"Should one name one central concept, a first principle, of cybernetics, it would be circularity." Heinz von Foerster
"the biggest bite out of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that mankind has taken in the last 2000 years." Gregory Bateson
"... cybernetics studies the flow of information round a system, and the way in which this information is used by the system as a means of controlling itself: it does this for animate and inanimate systems indifferently. For cybernetics is an interdisciplinary science, owing as much to biology as to physics, as much to the study of the brain as to the study of computers, and owing also a great deal to the formal languages of science for providing tools with which the behaviour of all these systems can be objectively described."Stafford Beer
Wiener found just the word he wanted in the operation of the long ships of ancient Greece. At sea, the long ships battled with rain, wind and tides -- matters in no way predictable. However, if the man operating the rudder kept his eye on a distant lighthouse, he could manipulate the tiller, adjusting continuously in real-time towards the light. This is the function of steersmanship. As far back as Homer, the Greek word for steersman was kubernetes, which transliterates into English as cybernetes."Stafford Beer