“For me, as I later came to say, cybernetics is the art of creating equilibrium in a world of possibilities and constraints. This is not just a romantic description, it portrays the new way of thinking quite accurately. Cybernetics differs from the traditional scientific procedure, because it does not try to explain phenomena by searching for their causes, but rather by specifying the constraints that determine the direction of their development.”

—  Ernst von Glasersfeld

Source: Partial Memories: Sketches from an Improbable Life, 2010, p. 136

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Ernst von Glasersfeld 9
German philosopher 1917–2010

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“… I believe I have come to adopt a cybernetic way of thinking… I became aware of this in the many conversations with students who were worrying about their future and asked for advice. I heard myself telling them that it was far more important to know what one did not want to do, than to have detailed plans of what one did want to do. One day it dawned on me that this was plain cybernetic advice; It is more useful to specify constraints rather than goals. - And then I explained it by adding that in one’s teens or twenties one usually has already discovered a number of things that one cannot stand, whereas it is quite impossible to foresee what, ten or twenty years later, will provide the satisfactions needed to maintain one’s equilibrium.”

Ernst von Glasersfeld (1917–2010) German philosopher

Glasersfeld (1992, p. 25) cited in: Stuart Umpleby (2007) "Cybernetics: Definitions and Descriptions". In: A Larry Richards Reader 1997–2007. http://polyproject.wikispaces.com/file/view/Larry+Richards+Reader+6+08.pdf. Larry Richards eds.

“Cybernetics is still headline news, and increasingly we hear about its applications to new fields of scientific and industrial endeavour. Stafford Beer's new book Cybernetics and Management is an admirable account on the relation that exist between cybernetics and the problems of management in industry [and]… covers a range of applications that have not previously been dealt with in print.”

Frank Honywill George (1921–1997) British psychologist

George (1960) " Automatic controls in industry http://books.google.nl/books?id=ca1QDXCpElgC&pg=PA48" in: New Scientist. 7 jan 1960. p.48

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“Abstract art.. searches for new ways to achieve harmony and equilibrium.”

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“The purpose of "Engineering Cybernetics" is then to study those parts of the broad science of cybernetics which have direct engineering applications in designing controlled or guided systems. It certainly includes such topics usually treated in books on servomechanisms. But a wider range of topics is only one difference between engineering cybernetics and servomechanisms engineering. A deeper - and thus more important - difference lies in the fact that engineering cybernetics is an engineering science, while servomechanisms engineering is an engineering practice.”

Qian Xuesen (1911–2009) Chinese rocket scientist

Source: Engineering cybernetics, (1954), p. vii

“Because intersectionality is a concept (a description of the experience of multiple oppressions, without explaining their causes) rather than a theory (which does attempt to explain the root causes of oppressions), it can be applied alongside different theories of oppression--theories informed by Marxism or postmodernism, but also separatism, etc. Because Marxism and postmodernism are often antithetical, their specific uses of the concept of intersectionality can be very different and in very different and contrary ways.”

Sharon Smith (writer) (1956) American historian

A Marxist Case For Intersectionality (2017)

“Q: Does the creation of Design admit constraint?
Design depends largely on constraints.
Q: What constraints?
The sum of all constraints. Here is one of the few effective keys to the Design problem: the ability of the Designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible; his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints. Constraints of price, of size, of strength, of balance, of surface, of time, and so forth. Each problem has its own peculiar list.”

Charles Eames (1907–1978) American designer, half of duo the Eames

Another part of the interview: Also cited at: Mark Wunsch. "[http://markwunsch.com/blog/2008/09/27/design-q-a-with-charles-eames.html A software engineer and technologist: Design Q&A with Charles Eames". at markwunsch.com/blog, 2008/09/27
Design Q & A with Charles Eames, 1972

“Those of us concerned with developing new technology should consider ourselves to have a major undertaking to try to meet the expanding needs of the increasing number of people in the world with its finite resources and environments constraints.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

Chestnut (1981) attributed in: Dr. Harold Chestnut: 1981 Honda Prize Laureate http://www.hondafoundation.jp/library/pdfs/ourdream_e.pdf in: Honda Prize Ecotechnology Quote

“Cybernetics treats not things but ways of behaving.”

W. Ross Ashby (1903–1972) British psychiatrist

Source: An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956), Part I: Mechanism, p. 1; As cited in: Stuart A. Umpleby, "Ross Ashby's general theory of adaptive systems." International Journal of General Systems 38.2 (2009): 231-238.
Context: Cybernetics treats not things but ways of behaving. It does not ask “what is this thing?” but “what does it do?”... It is thus essentially functional and behaviouristic. Cybernetics deals with all forms of behavior in so far as they are regular, or determinate, or reproducible. The materiality is irrelevant... The truths of cybernetics are not conditional on their being derived from some other branch of science. Cybernetics has its own foundations.

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“With the subsequent strong support from cybernetics, the concepts of systems thinking and systems theory became integral parts of the established scientific language, and led to numerous new methodologies and applications -- systems engineering, systems analysis, systems dynamics, and so on.”

Fritjof Capra (1939) American physicist

Source: The Web of Life (1996), p. 46.

“The critical act in formulating computational theories turns out to be the discovery of valid constraints on the way the world is structured -- constraints that provide sufficient information to allow the processing to succeed.”

David Marr (1945–1980) British neuroscientist and psychologist

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