"Prominent among the methods for dealing with complexity is cybernetics. It should reject the vaguely intuitive ideas that we pick up from handling such simple machines as the alarm clock and the bicycle, and set to work to build up a rigourous discipline of the subject. For a time (as the first few chapters of the book will show) it seems rather to deal with truisms and platitudes, but this is merely because the foundations are built to be broad and strong. They are built so that cybernetics can be developed vigorously, without the primary vagueness that has infected most past attempts to grapple with, in particular, the complexities of the brain in action.
Cybernetics offers the hope of providing effective methods for the study and control, of systems that are intrinsically extremely complex." 12