Cybernetics (Norbert Wiener): In his landmark book “Cybernetics,” Wiener proposed modeling scientific phenomena using not energy but which abstract quantity?

Difficulty: Easy

Correct Answer: information

Explanation:


Introduction / Context:
Cybernetics, introduced by Norbert Wiener, unified ideas about control, communication, and feedback in organisms and machines. A key conceptual shift was emphasizing an abstract, measurable quantity that flows through systems and can be encoded, transmitted, and transformed.


Given Data / Assumptions:

  • The question contrasts “energy” with another fundamental concept.
  • We seek the quantity that underpins feedback and communication theory.


Concept / Approach:
Wiener’s cybernetics and Shannon’s information theory placed information at the center of understanding control and communication. While energy drives physical processes, information governs organization, regulation, and signal meaning within feedback loops.


Step-by-Step Solution:
Identify cybernetics’ emphasis: feedback, signals, control.Recall that messages and their statistics are captured by information-theoretic measures.Select “information” as the quantity replacing a purely energetic viewpoint.


Verification / Alternative check:
Canonical summaries of cybernetics define it as “control and communication in the animal and the machine,” centering on information processing, coding, and feedback stability rather than on energy budgets alone.



Why Other Options Are Wrong:
Mathematics: a tool, not the modeled “substance.”


Intelligence: an outcome/process, not the general modeling quantity.


History: unrelated to control dynamics.


None of the above: incorrect; information is the accepted answer.



Common Pitfalls:
Conflating information with meaning; Shannon-style information is about uncertainty reduction, independent of semantics, yet still foundational to control and communication.



Final Answer:
information

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