Synergetics: a new perspective in interdisciplinary research

Abstract

The term ‘synergetics’ (from Greek ‘coherent action’) was suggested by the German physicist Hermann Haken in the mid-1970s to name a science of complexity, dealing with principles of emergence, self-organisation and self-regulation of complex systems of various ontologies – either man-made (artificial) or natural (self-organised). A precursor of synergetics was cybernetics – an interdisciplinary theory of control and communication in the animal and the machine. The word is of Greek origin as well, meaning ‘governance’, or ‘government’. Cybernetics focused on negative-feedback-based complex systems of causal-chain circularity, i.e. automatic systems capable of restoring their stability within a desired range regardless of any disturbances. It is within cybernetics that the notion of ‘homeostasis’, meaning invariability and balance of states, came to be applied not only to living beings, but also to technological systems. This notion is seen as one of the most important aspects of a system, necessary for maintaining the stability and functioning of the latter.