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Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions.

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
Based
Sleep
Religion
Science
Art
Presuppositions
Even
Warfare
Like
Commerce
Solutions

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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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Science probes it does not prove.
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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.
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Surrender to alcohol intoxication provides a partial and subjective shortcut to a more correct state of mind.
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There are no monotone values in biology.
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A man walking is never in balance, but always correcting for imbalance.
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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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Interesting phenomena occur when two or more rhythmic patterns are combined, and these phenomena illustrate very aptly the enrichment of information that occurs when one description is combined with another.
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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.
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A major difficulty is that the answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx is partly a product of the answers that we already have given to the riddle in its various forms.
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Every move we make in fear of the next war in fact hastens it.
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After mastery comes artistry and not before.
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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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Logic cannot model causal systems, and paradox is generated when time is ignored [as in logic].
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The pathology is to want control, not that you ever get it, because of course you never do.
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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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No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels.
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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.
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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.
Gregory Bateson
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We are discovering today that several of the premises which are deeply ingrained in our way of life are simply untrue and become pathogenic when implemented with modern technology.
Gregory Bateson