society for Cybernetics '"Use the word `cybernetics', Norbert, because nobody knows what it means. This will always put you at an advantage in arguments." Widely quoted; attributed to Claude Shannon in a letter to Norbert Wiener in the 1940's.' back |
| Bielefeld University Biological Cybernetics / Theoretical Biology 'keywords characterizing our homepage: biology, neurobiology, neuroscience, biological cybernetics, bionics, human arm control, robotics, locomotion, artificial life, artificial intelligence, artificial neural networks, recurrent networks, stick insect, insect walking, crayfish walking, robot walking, walking machine, movement control, motor control, redundant manipulator, bionik, world model, bionic' back |
| Emre Telatar A mathematical theory of communication: Claude E Shannon 'Claude Shannon's ``A mathematical theory of communication'' was first published in two parts in the July and October 1948 editions of the Bell System Technical Journal. ... Here you can find a PostScript (460 Kbytes), gzipped PostScript (146 Kbytes) and pdf (358 Kbytes) version of Shannon's paper. PDF files can be viewed by Adobe's acrobat reader. Tarred and gzipped contents of the directory (63 Kbytes) that contain the LaTeX code for the paper is also available.' back |
| IBM Quantum information and quantum computation 'This page is dedicated to Rolf Landauer (1927-1999) who is largely responsible form making the physics of information a serious subject of scientific study. During his long career at IBM Research, he continually emphasized the connection between information processing and fundamental laws of physics, and discovered the connection between logical irreversibility and heat generation by computers now known as Landauer's principle. Our group's work main work is in quantum information and computation theory, but we also study other aspects of the relation between physics and information processing.' back |
| IIIS: International Institute of Infomratics and Systemics Home Page / Systemics,Cybernetics and Informatics and Information Systems, Analysis and Synthesis - SCI'99/ISAS'99 back |
| Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers IEEE Computer Society 'With nearly 100,000 members, the IEEE Computer Society is the world's leading organization of computer professionals. Founded in 1946, it is the largest of the 36 societies of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The Computer Society's vision is to be the leading provider of technical information and services to the world's computing professionals.' back |
| Principia Cybernetica Project Welcome to the Principia Cybernetica Web Principia Cybernetica tries to tackle age-old philosophical questions with the help of the most recent cybernetic theories and technologies" back |
| Santa Fe Institute Welcome to the Santa Fe Institute Home page: 'The Santa Fe Institute is a private, non-profit, multidisciplinary research and education center, founded in 1984. ... Operating as a small, visiting institution, SFI seeks to catalyze new collaborative, projects that break down the barriers between the traditional disciplines, to spread its ideas and methodologies to other individuals and encourage the practical applications of its results.' back |
| University of Oxford Centre for Quantum Computation "... theoretical and experimental research into all aspects of quantum information processing, and into the implications of the quantum theory of computation for physics itself" back |
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