 Systems theorists in the 1940s and 1950s began to investigate feedback mechanisms of regulation and control, such as electronic circuits that loop their outputs back into their inputs in order to arrive at a stable equilibrium. Wiener (1948, 1950) applies this “cybernetics” to social systems, as do Mead et al. 1950–1956, Parsons 1951, Ashby 1956. Bateson (1972) elaborates these applications, describing social systems as involving homeostasis, i.e., mechanisms that self-correct to stabilize their properties.