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Still more astonishing is that world of rigorous fantasy which we call mathematics.

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
Call
Stills
Still
Rigorous
World
Astonishing
Mathematical
Math
Mathematics
Fantasy

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The wise legislator will only rarely initiate a new rule of behaviour more usually he will confine himself to affirming in law what has already become the custom of the people.
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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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Information is a difference that makes a difference.
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After mastery comes artistry and not before.
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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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There are no monotone values in biology.
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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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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.
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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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Logic cannot model causal systems, and paradox is generated when time is ignored [as in logic].
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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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Let's not pretend that mental phenomena can be mapped on to the characteristics of billiard balls.
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A man walking is never in balance, but always correcting for imbalance.
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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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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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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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Multiple descriptions are better than one.
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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.
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Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions.
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Those who lack all idea that it is possible to be wrong can learn nothing except know-how.
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