Cybernetics Forrester at MIT in the 1950s, is a related field. Cybernetics has been defined in a variety of ways, by a variety of people, from a variety of disciplines. Cybernetician Stuart Umpleby reports some notable definitions: Other notable definitions include: The term "cybernetics" stems from κυβερνήτης ("cybernḗtēs") "steersman, governor, pilot, or rudder". As with the ancient Greek pilot, independence of thought is important in cybernetics. French physicist and mathematician André-Marie Ampère first coined the word "cybernetique" in his 1834 essay "Essai sur la philosophie des sciences" to describe the science of civil government. The term was borrowed by Norbert Wiener,
System work by pushing on it). In 1850, the German physicist Rudolf Clausius generalized this picture to include the concept of the surroundings and began to use the term "working body" when referring to the system. The biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) became one of the pioneers of the general systems theory. In 1945 he introduced "models, principles, and laws that apply to generalized systems or their subclasses, irrespective of their particular kind, the nature of their component elements, and the relation or 'forces' between them." Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) and Ross Ashby (1903–1972), who pioneered the use of mathematics to study