Editing Cybernetics (section)

== Overview ==

=== Etymology ===
The term "'''cybernetics'''" comes from the Greek word "'''kybernetes'''," which means "governor" or "helmsman," and was coined by mathematician [[Norbert Wiener]] in the late 1940s. The word '''organism''' comes from [[Royal Society]] - simply meaning meaning a self-organizing system. With cybernetics metaphors of organism come full circle in hypostasis as Cybernetics. “Self organizing systems,” they tell us, must be seen as “organisms” - a term originally meaning nothing but a self organizing system.

=== Interdisciplinary ===
Essentially interdisciplinary, Cybernetics explores the structure, function, and processes of systems and how they can be controlled and communicated. The life-blood of Cybernetics is information, which is concerted to coordinate and regulate biological, mechanical, or social systems. Imperative is that these systems are not considered as discontinuous. Taking as essential that each is a system regulated by information, insights from one field are broadly applied to others, generating novel concepts and understandings. This attitude is largely responsible for both the vitality and the failures of Cybernetics as a paradigm.

Cybernetics has had a profound impact on fields ranging from engineering and computer science to biology and psychology. It has been used to develop self-regulating machines and systems, to model and simulate complex biological and ecological systems, and to study the behavior of social and economic systems.