What does cybernetics mean?
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary science of control and communication in living organisms and machines. Coined by mathematician Norbert Wiener in his landmark 1948 book of the same name, the field centers on feedback — the process by which a system monitors its own output and adjusts accordingly, as when a thermostat regulates temperature or the human body maintains its internal equilibrium. Drawing on engineering, biology, mathematics, and philosophy, cybernetics offered a unified vocabulary for describing self-regulating behavior across wildly different kinds of systems. Although used far less often today than in its mid-twentieth-century heyday, it profoundly shaped the development of computing, robotics, artificial intelligence, and systems thinking, and it survives actively in academic circles, particularly in second-order cybernetics, which examines the observer's role within a system. Grammatically, cybernetics behaves like physics or economics: a singular field of study that nonetheless takes a plural form.
nounThe interdisciplinary science of communication and control in living organisms and machines, concerned especially with feedback mechanisms and self-regulating systems.
- The science of control and communication in animals and machines, centered on feedback and self-regulation (the original and dominant sense established by Norbert Wiener).
- By extension, the broader theoretical framework for studying complex self-regulating systems in engineering, biology, sociology, and management.
"Her doctoral work in cybernetics explored how feedback loops allow both thermostats and the human body to maintain stable states."
"Wiener's 1948 book Cybernetics laid the foundation for the modern study of feedback systems."
"In the 1950s, researchers applied cybernetic principles to everything from missile guidance to organizational management."
Although spelled as a plural, cybernetics is invariant and takes singular agreement — 'Cybernetics is a young science,' never 'are'. It has no singular form such as '*a cybernetic' in this sense.
"Cybernetics was born from wartime research into anti-aircraft gunnery and prediction."
Cybernetics was named after the Greek word for 'steersman' — the same root that gave English 'governor' — because its founder saw self-regulating machines as helmsmen steering through feedback.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Where does cybernetics come from?
Norbert Wiener coined 'cybernetics' in 1948 from the Greek kybernetes, meaning 'steersman' or 'helmsman' — the same root that gave Latin gubernator and eventually the English 'governor' and 'govern'. He chose it deliberately to signal a science of steering and self-regulation through feedback. The Greek root also underlies the modern prefix 'cyber-', which spread through terms like cyborg and cyberspace, making Wiener's coinage one of the most consequential etymological legacies of twentieth-century science.
Related word forms
How cybernetics is actually used
Always treated as a singular mass noun despite its plural form ('cybernetics is', not 'cybernetics are'), like physics or economics. The term carries an academic, somewhat mid-century flavor — it was hugely influential in the 1940s–60s and remains current in systems theory and some European research traditions, though many of its concerns have been absorbed into computer science, robotics, and AI.
Easily confused with cybernetics
Genetics is the study of heredity and genes, while cybernetics is the study of control and communication via feedback in systems; the two share a similar ending but nothing else.