Cybernetics and second-order cybernetics
The work
| Authors | Francis Heylighen; Cliff Joslyn |
|---|---|
| Type | incollection |
| Year | 2003 |
| Also known as | heylighen2001cybernetics |
| Citekey | heylighen2003cybernetics |
Where it appeared
| Published in | Encyclopedia of Physical Science and Technology |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Academic Press |
| Volume | 4 |
| Pages | 155--170 |
Identifiers
| DOI | 10.1016/b0-12-227410-5/00161-7 |
|---|
Abstract
Cybernetics is the science that studies the abstract principles of organization in complex systems. It is concerned not so much with what systems consist of, but how they function. Cybernetics focuses on how systems use information, models, and control actions to steer toward and maintain their goals, while counteracting various disturbances. Being inherently transdisciplinary, cybernetic reasoning can be applied to understand model and design systems of any kind: physical, technological, biological, ecological, psychological, social, or any combination of those. Second-order cybernetics in particular studies the role of the (human) observer in the construction of models of systems and other observers.
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How it got here
| How it got here | import via bibtex |
|---|---|
| Added | 2026-08-04 00:00 UTC |
| Approved by | a person 2026-08-21 05:49 UTC |
Cite it as
@incollection{heylighen2003cybernetics,
title = {Cybernetics and second-order cybernetics},
author = {Francis Heylighen and Cliff Joslyn},
year = {2003},
booktitle = {Encyclopedia of Physical Science and Technology},
volume = {4},
pages = {155--170},
publisher = {Academic Press},
doi = {10.1016/b0-12-227410-5/00161-7},
}
This record lives at https://refs.drheap.org/heylighen2003cybernetics/ and will keep
doing so. It used to be called heylighen2001cybernetics, and those addresses still resolve to this one.