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The term itself originated in 1947 when Norbert Wiener used it to name a discipline apart from but touching upon such established disciplines as electrical engineering, mathematics, biology, neurophysiolgy, anthropology and psychology. Early applications in the control of physical systems (aiming artillery, desiring electrical circuits and maneuvering simple robots) clarified the fundamental roles of these concepts in engineering; but the relevance to social systems and the softer sciences was also clear from the start. Many researchers from the 1940s through 1960 worked solidly within the tradition of cybernetics without necessarily using the term.

Many a book has borne the title Theory of machines, but it usually contains information about mechanical things, about levers and cogs. Cybernetics, too, is a theory of machines but it treats, not things but ways of behaving. It does not ask what is this thing? But What does it do? Thus it is very interested in such a statement as this variable is undergoing a simple harmonic oscillation and is much less concerned with whether the variable is the position of point on a wheel or a potential in an electric circuit. It is thus essentially functional and behaviouristic.