World War II created a need for more advanced information processing systems for war technology (e.g. radar and sonar) which led to the development of electronic computers. Computers are unique in that they neither generate power nor manufacture a tangible product, they simply process information. Understanding the computer required the development of new ways to model the flow and transformation of information. These models were to have a strong influence on cognitive psychology (see 'Human Information Processing' in this history).
In a related development, the war led to advances in goal-directed/self-regulating systems (e.g. guided missiles, which must regulate their behavior to stay on course to their target) A new branch of mathematics, named 'cybernetics' was developed to model the behavior of these goal-directed/self-regulating systems. The anthropologist Gregory Bateson took the principles of cybernetics and applied them to the life sciences. He recognized that an understanding of systems could be applied to a wide variety of settings: tide pools, forests, families, computers, cultures and individual behavior. The principles of systems provide the pattern that connects all of the biological and social sciences. Bateson went on to propose a new approach to understanding the mind, basing it upon the study of the flow of information within systems,