What is cybernetics?

The science of communication, control and regulation in biological and abiotic systems. Cybernetics applied to systems engineering mainly refers to engineering cybernetics, including linear system theory, application of probability and statistics methods, optimal control theory, adaptive, self-learning and self-organizing system theory, system identification theory and large-scale system theory.

Control means that the controlled object acts according to people's predetermined requirements. Cybernetics is a science about the control of complex dynamic systems. It is the general law of control and communication in technical devices, biological organisms and human social organizations. Cybernetics is a new frontier subject of modern science and technology. It is the product of mutual penetration of automatic control, electronic technology, radio communication, neurophysiology, biology, psychology, mathematical logic, computer technology, statistical mechanics and other disciplines. The book Cybernetics published by American mathematician Nopertwiener in 1948 laid the theoretical foundation for this new discipline. He defined cybernetics as "the science of control and communication in animals and machines". The automatic control of machine or animal activities in nature can be regarded as the process of information transmission between its components. Cybernetics only studies the information transmission process between objects and process components from the functional analogy of control and technical devices in biological organisms. The concept of information is a basic concept in cybernetics, which is based on information theory. The feedback principle of information theory, which plays an important role in cybernetics, almost all controls include feedback-the information sent by the system, the results produced after acting on the controlled object, and then sent back, which has an impact on the re-output of information. Since 1950s, cybernetics has penetrated into various fields of natural science and social science, and has been widely used in psychology, management, leadership and other disciplines.

Cybernetics has important methodological significance in leadership science. Leading cadres use cybernetics to reveal the universal relationship between things from the perspective of "function" They pay attention to the overall comprehensive dynamic research, unified handling, operation planning, coordination of various departments and feedback processing in the implementation process, so that things can develop according to the predetermined goals.