Heinz von Foerster Quotes

Hard sciences are successful because they deal with the soft problems; soft sciences are struggling because they deal with the hard problems.

Should one name one central concept, a first principle, of cybernetics, it would be circularity.

If you desire to see, learn how to act.

Either Stone Age man was a technological wizard, who carefully removed his technological achievements so as not to upset his inferior progeny, or our population dwindled from a once astronomical size to the mere three billions of today.

First-order cybernetics is the science of observed systems; Second-order cybernetics is the science of observing systems.

Act always so as to increase the number of choices

Objectivity is a subject's delusion that observing can be done without him.

Something that cannot be explained cannot be seen.

Objectivity is the delusion that observations could be made without an observer.

Cybernetics is NOT the banana.

What we need now is the description of the "describer" or, in other words, we need a theory of the observer.

The environment as we perceive it is our invention.