Perceptual control theory

In a way, cybernetic principles are also substrate-independent, meaning the same abstract feedback relations can characterize a thermostat, an animal, or a human society.

Cybernetics gave birth to new theories and whole fields, including the famous Good Regulator Theorem, Perceptual Control Theory, modern theories of self-organization and complexity science, which are all direct or indirect contributions to theoretical biology.

Another intellectual descendant of cybernetics is systems biology, though it also traces its origins to several other theoretical forebears, including Ludwig von Bertalanfy's General System Theory, which argued that biological phenomena are to be understood in terms of organization and relations among parts rather than through the properties of isolated components.

In 1968, the Serbian systems engineering scientist Mihajlo Masarovic published an essay called Systems Theory and Biology, View of a Theoretician, discussing the application of engineering techniques to biological problems and a search for, quote, general biological laws which govern the behavior and evolution of living matter in a way analogous to the relation of the physical laws and non-living matter.