p.281 Descartes declared that there must be at least as much reality and perfection in the cause as in the effect. Kant asked, 'How can work full of design build itself up without a design and without a builder?'

p.282 the measurement of a quantity can properly precede the understanding of what it is that is being measured

p.287 Darwin... showed that quite a simple rule, acting over a great length of time, could produce design and adaptation far more complex than the rule that had generated it.

p.287 evolution by natural selection produces great richness of design.
 Whence comes the richness? ...the complexity that can be generated by evolution is independent of the complexity in these rules... the essence of the evolutionary process is selection, a single selective operator acting over and over again.

p.288 however complex the specification of 'natural selection,' evolution can in time produce a greater complexity.

p.288 Information theory, however, makes clear whence comes the extra information. The law that information cannot be created is not violated by evolution, for the evolving system receives an endless stream of information in the form of mutations... The evolving system has thus two sources of information, that implied in the specification of the rules of natural selection and that implied by the inpouring streams of mutations.

p.289 What we have to do now is to develop a machine that shall, in some way, use an evolution-like process in its working.

p.289-290 a human being... He has, in fact, devised an 'information amplifier.' ...the output is of the same quality as the input, but the input is not used to provide part of the output: it is consumed in controlling the flow of 'material' from a copious source, or large reservoir, of the same 'material'; and it is the reservoir that provides the output.

p.290 At this point the critic may well object that such information, being unorganized and chaotic, is useless. To this I would reply that chaotic information is by no means useless, but is, in fact, perfectly usable (as evolution has shown by its use of mutations) provided that the machine has been designed to make the necessary selection.

p.290, 292 First, what is the homeostat? ...In a sense it is a machine within a machine... Its process is clearly similar to that occurring in evolution. There the rules are: test the organism against the environment; if the organism is unfit remove it: replace it by a new organism that differs from it in some random way... In both, the new material varies merely randomly from the old.
 The homeostat was built before Shannon's theory of information had been published.

p.292-293 To defeat the limit implied by the dictum [JLJ - of Descartes, that there must be at least as much reality and perfection in the cause as in the effect], the designer must include, as one of his specifications, 'admit other information.' Stated thus the method may seem to be mere trickery... Trickery or not, however, it offers the designer a practical method for overcoming the limitations of his own powers of design.

p.293 If we wish to build a machine that can beat us at chess, or to build a 'real' brain... we must aim in design, not a machine that will play chess, but at a machine that can make trials, and select. The homeostat was intended to be a first step in this direction.

p.293-294 It is quite possible for a mechanical chess-player to outplay the man who designed it.
 For this to be possible, the designer must construct the machine so that it can receive and use information not provided by him in detail.