The brain is encased in the head, the part of the body which in most walking, flying or swimming animals is the leading end of the moving body (with … - Valentino Braitenberg

We must be careful, however, not to let the process of acquiring new ideas interfere with the detailed knowledge that our vehicle has assiduously collected and carefully stored in many associative connections during its lifetime. We know that this may happen in humans who are overly dedicated to the development of ideas. They tend to connect many individual cases into general categories ad then use the categories as if they were things, losing the potential for categorizing in other ways by remembering each instance.

We will talk only about machines with very simple internal structures, too simple in fact to be interesting from the point of view of mechanical or electrical engineering. Interest arises, rather, when we look at these machines or vehicles as if they were animals, in a natural environment. We will be tempted, then, to use psychological language in describing their behavior. And yet we know very well that there is nothing in these vehicles that we have not put there ourselves.

Ad Aertsen succeeds in allowing his sense of humour to shine through the deep seriousness of his scientific ethos. He also has a very balanced attitude to the question of "theory or experiment".