Heinz Von Foerster Quotes

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

Heinz Von Foerster

#2. Something that cannot be explained cannot be seen.

Heinz Von Foerster

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

Heinz Von Foerster

#4. If you desire to see, learn how to act.

Heinz Von Foerster

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

Heinz Von Foerster

#6. I shall act always so as to increase the total number of choices.

Heinz Von Foerster

#7. The environment as we perceive it is our invention,

Heinz Von Foerster

#8. Everything that is said is said by an observer.

Heinz Von Foerster

#9. 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.

Heinz Von Foerster

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

Heinz Von Foerster

#11. Act always so as to increase the number of choices

Heinz Von Foerster

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

Heinz Von Foerster

#13. Cybernetics is NOT the banana.

Heinz Von Foerster

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

Heinz Von Foerster