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
Creative thought must always contain a random component.
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.
Science probes; it does not prove.
All experience is subjective.
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'
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.
In no system which shows mental characteristics can any part have unilateral control over the whole. In other words, the mental characteristics of the system are imminent, not in some part, but in the system as a whole.
Evolution has long been badly taught. In particular, students - and even professional biologists - acquire theories of evolution without any deep understanding of what problem these theories attempt to solve. They learn but little of the evolution of evolutionary theory.
Money is always transitively valued. More money is supposedly always better than less money.
We do not know enough about how the present will lead into the future.
Logic cannot model causal systems, and paradox is generated when time is ignored [as in logic].
Whenever we pride ourselves upon finding a newer, stricter way of thought or exposition … we lose something of the ability to think new thoughts. And equally, of course, whenever we rebel against the sterile rigidity of formal thought and exposition and let our ideas run wild, we likewise lose. As I see it, the advances in scientific thought come from a combination of lose and strict thinking, and this combination is the most precious tool of science.
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.
Information consists of differences that make a difference.