On Mechanisms (1960-1969)

"Clearly, if the state of the system is coupled to parameters of an environment and the state of the environment is made to modify parameters of the system, a learning process will occur. Such an arrangement will be called a Finite Learning Machine, since it has a definite capacity. It is, of course, an active learning mechanism which trades with its surroundings. Indeed it is the limit case of a self-organizing system which will appear in the network if the currency supply is generalized." (Gordon Pask, "The Natural History of Networks", 1960)

"It is inherent in the logical character of the abstract self-organizing system that all available methods of organization are used, and that it cannot be realized in a single reference frame. Thus, any of the tricks which the physical model can perform, such as learning and remembering, may be performed by one or all of a variety of mechanisms, chemical or electrical or mechanical." (Gordon Pask, "The Natural History of Networks", 1960)

"For imagination sets the goal picture which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of will, as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination." (Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics", 1960)

"I discovered that a whole range of problems of the most diverse character relating to the scientific organization of production (questions of the optimum distribution of the work of machines and mechanisms, the minimization of scrap, the best utilization of raw materials and local materials, fuel, transportation, and so on) lead to the formulation of a single group of mathematical problems (extremal problems). These problems are not directly comparable to problems considered in mathematical analysis. It is more correct to say that they are formally similar, and even turn out to be formally very simple, but the process of solving them with which one is faced [i. e., by mathematical analysis] is practically completely unusable, since it requires the solution of tens of thousands or even millions of systems of equations for completion." (Leonid V Kantorovich, "Mathematical Methods of Organizing and Planning Production", Management Science 6(4), 1960)

"Your automatic creative mechanism is teleological. That is, it operates in terms of goals and end results. Once you give it a definite goal to achieve, you can depend upon its automatic guidance system to take you to that goal much better than ‘you’ ever could by conscious thought. 'You’ supply the goal by thinking in terms of end results. Your automatic mechanism then supplies the means whereby." (Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics", 1960)

"Intuition is the collection of odds and ends where we place all the intellectual mechanisms which we do not know how to analyze or even name with precision, or which we are not interested in analyzing or naming." (Mario Bunge,"Intuition and Science", 1962)

"In the language of cybernetics, maintaining reactions can be outlined as follows: the sensing material receives information about the external environment in the form of coded signals. This information is reprocessed and sent in the form of new signals through defined channels, or networks. This new information brings about an internal reorganization of the system which contributes to the preservation of its integrity. The mechanism which reprocesses the information is called the control system. It consists of a vast number of input and output elements, connected by channels through which the signals are transmitted. The information can be stored in a recall or memory system, which may consist of separate elements, each of which can be in one of several stable states. The particular state of the element varies, under the influence of the input signals. When a number of such elements are in certain specified states, information is, in effect, recorded in the form of a text of finite length, using an alphabet with a finite number of characters. These processes underlie contemporary electronic computing machines and are, in a number of respects, strongly analogous to biological memory systems." (Carl Sagan, "Intelligent Life in the Universe", 1966)

"Graphic representation constitutes one of the basic sign-systems conceived by the human mind for the purposes of storing, understanding, and communicating essential information. As a "language" for the eye, graphics benefits from the ubiquitous properties of visual perception. As a monosemic system, it forms the rational part of the world of images. […] Graphics owes its special significance to its double function as a storage mechanism and a research instrument." (Jacques Bertin, Semiology of graphics [Semiologie Graphique], 1967)

"Adaptive system - whether on the biological, psychological, or sociocultural level - must manifest (1) some degree of 'plasticity' and 'irritability' vis-a-vis its environment such that it carries on a constant interchange with acting on and reacting to it; (2) some source or mechanism for variety, to act as a potential pool of adaptive variability to meet the problem of mapping new or more detailed variety and constraints in a changeable environment; (3) a set of selective criteria or mechanisms against which the 'variety pool' may be sifted into those variations in the organization or system that more closely map the environment and those that do not; and (4) an arrangement for preserving and/or propagating these 'successful' mappings." (Walter F Buckley," Sociology and modern systems theory", 1967)

"Cybernetics, based upon the principle of feedback or circular causal trains providing mechanisms for goal-seeking and self-controlling behavior." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "General System Theory", 1968)

"As to the role of emotions in art and the subconscious mechanism that serves as the integrating factor both in artistic creation and in man's response to art, they involve a psychological phenomenon which we call a sense of life. A sense of life is a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of existence." (Ayn Rand,"The Romantic Manifesto: A Philosophy of Literature", 1969)

"Intelligence has two parts, which we shall call the epistemological and the heuristic. The epistemological part is the representation of the world in such a form that the solution of problems follows from the facts expressed in the representation. The heuristic part is the mechanism that on the basis of the information solves the problem and decides what to do." (John McCarthy & Patrick J Hayes, "Some Philosophical Problems from the Standpoint of Artificial Intelligence", Machine Intelligence 4, 1969)

"The machine rules. Human life is rigorously controlled by it, dominated by the terribly precise will of mechanisms. These creatures of man are exacting. They are now reacting on their creators, making them like themselves. They want well-trained humans; they are gradually wiping out the differences between men, fitting them into their own orderly functioning, into the uniformity of their own regimes. They are thus shaping humanity for their own use, almost in their own image." (Paul A Valéry, "Fairy Tales for Computers", 1969)