This book an attempt will be made to outline the principles of cybernetics and relate them to what we know of behaviour, both from the point of view … - Frank Honywill George

Cybernetics is still headline news, and increasingly we hear about its applications to new fields of scientific and industrial endeavour. Stafford Beer's new book Cybernetics and Management is an admirable account on the relation that exist between cybernetics and the problems of management in industry [and]... covers a range of applications that have not previously been dealt with in print.

In many ways it is true to say that syntax is mathematical logic, semantics is philosophy or philosophy of science, and pragmatics is psychology, but these fields are not really all distinct.

Cybernetics is concerned primarily with the construction of theories and models in science, without making a hard and fast distinction between the physical and the biological sciences. The theories and models occur both in symbols and in hardware, and by 'hardware* we shall mean a machine or computer built in terms of physical or chemical, or indeed any handleable parts. Most usually we shall think of hardware as meaning electronic parts such as valves and relays. Cybernetics insists, also, on a further and rather special condition that distinguishes it from ordinary scientific theorizing: it demands a certain standard of effectiveness... The concept of an effective procedure springs primarily from mathematics, where it is called an algorithm... The principal aims of cybernetics may be listed under three headings: (1) To construct an effective theory... [of] the principal functions of the human organism... (2) To produce the models and theory in a manner that realizes the functions of human behaviour by the same logical means as in human beings. This implies the simulation of human operations by machines... (3) To produce models which are constructed from the same colloidal chemical fabrics as are used in human beings.