On Cybernetics (1970-1979)

"Because the subject matter of cybernetics is the propositional or informational aspect of the events and objects in the natural world, this science is forced to procedures rather different from those of the other sciences. The differentiation, for example, between map and territory, which the semanticists insist that scientists shall respect in their writings must, in cybernetics, be watched for in the very phenomena about which the scientist writes. Expectably, communicating organisms and badly programmed computers will mistake map for territory; and the language of the scientist must be able to cope with such anomalies." (Gregory Bateson, "Steps to an Ecology of Mind", 1972) 

"But metaphor is an indispensable tool of thought and expression - a characteristic of all human communication, even of that of the scientist. The conceptual models of cybernetics and the energy theories of psycho-analysis are, after all, only labeled metaphors." (Gregory Bateson, "Steps to an Ecology of Mind", 1972) 

"I think that cybernetics is the biggest bite out of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that mankind has taken in the last 2000 years. But most of such bites out of the apple have proved to be rather indigestible - usually for cybernetic reasons. Cybernetics has integrity within itself, to help us to not be seduced by it into more lunacy, but we cannot trust it to keep us from sin. […] there are other dangers latent in cybernetics and many of these are still unidentified. […] that there is also latent in cybernetics the means of achieving a new and perhaps more human outlook, a means of changing our philosophy of control and a means of seeing our own follies in wider perspective." (Gregory Bateson, "Steps to an Ecology of Mind", 1972) 

"It follows from this that man's most urgent and pre-emptive need is maximally to utilize cybernetic science and computer technology within a general systems framework, to build a meta-systemic reality which is now only dimly envisaged. Intelligent and purposeful application of rapidly developing telecommunications and teleprocessing technology should make possible a degree of worldwide value consensus heretofore unrealizable." (Richard F Ericson, "Visions of Cybernetic Organizations", 1972)

"The essence of cybernetic organizations is that they are self-controlling, self-maintaining, self-realizing. Indeed, cybernetics has been characterized as the “science of effective organization,” in just these terms. But the word “cybernetics” conjures, in the minds of an apparently great number of people, visions of computerized information networks, closed loop systems, and robotized man-surrogates, such as ‘artorgas’ and ‘cyborgs’." (Richard F Ericson, "Visions of Cybernetic Organizations", 1972)

"This parallel, between cybernetic explanation and the tactics of logical or mathematical proof, is of more than trivial interest. Outside of cybernetics, we look for explanation, but not for anything which would simulate logical proof. This simulation of proof is something new. We can say, however, with hindsight wisdom, that explanation by simulation of logical or mathematical proof was expectable. After all, the subject matter of cybernetics is not events and objects but the information 'carried' by events and objects. We consider the objects or events only as proposing facts, propositions, messages, percepts, and the like. The subject matter being propositional, it is expectable that explanation would simulate the logical." (Gregory Bateson, "Steps to an Ecology of Mind", 1972) 

"The main object of cybernetics is to supply adaptive, hierarchical models, involving feedback and the like, to all aspects of our environment. Often such modelling implies simulation of a system where the simulation should achieve the object of copying both the method of achievement and the end result. Synthesis, as opposed to simulation, is concerned with achieving only the end result and is less concerned (or completely unconcerned) with the method by which the end result is achieved. In the case of behaviour, psychology is concerned with simulation, while cybernetics, although also interested in simulation, is primarily concerned with synthesis." (Frank H George, "Soviet Cybernetics, the militairy and Professor Lerner", New Scientist, 1973)

"Cybernetics studies the organization of systems in space and time, that is, it studies how subsystems are connected into a system and how change in the state of some subsystems influences the state of other subsystems. The primary emphasis, of course, is on organization in time which, when it is purposeful, is called control. Causal relations between states of a system and the characteristics of its behavior in time which follow from this are often called the dynamics of the system [...]." (Valentin F Turchin,"The Phenomenon of Science: a cybernetic approach to human evolution", 1977)

"Principles so general that they are applicable both to the evolution of science and to biological evolution require equally general concepts for their expression. Such concepts are offered by cybernetics, the science of relationships, control, and organization in all types of objects." (Valentin F Turchin, "The Phenomenon of Science: a cybernetic approach to human evolution", 1977)

"The branch of modern science called cybernetics gives us concepts that describe the evolutionary process at both the level of intracellular structures and the level of social phenomena. The fundamental unity of the evolutionary process at all levels of organization is transformed from a philosophical view to a scientifically substantiated fact." (Valentin F Turchin, "The Phenomenon of Science: A cybernetic approach to human evolution", 1977)

"Cybernetics is a homogenous and coherent scientific complex, a science resulting from the blending of at least two sciences - psychology and technology; it is a general and integrative science, a crossroads of sciences, involving both animal and car psychology. It is not just a discipline, circumscribed in a narrow and strictly defined field, but a complex of disciplines born of psychology and centered on it, branched out as branches of a tree in its stem. It is a stepwise synthesis, a suite of multiple, often reciprocal, modeling; syntheses and modeling in which, as a priority, and as a great importance, the modeling of psychology on the technique and then the modeling of the technique on psychology. Cybernetics is an intellectual symphony, a symphony of ideas and sciences." (Stefan Odobleja, "Psihologia consonantista și cibernetică" ["Consonatist and Cybernetic Psychology"], 1978)