Top 12 Quotes & Sayings by Heinz von Foerster

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American scientist Heinz von Foerster.

Last updated on December 25, 2024.

Heinz von Foerster was an Austrian American scientist combining physics and philosophy, and widely attributed as the originator of Second-order cybernetics. He was twice a Guggenheim fellow and also was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1980. He is well known for his 1960 Doomsday equation formula published in Science predicting future population growth.

American - Scientist | November 13, 1911 - October 2, 2002

Source: Wikipedia

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

If you desire to see, learn how to act.

Heinz von Foerster

Cybernetics is NOT the banana.

Heinz von Foerster

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

Heinz von Foerster

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

Heinz von Foerster

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

Heinz von Foerster

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

Heinz von Foerster

Act always so as to increase the number of choices

Heinz von Foerster

The environment as we perceive it is our invention.

Heinz von Foerster

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

Heinz von Foerster

Something that cannot be explained cannot be seen.

Heinz von Foerster

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

Top 12 Quotes & Sayings by Heinz von Foerster

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