“While in the first quarter of this century physicists and cosmologists were forced to revise the basic notions that govern the natural sciences, in the last quarter of this century biologists will force a revision of the basic notions that govern science itself. After that “first revolution” it was clear that the classical concept of an “ultimate science”, that is an objective description of the world in which there are no subjects (a “subjectless universe”), contains contradictions.”
Source: 1980s, Notes on an epistemology for living things, 1981, p.258
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Heinz von Foerster 11
Austrian American scientist and cybernetician 1911–2002Related quotes

Autobiographical Essay (2001)

“Physicists, for all their odd notions, are basically a conservative lot.”
Source: Quantum Reality - Beyond The New Physics, Chapter 4, Facing The Quantum Facts, p. 55

Banquet speech http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1927/compton-speech.html for his Nobel Prize, 1927.

Source: The Lightness of Being – Mass, Ether and the Unification of Forces (2008), Ch. 1, p. 9.
Principles of Modern Chemistry (7th ed., 2012), Ch. 1 : The Atom in Modern Chemistry