"Big whirls have little whirls, That feed on their velocity; And little whirls have lesser whirls, And so on to viscosity."
— Lewis Fry Richardson
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A concept that is central to all systems is feedback. Every object or organism within a system is influenced by its own actions as well as its surrounding environment. Many phenomena in nature correspond to the feedback model. One example is thermoregulation in warm-blooded animals. Cooling of the blood stimulates certain centers in the brain which "turn on" heat-producing mechanisms in the body. The body temperature is then monitored back to the center so that temperature is maintained at a constant level.
The feedback metaphor is shown in the diagram shown above. Here, the fish's current swimming speed becomes the input value. The fish's eyes and lateral lines sense distances to nearest neighbors. This information becomes the environmental values received by the fish's internal processor. Based on the input values, the processor causes corrections to be made to the swimming speed and direction values. These values become the new swimming speed inputs into the feedback machine.
The term cybernetics derives from a Greek word which means "steersman", and which is the origin of English words such as "govern". Cybernetics is the study of feedback and derived concepts such as communication and control in living organisms, machines and organizations. Cybernetics focuses on how anything (digital, mechanical or biological) processes information, reacts to information, and changes or can be changed to better accomplish the first two tasks.
