"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 ramification on various fields. 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!" (Heinz von Foerster, "Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics", 1991)
"Essentially, the theory of finite state machines is that of computation. It postulates two finite sets of external states called 'input states' and 'output states', one finite set of 'internal states', and two explicitly defined operations (computations) which determine the instantaneous and temporal relations between these states." (Heinz von Foerster, "Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition", 2003)
"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, "Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition", 2003)
"If 'memory' is a misleading metaphor for recording devices, so is the epithet 'problem solver' for our computing machines. Of course, they are no problem solvers, because they do not have any problems in the first place. It is our problems they help us solve like any other useful tool, say, a hammer which may be dubbed a 'problem solver' for driving nails into a board. The danger in this subtle semantic twist by which the responsibility for action is shifted from man to a machine lies in making us lose sight of the problem of cognition. By making us believe that the issue is how to find solutions to some well defined problems, we may forget to ask first what constitutes a 'problem', what is its 'solution', and - when a problem is identified - what makes us want to solve it." (Heinz von Foerster, "Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition", 2003)
"If some aspects of the behavior of an organism can be modeled by a finite state machine, then the interaction of the organism with its environment may be such a case in question, if the environment is likewise representable by a finite state machine. In fact, such two-machine interactions constitute a popular paradigm for interpreting the behavior of animals in experimental learning situations, with the usual relaxation of the general complexity of the situation, by chosing for the experimental environment a trivial machine. 'Criterion' in these learning experiments is then said to have been reached by the animal when the experimenter succeeded in transforming the animal from a nontrivial machine into a trivial machine, the result of these experiments being the interaction of just two trivial machines." (Heinz von Foerster, "Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition", 2003)
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