New Cybernetics and the Application of its Principles in Physics

The key idea in cybernetics is feedback [1]. It is a closed cycle: the object affects itself through other objects. Within the scope of the new cybernetics [2, 3, 4, 5], this idea has been developed further the cyberneticians (investigators and observers) and cybernetics (the studied/observed system) influence each other and thus create feedback. The new cybernetics is otherwise known as the cybernetics of cybernetics, or second-order cybernetics. Heinz von Foerster attributes the origin of second-order cybernetics to the attempts of classical cyberneticians to construct a model of the mind [2]: “a brain is required to write a theory of a brain. From this follows that a theory of the brain, that has any aspirations for completeness, has to account for the writing of this theory. And even more fascinating, the writer of this theory has to account for her or himself. Translated into the domain of cybernetics; the cybernetician, by entering his own domain, has to account for his or her own activity. Cybernetics then becomes cybernetics of cybernetics, or second-order cybernetics.”