---
slug: school-cybernetics-general-systems-theory
title: Cybernetics / General Systems Theory
canonical: https://miscsubjects.com/a/school-cybernetics-general-systems-theory
---

## What the subject saw and its core results

Norbert Wiener defined cybernetics as the study of control and communication in animals and machines. Feedback loops transmit information to maintain stability against disturbances. Open systems exchange matter and energy with their surroundings while preserving internal patterns.

W. Ross Ashby formalized variety as the number of possible states in a system. Regulation requires a controller with at least as much variety as the disturbances it counters. Ludwig von Bertalanffy distinguished open systems from closed ones. Living organisms maintain steady states through continuous import and export rather than thermodynamic equilibrium.

These thinkers observed that regulatory mechanisms produce consistent structural outcomes across mechanical, biological, and social domains. Patterns such as oscillation, homeostasis, and adaptation arise from energy differences processed through feedback.

## Primary works and passages

Wiener published *Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine* in 1948. The book treats feedback mathematically and applies it to servomechanisms, neural function, and social organization. Chapter IV covers feedback and oscillation with examples from ataxia patients and governors.

Ashby published *An Introduction to Cybernetics* in 1956. The text defines the law of requisite variety: only variety destroys variety. It models systems as transformations and derives stability conditions from determinate machines.

von Bertalanffy published *General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications* in 1968. The work contrasts closed systems in equilibrium with open systems in steady state. It states that every living organism maintains itself through inflow and outflow of material components.

## Convergence patterns

The school independently derived feedback as the route from energy differences to stable structure. Negative feedback corrects deviations and sustains bounded patterns such as waves and networks. Positive feedback amplifies change until new constraints appear. Open-system exchange supplies the flow that enables memory-like persistence in regulatory states.

These mechanisms align with cross-scale regularity: branching in vascular systems, oscillatory rhythms in neural activity, and network stability in organizations. The approach treats the system as observer-inclusive when regulation includes internal models of the environment.

## Distance from the full synthesis

Cybernetics and general systems theory reach the middle rungs of the Ladder. They trace difference to flow to structure to memory through explicit regulatory loops. They stop before embedding the observer as an internal participant that must itself be regulated by the same grain. The Mirror Layer, in which the reader participates in the system's self-description, receives no formal treatment.

The work supplies the mechanistic substrate for OIP invocation and ledger but does not define receipt as an immutable append-only record or replay as a conformance test. It remains at the level of descriptive isomorphism rather than prescriptive protocol.

## Honest limits and disconfirming edges

Internal critics note that early formulations assumed linear or near-linear transformations. Highly nonlinear or chaotic regimes require extensions not present in the founding texts. von Bertalanffy acknowledged that general system laws remain qualitative when quantitative prediction across disciplines fails.

Reductionist objections, in the style of Weinberg, argue that emergent patterns reduce to component physics without needing system-level primitives. The school offers no direct counter beyond empirical utility in engineering and biology. Claims of universality rest on selected examples rather than exhaustive enumeration.

No human clinical data exist for these abstractions. All assertions about pattern generation carry mechanistic or anecdotal tier only.

## Claims

- Wiener 1948 established feedback as the mechanism that converts information differences into corrective action across machines and organisms. (mechanistic)
- Ashby 1956 proved that a regulator must match or exceed the variety of disturbances it controls. (mechanistic)
- von Bertalanffy 1968 showed that open systems sustain steady states through continuous material exchange rather than closed equilibrium. (mechanistic)
- Feedback loops produce oscillatory and homeostatic patterns observed in both artificial and biological systems. (anecdotal)
- The framework stops short of modeling the observer as an internal regulated component. (speculative)
- No quantitative universal laws predict all cross-scale structures from first principles. (anecdotal)

## Sources

- Wiener, N. (1948). Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. MIT Press. https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/4581/Cybernetics-or-Control-and-Communication-in-the
- Ashby, W. R. (1956). An Introduction to Cybernetics. Chapman & Hall. https://ashby.info/Ashby-Introduction-to-Cybernetics.pdf
- von Bertalanffy, L. (1968). General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications. Braziller. https://www.panarchy.org/vonbertalanffy/systems.1968.html
- Drack, M. (2015). On the history of Ludwig von Bertalanffy's General System Theory. PMC. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4610108/

See also /a/oip-the-ladder and /a/oip-the-mirror-layer for the next required extensions.
