"It seems that cybernetics is many different things to many different people. But this is because of the richness of its conceptual base; and I believe that this is very good, otherwise cybernetics would become a somewhat boring exercise. However, all of those perspectives arise from one central theme; that of circularity. When, perhaps a half century ago, the fecundity of this concept was seen, it was sheer euphoria to philosophize, epistemologize, and theorize about its unifying power and its consequences and ramiļ¬cation on various ļ¬elds. While this was going on, something strange evolved among the philosophers, the epistemologists and, the theoreticians. They began to see themselves more and more as being included in a larger circularity; maybe within the circularity of their family; or that of their society and culture; or even being included in a circularity of cosmic proportions!"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Von Foerster (1991) "Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics"
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Heinz_von_Foerster
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Heinz von Foerster
Heinz von Foerster (November 13 1911 ā February 10 2002) was an Austrian-American scientist known for his pioneering research in the field of cybernetics.
15 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Heinz von Foerster ā
Related Quotes
"Heinz von Foerster was a physicist and philosopher, who worked extensively in cybernetics, biology and family therapyā¦"
"Objectivity is a subject's delusion that observing can be done without him. Involving objectivity is abrogating respoā¦"
"The "second order cyberneticians" claimed that knowledge is a biological phenomenon (Maturana, 1970), that each indivā¦"
"Heinz performs the magic trick of convincing us that the familiar objects of our existence can be seen to be nothing ā¦"
"I shall act always so as to increase the total number of choices"
"The world, as we perceive it, is our own invention."
"While in the ļ¬rst quarter of this century physicists and cosmologists were forced to revise the basic notions that goā¦"
"To remove these one had to account for an āobserverā (that is at least for one subject): (i) Observations are not absā¦"
"What we need now is the description of the ādescriberā or, in other words, we need a theory of the observer."
"I don't know where my expertise is; my expertise is no disciplines. I would recommend to drop disciplinarity whereverā¦"