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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.

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
Steps
Riddle
Answers
Civilisation
Turn
Conduct
Class
Systems
Turns
Actual
Living
Importance
Firsts
Step
Sphinx
First
Answer
Workings

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There are no monotone values in biology.
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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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Information is a difference that makes a difference.
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People are going to have to make themselves predictable, or the machines will get angry and kill them.
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We are most of us governed by epistemologies that we know to be wrong
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Life and 'Mind' are systemic processes.
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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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Those who lack all idea that it is possible to be wrong can learn nothing except know-how.
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After mastery comes artistry and not before.
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The creature that wins against its environment destroys itself.
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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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Science probes it does not prove.
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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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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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A man walking is never in balance, but always correcting for imbalance.
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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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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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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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