"Cybernetics was defined by Wiener as “the science of control and communication, in the animal and the machine” — in a word, as the art of steermanship, and it is to this aspect that the book will be addressed. Co-ordination, regulation and control will be its themes, for these are of the greatest biological and practical interest. We must, therefore, make a study of mechanism; but some introduction is advisable, for cybernetics treats the subject from a new, and therefore unusual, angle... The new point of view should be clearly understood, for any unconscious vacillation between the old and the new is apt to lead to confusion."