Heinz von Foerster · Said to someone
Aphorisms, their sources, and ways to hear him think. Follow a saying into the argument, the conversation, or the question it leaves you with.
The title is a familiar paraphrase. The wording in von Foerster’s 1979 paper brings the observer into the sentence.
His 1995 Chicago booklet is preserved by the Cybernetics Society. Every numbered item is indexed below, including its subitems and diagrams.
These are topic labels in our words. Follow a topic for its original wording or diagram; ↳ leads to a corresponding entry here. Inclusion in Heinz’s collection doesn’t mean that he originated it.
The transcription leaves 2 blank, repeats 26, has inconsistent arithmetic at 15 and unresolved geometry at 28. Item 24 was corrected; the personal ethical footnote is reported.
Read Cybernetics and Circularity: The Heinz von Foerster Aphorisms ↗The 1995 anthology is indexed in full above. Below are 54 entries from papers, interviews, and recollections, followed by indexes of further numbered collections. Several wordings of one saying stay together. There’s no numerical limit on inclusion.
Quotation marks identify the words printed in the linked source. A report tells us how someone remembered or attributed a saying; it doesn’t establish a recording or its first use. Summaries carry a paraphrase label, with a route to the exact passage. Commentary is ours.
This is a documented collection in progress. Untranscribed recordings, inaccessible editions, translations, and private conversations leave gaps. The source record names the collections checked and the remaining leads; it doesn’t claim to include everything Heinz ever said.
Browse the titles, search a phrase, or follow a source. Every entry has its own link; the source distinguishes a printed formulation, an interview, a recollection, and a paraphrase.
In his writing or an interview
‘Anything said is said to an observer.’
Von Foerster adds this to Humberto Maturana’s proposition, Anything said is said by an observer.
The person speaking and the person addressed both belong in the account. What happens between them matters.
Heinz von Foerster, Cybernetics of Cybernetics (1979), pp. 5–8; first page of the linked PDF. He explicitly credits Maturana for the first proposition and presents the second as his own corollary.
In his writing or an interview
‘Act always so as to increase the number of choices.’
Ask what your action makes possible, and for whom. My increased freedom may come at somebody else’s expense. Counting the options on a menu won’t settle that.
On Constructing a Reality (1973), final page. His later Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics, pp. 288–289, distinguishes ethical commitments I make from moral commands imposed on others.
In his writing or an interview
‘If you desire to see, learn how to act.’
What we can perceive develops through what we do. Participate, vary the action, and notice what becomes available to observation.
On Constructing a Reality (1973), final page. This accompanies the ethical imperative in the same closing passage.
In his writing or an interview
‘The hearer, not the speaker determines the meaning of an utterance.’
Intending to communicate something doesn’t establish that it has been understood. Ask what the other person made of it. Their response changes what you can say next.
The 1995 anthology, item 4. This doesn’t release the speaker from responsibility for what they say.
In his writing or an interview
‘One does not see what one does not see.’
A blind spot doesn’t announce itself as a hole. Another person, a changed position, or an unexpected result may expose something your account had no place for.
The 1995 anthology, item 5, on the blind spot.
In his writing or an interview
‘Only those questions that are in principle undecidable, we can decide.’
Where an agreed framework compels the answer, it has already settled the question. Where it cannot, we have to choose and take responsibility. Evidence still matters; it cannot relieve us of every judgement.
Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics, in Understanding Understanding (2003), p. 293. First published in French in 1991; the English journal version appeared in 1992.
Reported or remembered
‘Objectivity is a subject’s delusion that observing can be done without him.’
The observer’s position, distinctions, and means of observing belong in the account. Acknowledging them creates obligations to explain and test a claim.
Bernhard Poerksen, The Certainty of Uncertainty, p. 3. Poerksen puts this attributed saying to von Foerster, who develops the argument in their conversation. This is the checked dialogue source, not a claim to have located its first use.
The 1984 essay also connects removing the observer from an account with avoiding responsibility. Read that argument, PDF p. 6.
In his writing or an interview
‘The more profound the problem that is ignored, the greater are the chances for fame and success.’
A pointed question for any account of success: what had to be left outside it?
Responsibilities of Competence (1972), BCL #223, p. 1.
Paraphrase — follow the original
The “hard” sciences succeed with comparatively tractable problems; the “soft” sciences face harder ones.
His second theorem challenges an easy ranking of disciplines. Simplifying a social problem may remove the interactions that matter.
Responsibilities of Competence. 1972, p. 1, Theorem Number Two. Paraphrase of his contrast; the exact formulation is in the paper.
In his writing or an interview
‘Truth is the invention of a liar.’
Follow this into the conversation about knowledge, certainty, and ethics. Using it as permission to disregard evidence would give the phrase rather too easy a life.
The title of Heinz von Foerster and Bernhard Poerksen’s book, subtitled Conversations on Epistemology and Ethics. The link is to the publisher’s record.
Paraphrase — follow the original
A biological account must also account for the living person who produces it.
This completes the paper’s three explicitly numbered theorems. A theory made by an organism must be able to accommodate that activity.
Responsibilities of Competence. The Single-Brain Problem, Theorem Number Three; reprinted on p. 195.
In his writing or an interview
‘Reality = Community’
The closing equation makes room for other people in the account of reality. It precedes the ethical and aesthetical imperatives.
On Constructing a Reality. Final PDF page 13, just before the two imperatives.
Paraphrase — follow the original
The world we perceive is something we participate in producing.
This paraphrases the essay’s opening claim. The linked page preserves his precise formulation.
On Constructing a Reality. Opening sentence, PDF p. 1.
In his writing or an interview
‘The length of descriptions is language-dependent.’
He links order and complexity to the descriptions an observer can produce. A changed descriptive language can change the apparent order.
Disorder/Order: Discovery or Invention?. PDF p. 5, concluding sequence of propositions.
Paraphrase — follow the original
Deductive certainty and inductive uncertainty concern our inference-making capacities.
His contrast places the observer’s abilities within the explanation of what appears necessary or accidental.
Disorder/Order: Discovery or Invention?. PDF p. 6, first paragraph; also anthology items 24–25.
Paraphrase — follow the original
An organisation can maintain its own organisation while exchanging energy with its surroundings.
Von Foerster explicitly credits Maturana, Varela, and Uribe in this discussion. Closure in one respect needn’t mean isolation in every respect.
Disorder/Order: Discovery or Invention?. PDF p. 6, discussion of autopoiesis.
In his writing or an interview
‘Education is learning to ask legitimate questions.’
Here the answer is not prescribed in advance. He credits Herbert Brün for this distinction and presents education as a necessity, beyond entitlement or privilege.
Perception of the Future and the Future of Perception. PDF p. 6, Future, propositions 1–2 and preceding paragraph. Address 1971; publication 1972.
In his writing or an interview
‘A is better off when B is better off.’
The third proposition follows his account of education. Whose improvement is being pursued, and what happens to the other person?
Perception of the Future and the Future of Perception. PDF p. 6, Future, proposition 3.
In his writing or an interview
‘Let there be vision: and there was light.’
He closes by reversing the familiar order: what becomes visible depends on the capacity to see.
Perception of the Future and the Future of Perception. PDF p. 7, final sentence before the references.
Paraphrase — follow the original
Testing only for prescribed answers measures how predictable a student has become.
The paper questions making predictability an ideal for people simply because it is useful in manufactured devices.
Perception of the Future and the Future of Perception. PDF p. 6, educational trivialisation before Future.
Paraphrase — follow the original
An imagined future can orient present action; failing to act leaves others to act upon us.
Perception of the Future and the Future of Perception. PDF pp. 1 and 4.
In his writing or an interview
‘I am the observed relation between myself and observing myself.’
A formulation of self-reference: the description includes the act of describing oneself.
Notes on an Epistemology for Living Things. §8.45, printed p. 19; PDF p. 21.
In his writing or an interview
‘The environment contains no information. The environment is as it is.’
In §10, information depends on what an observer can infer from a description. The two propositions belong together.
Notes on an Epistemology for Living Things. §11, printed p. 23; PDF p. 25. Read alongside §10, PDF p. 24.
Paraphrase — follow the original
A communication theory must explain how messages arise, including the observer who identifies an interaction as communication.
Notes on an Epistemology for Living Things. §8 and §8.4, printed p. 18; PDF p. 20.
Paraphrase — follow the original
Logical descriptions arise through organisms’ movements.
Notes on an Epistemology for Living Things. §9, printed p. 19; PDF p. 21.
Paraphrase — follow the original
Constancy and alteration require each other.
Notes on an Epistemology for Living Things. §1.1, printed p. 11; PDF p. 13.
In his writing or an interview
‘the whole is neither more nor is it less than the sum of its parts: it is different.’
He is discussing the relationship between a recursive expression and the finite forms it entails. The difference matters more here than an arithmetic claim of superiority.
Objects: Tokens for (Eigen-)Behaviors. Printed p. 266; PDF p. 6, after expression (12). Excerpt from a longer sentence.
In his writing or an interview
‘tokens for stable behaviors’
This is his phrase for objects in an account that includes the observer. Repeated sensorimotor coordination gives a route into the apparent stability of things.
Objects: Tokens for (Eigen-)Behaviors. Printed p. 261; PDF p. 1. Presented in 1976; reprinted in 2003.
In his writing or an interview
‘Tell me how the Universe came about, and I tell you who you are!’
Accounts of the world also disclose their speaker. The question invites attention to the person making the account.
Metaphysics of an Experimental Epistemologist. Metaphysics section, after the range of cultural accounts of origins.
In his writing or an interview
‘ethics becomes implicit, responsibility explicit.’
His choice of language is part of how ethics is practised. The observer’s participation can’t be handed off to an external authority.
Metaphysics of an Experimental Epistemologist. Closing section, paragraph about the collapse of hierarchy.
In his writing or an interview
‘I don't know where my expertise is; my expertise is no disciplines.’
Academic labels can restrict what someone is allowed to investigate.
‘Disciplines are an aftereffect of the institutional situation.’
Interview with Heinz von Foerster. Opening answer. Stefano Franchi, Güven Güzeldere, and Eric Minch; Stanford Humanities Review 4(2), 1995. Public transcript mirror.
In his writing or an interview
‘There are no such things as self-organizing systems!’
The provocation challenges a system treated independently of the environment that supports it. Read the qualification with the sentence.
On Self-Organizing Systems and Their Environments. Opening, printed p. 1; PDF p. 14. Essay published 1960, reprinted 2003.
In his writing or an interview
‘Language for me is an invitation to dance.’
Language is a joint activity in which both partners help shape the next step.
Christina Waters, Invitation to Dance: A Conversation with Heinz von Foerster. Answer to the question about reinventing language. Signed Santa Cruz, November 1999; reproduced in the 2001 festschrift.
In his writing or an interview
‘Nobody knows how it is. It is how you tell it.’
He uses this to insist on a writer’s responsibility for a description.
Christina Waters, Invitation to Dance: A Conversation with Heinz von Foerster. Opening discussion of discovery and invention, after the journalism-school banner. Signed Santa Cruz, November 1999; reproduced in the 2001 festschrift.
Reported or remembered
‘What matters to me is the invitation to see.’
Pörksen quotes this August 1998 conversation and says he recorded it. These are the words of the published English account; the recording itself has not been checked.
‘What the other sees is his business.’
Bernhard Pörksen, Beyond Distinctions: Memories of a conversation on Rattlesnake Hill about George Spencer-Brown and mystics. Paragraph beginning 'The breaks of our conversation'. Conversation August 1998; published in the 2001 festschrift.
Reported or remembered
‘Learn how to Learn’
Inselberg asked what courses to take; this is the response he remembers.
Alfred Inselberg, HvF Recursion … or was it Magic?. Section 'Non-causality', paragraph beginning 'Just prior to course registration'. 2001 festschrift; recollections begin in May 1959.
Reported or remembered
‘skillful good fortune’
Inselberg says HvF regularly used the expression for helpful, otherwise mysterious coincidences. A characteristic phrase rather than a formal maxim.
Alfred Inselberg, HvF Recursion … or was it Magic?. Opening section 'Skillful Good Fortune', paragraph beginning 'My timely arrival'. 2001 festschrift; recollections begin in May 1959.
Reported or remembered
‘you must learn to cherish what's implicit in things’
Rebitzer recalls this advice in response to his persistent probing questions. The lowercase opening follows his text.
Robert S. Rebitzer, Doing Science. Paragraph beginning 'I remember many moments'. 2001 festschrift; individual contribution undated.
Reported or remembered
‘Congratulations! You have reversed evolution. Now the sons are creating the fathers!’
Response to Scott's tribute about cybernetics' founders. A joke about how later accounts create a field's ancestors, not a biological proposition.
Bernard Scott, Co-Creators: To Heinz from Bernard. Paragraph immediately after Scott describes his 1979 appreciation. Signed August 2001; telegram followed Scott's 1979 appreciation.
Reported or remembered
‘If somebody is ignorant enough to want to deal with complexity, he will stay that way’
Baecker places the remark in a discussion of recursive operations and Heinz’s response to Luhmann’s work.
Dirk Baecker, The Eye of the Coyote. Paragraph contrasting recursivity and complexity, beginning 'Heinz looked on Luhmann's oeuvre'. 2001 festschrift; account of visits during 1990–1991.
Reported or remembered
‘You are very valuable, because you see, you can be an observer.’
Welcoming a late arrival to the 1971 CIDOC seminar. Author explicitly warns at the beginning that he reconstructed conversations 29 years later.
Rodney Clough, “Getting” Heinz. Section III, paragraph beginning 'Earlier before the seminar'. 2001 festschrift; reconstructed exchanges from June 1971.
Reported or remembered
‘an idea should be a sculpture!’
Galuszka remembers the phrase from their first meeting in the mid 1980s. His account leaves it unexplained.
Frank Galuszka, Perplexity. Opening paragraph, within parentheses. 2001 festschrift; encounter in the mid 1980s.
Reported or remembered
‘then I simply turn and go in the direction that is green.’
Schroeder remembers a classroom illustration: when a traffic light blocks a route, Heinz turns towards an open crossing. These words are the final clause of the recalled remark, offered as a way around an institutional confrontation.
Paul Schroeder, A Grasshopper Reflects. Paragraph beginning 'Heinz was arguing'. 2001 festschrift; author uncertain whether separate nighttime episode was in 1971 or 1974.
Reported or remembered
‘How, why and what refer to three different ways of relating things.’
Reproduced class-project material carrying a 1972 copyright. It is a scribe's account rather than an audio transcript.
Steve Sloan / reproduced student scribe and metascribe notes, Metagames. Scribe column, paragraph beginning 'He carried this into Pask's models'. Class-project material copyright 1972; reproduced in the 2001 festschrift.
In his writing or an interview
‘In a dialogue I am talking to me through you.’
Understanding changes as one's language returns through another person's response. English wording as published; interview date is not supplied.
Umberta Telfener, An interview to Heinz von Foerster (U.T.). Answer following the question about Maturana's languaging. Website post 20 February 2013; interview date unspecified and necessarily before HvF's death in 2002.
In his writing or an interview
‘Information is the way one changes after a relationship with someone.’
The interview treats information as a change in the person participating in a relationship.
Umberta Telfener, An interview to Heinz von Foerster (U.T.). Last paragraph before the concluding Taoist story. Website post 20 February 2013; interview date unspecified and necessarily before HvF's death in 2002.
Paraphrase — follow the original
Unexpected questions can require the answerer to invent a response and thereby become a poet.
Umberta Telfener, An interview to Heinz von Foerster (U.T.). Answers about therapeutic questions. Posted 20 February 2013; interview date unspecified.
Paraphrase — follow the original
Knowledge depends on the person interpreting a book, rather than passing intact from its pages.
Umberta Telfener, An interview to Heinz von Foerster (U.T.). Answer on scientific and individual knowledge, before the concluding story.
Reported or remembered
Rebitzer reports that Heinz recommended occasionally reading work beyond one’s current understanding.
There is no exact maxim to reproduce in this account. This is reported advice, retained as indirect speech.
Robert S. Rebitzer, Doing Science. Final anecdote in Doing Science; the source itself uses indirect speech.
Paraphrase — follow the original
He challenges the dismissal of questions as foolish, and criticises hierarchy and claims of having no choice as ways to evade responsibility.
Christina Waters, Invitation to Dance: A Conversation with Heinz von Foerster. Early answers on inventing and avoiding responsibility, before the language-as-dance passage.
Attribution needs care
‘everything is now and here’
Winter attributes this phrase to a small book he doesn’t identify and says he never met Heinz. The report is locatable; the book passage remains an open lead.
Wolfgang Winter, Everything is now and here. Opening paragraphs; November 2001.
Reported or remembered
‘I DON'T KNOW’
Kreitman recalls Heinz’s teasing advice to a doctoral candidate: let the examiners have the pleasure of explaining something. This is a remembered joke in a particular situation.
Kevin Kreitman, Some Heinz Stories. Oral-examination anecdote, after the retirement story.
Paraphrase — follow the original
The nervous system’s organisation produces stability in experienced reality.
On Constructing a Reality (1973), PDF p. 11, Postulate of Cognitive Homeostasis. See also anthology item 22.
In his writing or an interview
‘Communication is recursion.’
The lecture develops this proposal into an account of mutual participation and stable patterns. Follow its numbered sequence.
For Niklas Luhmann: How Recursive is Communication?, proposal 00, p. 308. Richard Howe’s translation of the 1993 lecture, reprinted 2003.
These concise indexes account for each main numbered item. They link to the complete texts, including their explanations and subsidiary notes.
The 1972 paper has 80 notes, organised around these 12 main propositions. Item 12 returns to item 1. This index covers the main sequence; the full text includes its subsidiary notes.
Read the original sequence, printed pp. 11–23 (PDF pp. 13–25). Proposition 7 draws on Maturana and Varela.
The 1993 lecture’s checked 2003 translation has these eleven distinct labels. The repeated 00 stays one entry.
Read the full chapter, pp. 305–323. No 04 was located; 0.5 is preserved. Entry 02 has inconsistent determinability wording. Intervening discussions cover closure and stable outcomes. Borrowed material retains its named authors.
Read the sequence together: ignored problems and success, the difficulty of scientific problems, and the biologist within a theory of biology.
Responsibilities of Competence (1972), opening and The Single-Brain Problem.
The closing education sequence links inquiry with how people fare together.
Perception of the Future and the Future of Perception, PDF p. 6, Future.
The online festschrift Human Becoming—Becoming Human, edited by Monika Bröcker and Alexander Riegler (2001), gathers accounts from friends and colleagues. These are their recollections, including remembered speech. Each excerpt below belongs to its named storyteller.
‘A place where intelligent people can come and think, without being bothered by administrations.’
In Toledo, von Glasersfeld and Charlotte caught Heinz as he ran down a steep cobbled street, delighted at finding a possible home for their Institute of Free Research. They discussed it over lunch; the institute remained a dream.
‘he decided to call the path that I had opened with the tractor, Chicho's Promenade.’
During a 1978 visit to Rattlesnake Hill, Maturana lost control of a small tractor and rolled towards the house. He steered between the trees into bushes, stopping the tractor and leaving a new path. Heinz gave the accidental route a name.
‘From now on, when I travel and speak and write, I will no longer be PAID for it!’
Kreitman remembers Heinz repeatedly promising to retire at 76. When his birthday arrived, a guest asked whether he really would. This was his explanation of what retirement meant.
‘the raccoon was a guide and an omen to the extent that I accepted it as such.’
After tea with Heinz and Mai, a conversation about natural magic, and an encounter with a raccoon, Bunnell changed her travel plans. She explores how her own participation gave the encounter meaning, keeping several possible explanations in play.
Heinz von Foerster and Humberto Maturana in conversation with Fred Steier at the American Society for Cybernetics conference in Virginia Beach, 9–12 November 1989. Broadcast by Old Dominion University Television.
Watch the archive playlist ↗
Catalogue and recording provenance
Lectures recorded at est and introduced by Werner Erhard. The SysCoI page preserves Paul Schroeder’s account of digitising the tapes and links to the recordings.
The opening segment is missing; picture quality reflects the original VHS tapes, and one segment has quieter audio.
A lecture on observation, participation, and the cognitive work involved in managing complex systems. Portland State University Library preserves the recording and provides a transcript.
Von Foerster at the AUM conference at Esalen, discussing perception and how people form and test descriptions of reality. Kurt von Meier recorded the talk.
Listen to the recording ↗
Edited transcript, 2008 — free registration for full text
Perception, blind spots, and the ethical and aesthetic implications of participating in what we observe.
The observer who speaks, the observer addressed, and what changes when cybernetics includes its own practitioners.
The theorems about success and difficult problems, followed by questions about education, society, and what cyberneticians owe to the world.
Choice, responsibility, and the difference between an ethical commitment and telling somebody else how to behave.
A collection of essays spanning several decades. The publisher provides the contents and chapter records; access to the book may require a purchase or institutional subscription.
Bernhard Poerksen’s conversations with constructivists, opening with von Foerster. The linked preview includes their discussion of the observer and objectivity.
Von Foerster and Poerksen’s dialogue, published under the provocative title quoted above.
The University of Illinois catalogue links to digitised papers, correspondence, images, and recordings.
Heinz meets Captain Beefheart
Benjamin P Taylor imagines Heinz von Foerster in conversation with Don Van Vliet, Captain Beefheart: music, systems, a laughing tree, and a disappearing coin.
An imagined conversation, not a historical transcript or a source of authenticated quotations. Published on Chosen Path, 24 December 2024.
A memorable sentence travels further than its qualifications. The register keeps wording, variants, attribution, and context together. Its coverage is measured against named sources. A new source can extend it; repetition on a quotation website alone cannot authenticate a line.
† About the hallucination. The sentence about the uninvited observer rearranging the chairs was invented for this page. It is not a recorded saying by Heinz von Foerster. The Chosen Path dialogue is also explicitly imagined. The sourced maxims and attributed recollections have their own links; the invention has this confession. Back to the marginal saying ↑
Sources checked on 29 October 2026. Recordings stay with their hosts. For a correction, a missing maxim, or an earlier source, send a contribution with the passage or timestamp.