Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson
Gregory Batesonwas an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician, and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. In the 1940s he helped extend systems theory and cybernetics to the social and behavioral sciences. He spent the last decade of his life developing a "meta-science" of epistemology to bring together the various early forms of systems theory developing in different fields of science. His writings include Steps to an Ecology of Mindand Mind and Nature. Angels Fearwas...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth9 May 1904
Wisdom is the intelligence of the system as a whole.
All experience is subjective.
The pathology is to want control, not that you ever get it, because of course you never do.
Official education was telling people almost nothing of the nature of all those things on the seashores, and in the redwood forests, in the deserts and in the plains.
Things have to be done fast in America , and therefore therapy has to be brief.
To think straight, it is advisable to expect all qualities and attributes, adjectives, and so on to refer to at least two sets of interactions in time.
Numbers are the product of counting. Quantities are the product of measurement. This means that numbers can conceivably be accurate because there is a discontinuity between each integer and the next. Between two and three there is a jump. In the case of quantity, there is no such jump; and because jump is missing in the world of quantity, it is impossible for any quantity to be exact. You can have exactly three tomatoes. You can never have exactly three gallons of water. Always quantity is approximate.
What is true is that the idea of power corrupts. Power corrupts most rapidly those who believe in it, and it is they who will want it most. Obviously, our democratic system tends to give power to those who hunger for it and gives every opportunity to those who don't want power to avoid getting it. Not a very satisfactory arrangement if power corrupts those who believe in it and want it.
Science probes; it does not prove.
Language commonly stresses only one side of any interaction.
Most of us have lost that sense of unity of biosphere and humanity which would bind and reassure us all with an affirmation of beauty. Most of us do not today believe that whatever the ups and down of detail within our limited experience, the larger whole is primarily beautiful.
The map is not the territory (coined by Alfred Korzybski), and the name is not the thing named.
The creature that wins against its environment destroys itself.
Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions.