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Some tools of thought are so blunt that they are almost useless others are so sharp that they are dangerous. But the wise man will have the use of both kinds.

Gregory Bateson

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Gregory Bateson
Age: 76 †
Born: 1904
Born: May 9
Died: 1980
Died: July 4
Anthropologist
Biologist
Film Director
Linguist
Philosopher
Psychologist
Semiotician
Sociologist
Grantchester
Cambridgeshire
Use
Blunt
Others
Sharp
Thought
Useless
Kind
Kinds
Men
Tools
Dangerous
Wise
Almost

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Yes, metaphor. That's how the whole fabric of mental interconnections holds together. Metaphor is right at the bottom of being alive.
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After mastery comes artistry and not before.
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Let's not pretend that mental phenomena can be mapped on to the characteristics of billiard balls.
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Still more astonishing is that world of rigorous fantasy which we call mathematics.
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In the nature of the case, an explorer can never know what he is exploring until it has been explored.
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Multiple descriptions are better than one.
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It is to the Riddle of the Sphinx that I have devoted fifty years of professional life as an anthropologist.
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But epistemology is always and inevitably personal. The point of the probe is always in the heart of the explorer: What is my answer to the question of the nature of knowing?
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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 DNA.
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Life and 'Mind' are systemic processes.
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We do not know enough about how the present will lead into the future. We shall never be able to say, Ha! My perception, my accounting for that series, will indeed cover its next and future components, or Next time I meet with these phenomena, I shall be able to predict their total course.
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We can never be quite clear whether we are referring to the world as it is or to the world as we see it.
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The rules of the universe that we think we know are buried deep in our processes of perception.
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It is of first-class importance that our answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx should be in step with how we conduct our civilisation, and this should in turn be in step with the actual workings of living systems.
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Information is a difference that makes a difference.
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A man walking is never in balance, but always correcting for imbalance.
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There are no monotone values in biology.
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