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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.

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
Whether
Never
World
Referring
Quite
Clear

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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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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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After mastery comes artistry and not before.
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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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The creature that wins against its environment destroys itself.
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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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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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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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Life and 'Mind' are systemic processes.
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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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Let's not pretend that mental phenomena can be mapped on to the characteristics of billiard balls.
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There are many matters and many circumstances in which consciousness is undesirable and silence is golden, so that secrecy can be used as a marker to tell us that we are approaching the holy.
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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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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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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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It is to the Riddle of the Sphinx that I have devoted fifty years of professional life as an anthropologist.
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