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A teoria cibernética de Wiener, da década de 1940, originou pesquisas e influenciou vários campos científicos, incluindo a antropologia. Atualmente, a cibernética está praticamente esquecida como uma ciência, mas deixou importantes resíduos para a cultura. Esses resíduos, dentre outros provenientes do discurso técnico e cientifico, são meios criativos para as reavaliações do consenso social acerca dos significados das coisas. Resultados de um processo de reinvenção cultural, o ciborgue e o ciberespaço são referências emblemáticas de uma nova ordem do real que projeta o sistema antigo de interpretação da realidade sob novas formas, restringidas pelas dadas possibilidades históricas e culturais de significação.The Wiener's cybernetics theory, from 1940's, has inspired researches and has influenced many scientific fields, including anthropology. Nowadays, the cybernetics is almost forgotten as a science but it has left important residues for the culture. These residues, amongst others from scientific and technical discourse, are creative means for the revaluations of social consensus about the meanings of things. As results of cultural process of reinvention, the cyborg and the cyberspace are emblematic references of a new order of real, which projects the old interpretational system of reality in new forms, constrained by its given historical and cultural possibilities of signification.

In the course of our studies on the fate of cytoplasmic receptors for androgens in various target organs, such a receptor has been partially characterized in rat kidney cytosol: the high affinity constant, the specificity for testosterone and the formation of a hormone-receptor complex with a 8-10S sedimentation coefficient on sucrose density gradient led us to estimate that this macromolecule was similar to the rat prostate androgen receptor. This receptor is partially occupied by circulating androgens because the number of binding sites increases following castration or hypophysectomy. Constant levels of receptors have been recorded for several months in absence of testosterone. The age and the sex of animals, as well as the functional state of thyroid gland, did not affect the number of binding sites. These receptor characteristics may explain the slight renotrophic action of androgens in rat kidney.

In order to determine whether kidney hypertrophy secondary to unilateral nephrectomy was an appropriate model to study cytoplasmic androgen receptor modulation, this receptor was measured three weeks after surgery in intact or castrated animals. Our results demonstrate that the process of kidney hypertrophy is not accompanied by a proportional elevation of the number of androgen receptors and that these receptors are not significantly influenced by the gonadal activity in the rat.