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
What is the pattern that connects the crab to the lobster and the primrose to the orchid, and all of them to me, and me to you?
There are times when I catch myself believing that there is such a thing as something; which is separate from something else.
The only way out is spiritual, intellectual, and emotional revolution in which, finally, we learn to experience first hand the interloping connections between person and person, organism and organism, action and consequence.
Let's not pretend that mental phenomena can be mapped on to the characteristics of billiard balls.
Information is a difference that makes a difference.
But the myth of power is, of course, a very powerful myth, and probably most people in this world more or less believe in it. It is a myth, which, if everybody believes in it, becomes to that extent self-validating. But it is still epistemological lunacy and leads inevitably to various sorts of disaster.
The meaning of your communication is the response you get.
Yes, metaphor. That's how the whole fabric of mental interconnections holds together. Metaphor is right at the bottom of being alive.
In the transmission of human culture, people always attempt to replicate, to pass on to the next generation the skills and values of the parents, but the attempt always fails because cultural transmission is geared to learning, not D.N.A.
We are most of us governed by epistemologies that we know to be wrong
If a man achieves or suffers change in premises which are deeply embedded in his mind, he will surely find that the results of that change will ramify throughout his whole universe.
We can never be quite clear whether we are referring to the world as it is or to the world as we see it.
Without context words and actions have no meaning at all
Pathology is a relatively easy thing to discuss, health is very difficult. This, of course, is one of the reasons why there is such a thing as the sacred, and why the sacred is difficult to talk about, because the sacred is peculiarly related to the healthy. One does not like to disturb the sacred, for in general, to talk about something changes it, and perhaps will turn it into a pathology.