Polish School of Cybernetics — a dictionary of Marian Mazur's concepts
A dictionary of the concepts of Marian Mazur (1909–1983), the founder of the Polish School of Cybernetics: 309 entries and 313 definitions. Every Polish definition is a verbatim quotation from one of Mazur's three books — Cybernetyczna teoria układów samodzielnych (‘A Cybernetic Theory of Autonomous Systems’, 1966), Jakościowa teoria informacji (‘A Qualitative Theory of Information’, 1970), Cybernetyka i charakter (‘Cybernetics and Character’, 1976) — with the work, year and page; the English definitions are translations of them. Each entry is linked to the concepts its definition rests on and to the entries that use it; the concept graph shows these connections. In Polish, English and Chinese.
Who it is for: anyone who wants to study Mazur's cybernetics directly from his works — students, teachers, researchers, practitioners.
Still a draft: the whole site is a working version. The English and Chinese translations are machine translations under review; until the review is complete, the Polish wording prevails. Some page numbers were worked out from scans of the books.
The dictionary in numbers
- 309 entries — Mazur's concepts in three domains: cybernetics (59), qualitative information theory (135), theory of character (115)
- 313 definitions, each with its source — verbatim quotations in Polish, translations in English
- 704 links: a concept used in the definition of another concept
- 16 levels of definitions — the steps from the concept with the longest definitional chain down to the basic concepts
- 39 bridges between domains: a concept of one domain defined through a concept of another
- 14 concepts used in definitions that are still waiting for an entry of their own — fields for further work
An example entry: homeostat
Term of the month on the site: the organ through which an autonomous system defends its ability to function. An entry looks like this:
homeostat
Domain: cybernetics
The term in three languages: Polski: homeostat · English: homeostat · 中文: 稳态器
homeostat, i.e. an organ for counteracting flows of information and energy that reduce the system's capacity to act upon the environment (Machine translation, under review)
Original:
[…] homeostat, czyli organ do przeciwdziałania przepływom informacji i energii zmniejszających możność oddziaływania systemu na otoczenie […]
Concepts used in the definition: autonomous system, correlator, accumulator
The definitions of 14 other entries make use of this concept: belated reflection, defensive motivation, emotion, extravertism, functional equilibrium, homeostatic potential, introvertism, load, motivation, offensive motivation, perturbation potential, reflection, tension, thinking.
PSC — Polish School of Cybernetics · working version · October 2026