Gregory Bateson Quotes - Page 4

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• It is to the Riddle of the Sphinx that I have devoted fifty years of professional life as an anthropologist.

  Gregory Bateson

  Years, Sphinx, Fifty

  14 Copy quote

• Number is different from quantity. This difference is basic for any sort of theorizing in behavioral science, any sort of imagining of what goes on between organisms or inside organisms as part of their processes of thought.

  Gregory Bateson

  Numbers, Different, Quantity

  "Number is Different from Quantity". CoEvolution Quarterly, www.oikos.org. Spring 1978.

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Gregory Bateson

  Wise, Law, People

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• There are no monotone "values" in biology.

  Gregory Bateson

  Biology, Values

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• There is a strong tendency in explanatory prose to invoke quantities of tension, energy, and whatnot to explain the genesis of pattern. I believe that all such explanations are inappropriate or wrong.

  Gregory Bateson

  Strong, Believe, Energy

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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

  Class, Sphinx, Answers

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Gregory Bateson

  Deep Understanding, Theory Of Evolution, Long

  Gregory Bateson (1972). “Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology”, p.343, University of Chicago Press

  5 Copy quote

• Members of weakly religious families get, of course, no religious training from any source outside the family.

  Gregory Bateson

  Religious, Training, Source

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• Numbers are the product of counting. Quantities are the product of measurement. This means that numbers can conceivably be accurate because there is a discontinuity between each integer and the next.

  Gregory Bateson

  Mean, Numbers, Next

  "Number is Different from Quantity". CoEvolution Quarterly, www.oikos.org. Spring 1978.

  35 Copy quote

• A major difficulty is that the answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx is partly a product of the answers that we already have given to the riddle in its various forms.

  Gregory Bateson

  Sphinx, Answers, Form

  Gregory Bateson, Mary Catherine Bateson (1987). “Angels fear: towards an epistemology of the sacred”, MacMillan Publishing Company

  11 Copy quote

• If it were possible adequately to present the whole of a culture, stressing every aspect exactly as appears in the culture itself, no single detail would appear bizarre or strange or arbitrary to the reader, but rather the details would all appear natural and reasonable as they do to the natives who have lived all their lives within the culture.

  Gregory Bateson

  Stress, Details, Culture

  "Naven: A Survey of the Problems Suggested by a Composite Picture". Book by Gregory Bateson, 1936.

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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."

  Gregory Bateson

  Perception, Able, Next

  "Mind and Nature - a Necessary Unity". Book by Gregory Bateson, new edition, 1988.

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• Synaptic summation is the technical term used in neurophysiology for those instances in which some neuron C is fired only by a combination of neurons A and B.

  Gregory Bateson

  Neurons, Used, Combination

  8 Copy quote

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