<robotics> /si:'b*-net'iks/ The study of control and communication in living and man-made systems. The term was first proposed by Norbert Wiener in the book referenced below. Originally, cybernetics drew upon electrical engineering, mathematics, biology, neurophysiology, anthropology, and psychology to study and describe actions, feedback, and response in systems of all kinds. It aims to understand the similarities and differences in internal workings of organic and machine processes and, by formulating abstract concepts common to all systems, to understand their behaviour. Modern "second-order cybernetics" places emphasis on how the process of constructing models of the systems is influenced by those very systems, hence an elegant definition - "applied epistemology". Related recent developments (often referred to as {sciences of complexity}) that are distinguished as separate disciplines are artificial intelligence, neural networks, {systems theory}, and chaos theory, but the boundaries between those and cybernetics proper are not precise. See also robot. The Cybernetics Society (http://cybsoc.org) of the UK. {American Society for Cybernetics (http://asc-cybernetics.org/)}. {IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society (http://isye.gatech.edu/ieee-smc/)}. {International project "Principia Cybernetica" (http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/DEFAULT.html)}. Usenet newsgroup: sci.systems (news:sci.systems). ["Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine", N. Wiener, New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1948] (2002-01-01)

Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with regulatory and purposive systems. The core concept of cybernetics is circular causality or feedback—where the observed outcomes of actions are taken as inputs for further action in ways that support the pursuit and maintenance of particular conditions, or their disruption.

Cybernetics is a transdisciplinary approach for exploring regulatory systems, their structures, constraints, and possibilities, but has other definitions.

Engineering cybernetics also known as technical cybernetics or cybernetic engineering, is the branch of cybernetics concerned with applications in engineering, in fields such as control engineering and robotics.

Second-order cybernetics, also known as the cybernetics of cybernetics, is the recursive application of cybernetics to itself and the reflexive practice of cybernetics according to such a critique. It is cybernetics where "the role of the observer is appreciated and acknowledged rather than disguised, as had become traditional in western science".

The Cybernetics Society is a UK-based learned society that exists to promote the understanding of Cybernetics. The core activity of the Cybernetics Society is the organization and facilitation of scientific meetings, conferences, and social events.

The American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) is an American non-profit scholastic organization for the advancement of cybernetics as a science , a discipline, a meta-discipline and the promotion of cybernetics as basis for an interdisciplinary discourse. The society does this by developing and applying cybernetics’ concepts which are presented and published via its conferences and peer-reviewed publications.

Cybernetics and Systems is a peer-reviewed scientific journal of cybernetics and systems science, including artificial intelligence, computer science, cybernetics, human computer intelligence, information and communication technology, machine learning, and robotics. The journal was established in 1971 as Journal of Cybernetics and obtained its current title in 1980.