Gordon Pask: The Cybernetics of Human Learning and Performance: A Guide to Theory and Research (1975)

“This book assumes a background knowledge commensurate with having read its predecessor An Approach to Cybernetics (1961) of which some passages are a direct continuation. All that is needed from a system/cybernetic point of view is available in Ashby’s lucid and still up-to-date Introduction to Cybernetics (1965), though the reader with a bent and liking for mathematics will find Glushkov’s Introduction to Cybernetics (1966) profound and comprehensive (the nearly identical title is due to translation). There is a glossary covering all essential technical terms at the end of the book. Readers may find this helpful, not so much because of obscure symbolism (very little is employed) but because ordinary language phrases are used, from time to time, with rather exact meaning; in order to avoid symbols. This trick is played quite often with logical and mathematical terms; sometimes with the relatively comprehensible jargon of psychology, educational science, and philosophy. The other offending speciality is electronics. Knowledge of the subject is unimportant, since the function of components is explained or illustrated. Some otherwise abstract notions are made tangible by the description of electrical machinery; people who are versed in the field may find the details interesting and amusing (especially in Chapter 5 where methods are quaintly redolent of the late 1950s and early 1960s). But there is no need to labour these points; only the function of the machinery bears directly upon the main theme.” (from Preface)

Publisher Hutchinson Educational, 1975
ISBN 0091194903, 9780091194901
347 pages
via pangaro.com

PDF (28 MB, updated on 2017-10-25)