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No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels.

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
Matter
Organisms
Afford
Unconscious
Matters
Conscious
Deal
Deals
Generalities
Levels
Organism

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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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Let's not pretend that mental phenomena can be mapped on to the characteristics of billiard balls.
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Information is a difference that makes a difference.
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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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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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There are no monotone values in biology.
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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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We are most of us governed by epistemologies that we know to be wrong
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I shall argue that the problem of grace is fundamentally a problem of integration and what is to be integrated is the diverse parts of the mind - especially those multiple levels of which one extreme is called 'consciousness' and the other the 'unconscious'
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Multiple descriptions are better than one.
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After mastery comes artistry and not before.
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Still more astonishing is that world of rigorous fantasy which we call mathematics.
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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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Science probes it does not prove.
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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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Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions.
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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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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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The pathology is to want control, not that you ever get it, because of course you never do.
Gregory Bateson