Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson
Gregory Batesonwas an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician, and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. In the 1940s he helped extend systems theory and cybernetics to the social and behavioral sciences. He spent the last decade of his life developing a "meta-science" of epistemology to bring together the various early forms of systems theory developing in different fields of science. His writings include Steps to an Ecology of Mindand Mind and Nature. Angels Fearwas...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth9 May 1904
Gregory Bateson quotes about
Language commonly stresses only one side of any interaction.
Those who lack all idea that it is possible to be wrong can learn nothing except know-how.
The creature that wins against its environment destroys itself.
Information is a difference that makes a difference.
The map is not the territory (coined by Alfred Korzybski), and the name is not the thing named.
After mastery comes artistry and not before.
Wisdom is the intelligence of the system as a whole.
Most of us have lost that sense of unity of biosphere and humanity which would bind and reassure us all with an affirmation of beauty. Most of us do not today believe that whatever the ups and down of detail within our limited experience, the larger whole is primarily beautiful.
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.
The pathology is to want control, not that you ever get it, because of course you never do.
Our initial sensory data are always "first derivatives," statements about differences which exist among external objects or statements about changes which occur either in them or in our relationship to them. Objects and circumstances which remain absolutely constant relative to the observer, unchanged either by his own movement or by external events, are in general difficult and perhaps always impossible to perceive. What we perceive easily is difference and change and difference is a relationship.
The world is indeed only a small tide pool; disturb one part and the rest is threatened.
Science sometimes improves hypotheses and sometimes disproves them. But proof would be another matter and perhaps never occurs except in the realms of totally abstract tautology. We can sometimes say that if such and such abstract suppositions or postulates are given, then such and such abstract suppositions or postulates are given, then such and such must follow absolutely. But the truth about what can be perceived or arrived at by induction from perception is something else again.
Whatever the ups and downs of detail within our limited experience, the larger whole is primarily beautiful.