p.29 It is these notions of inhibition and facilitation which have been used in the discussion of the reflex arc.

 

p.49 The thought of every age is reflected in its technique.

 

p.51 At every stage of technique since Daedalus or Hero of Alexandria, the ability of the artificer to produce a working simulacrum of a living organism has always intrigued people. This desire to produce and to study automata has always been expressed in terms of the living technique of the age. In the days of magic, we have the bizarre and sinister concept of the Golem, that figure of clay into which the Rabbi of Prague breathed in life with the blasphemy of the Ineffable Name of God.

 

p.55 The machines of which we are now speaking are not the dream of the sensationalist, nor the hope of some future time. They already exist as thermostats, automatic gyro-compass ship-steering systems, self-propelled missiles - especially such as seek their target - anti-aircraft fire-control systems, automatically controlled oil-cracking stills, ultra-rapid computing machines, and the like... the many automata of the present age are coupled to the outside world both for the reception of impressions and for the performance of actions. They contain sense-organs, effectors, and the equivalent of a nervous system to integrate the transfer of information from one to the other.

 

p.114 for effective action on the outer world, it is not only essential that we possess good effectors, but that the performance of these effectors be properly monitored back to the central nervous system, and that the readings of these monitors be properly combined with the other information coming in from the sense organs to produce a properly proportioned output to the effectors.

 

p.133 When we go duck-shooting, the error which we try to minimize is not that between the position of the gun and the actual position of the target, but that between the position of the gun and the anticipated position of the target.

 

p.152 It has already been recognized that the conditioned reflex is a learning mechanism, and this idea has been used in the behaviorist studies of the learning of rats in a maze. [JLJ - the work of Tolman comes to mind here]

 

p.153 There is nothing in the nature of the computing machine which forbids it to show conditioned reflexes.

 

p.157 When the peripheral vision has picked up some object conspicuous by brilliancy or light-contrast or color or above all by motion, there is reflex feed-back to bring it into the fovea.

 

[quotes and page numbers below from 1965 edition of Cybernetics]

 

p.177 In all these stories the point is that the agencies of magic are literal-minded; and that if we ask for a boon from them, we must ask for what we really want and not for what we think we want. The new and real agencies of the learning machine are also literal-minded.