cyberTao

The development of the concept of feedback combined with the generalization to open systems was undertaken in '40s by a very eclectic group of people, first of all Norbert Wiener, who defined the term Cybernetics deriving it from the greek Kybernetes (helmsman, pilot) and interpreted as "Control and communication in the animal and the machine" with the hope of a "Human use of Human beings".

Simple cybernetics or first cybernetics, was proposed as a system synthesis to study the design and construction of artificial systems, not necessarily starting from an existing biological system, having as ultimate goal the creation of systems capable of self-organization, ie to offer themselves their own purpose. As analysis aims to provide a range of methods for describing the system. Cybernetics is a science typically interdisciplinary science that is a liaison between various disciplines such as engineering, biology, mathematics, logic, etc.., Who studies animal behavior and any system comparable to a living organism.

The formal theory of machines was developed from feedback Ross Ashby in two key texts:

Two papers are particularly important at this early stage of cybernetics, both of 1943.
In the first,"Behavior, Purpose and Teleology" by Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener and Julian Bigelow in Philosophy of Science, 10(1943), S. 18–24, examines the behavior of the feedbacked machines and argues that the overall behavior of the system has characteristics of Teleology (from the greek telos, "end, purpose"), understood as the philosophical study that assumes that there is a plan, a purpose, a directive, a principle or a purpose in the works and natural processes, illustrated in the following levels of description:

In the second Warren McCulloch e Walter Pitts developed a logical calculus of neuronal activity.

AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR CYBERNETICS