Teleology which focuses instead on goal-contribution. With the objective goals of organisms being survival and inclusive fitness, Piccinini and Maley define teleological functions to be “a stable contribution by a trait (or component, activity, property) of organisms belonging to a biological population to an objective goal of those organisms.” Julian Bigelow, Arturo Rosenblueth, and Norbert Wiener have conceived of feedback mechanisms as lending a teleology to machinery. Wiener, a mathematician, coined the term 'cybernetics' to denote the study of "teleological mechanisms." Cybernetics is the study of the communication and control of regulatory feedback both in living beings and machines, and in
Norbert Wiener Center for Harmonic Analysis and Applications colloquium, and a keynote lecture. The speakers are top researchers in pure and applied harmonic analysis in academia, government, and industry. The Director of the NWC is John Benedetto. The faculty members include: John Benedetto, Radu Balan, Wojciech Czaja, and Kasso Okoudjou. The current Scientific Development Officers include Michael Dellomo, Jeffrey Sieracki, and Alfredo Nava-Tudela. The current postdoctoral fellows include Xuemei Chen and Benjamin Manning. The associate director of the center is Matthew Begué. A list of all other members, including all graduate students, can be found on the center's official website. Norbert Wiener Center for Harmonic Analysis and Applications