Lectures on Elementary Cybernetics

Contents. Lecture videos and slides:

1. Introduction
2. Research on Complex Systems
3. Towards Modeling of Emergence
4. Neocybernetic Basic Models
5. Association to Populations
6. Role of Control
7. Emergent Models
8. Practical Experiments
9. About “Artificial Evolution”
10. Special Challenge: Cognitive Systems
11. Power of Analogies
12. Philosophical Consequences

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∞. Convergence of Diversions (2010)
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ω+1. Transfinite Considerations (2011)
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ω+2. Book on Enformation Theory (2012) – book 244 p.
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ω+3. Some Glimpses and the Big Picture (2013)
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Enformation Theory: “Physical Vitalism” (2013) – slides, kalvot
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Final Lecture: Mental Vitalism (2014) – book 324 p.

This course offers postgraduate students a view towards the possibilities of tomorrow’s cybernetics, concentrating consistently on the neocybernetic framework. For those who already know control theory, the course opens up new horizons, coupling holistic perspectives with engineering-like reductionism. The course has been lectured at Helsinki University of Technology – TKK since 2005. The official page of the course can be found in the Noppa-portal. During 2010-2014 the course was instructed by Petri Lievonen based on lecture videos and slides by Heikki Hyötyniemi.

There are 12+3 lectures and writing of an essay where students can apply the intuitions in their own application fields. Some examples accompany the lectures to get acquainted with the mathematical tools. The students are asked to ponder on the lecture topics in writing, so that the emergence of the “cybernetic thinking” becomes hopefully documented. In addition to the public lecture videos and slides, much of the course material can be found in the research report on neocybernetics (2006) and in the book (2013, see video and the five-part article on enformation theory).

Authentic comment: “This is perhaps the most interesting course at TKK!”