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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.

-Gregory Bateson

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Our Initial Sensory Data

Gregory Bateson

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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.

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Characteristics

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Logic Cannot Model Causal Systems, And Paradox Is Generated When Time Is Ignored [as In Logic].

Play Is The Establishment And Exploration Of Relationship.

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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.

Without Context Words And Actions Have No Meaning At All

Words And Actions

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Characteristics

It Is To The Riddle Of The Sphinx That I Have Devoted Fifty Years Of Professional Life As An Anthropologist.

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A Man Walking Is Never In Balance, But Always Correcting For Imbalance.

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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Information Is A Difference That Makes A Difference.

Making A Difference

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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.

Wisdom Is The Intelligence Of The System As A Whole.

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Science, Like Art, Religion, Commerce, Warfare, And Even Sleep, Is Based On Presuppositions.

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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.

Deep Understanding

Theory Of Evolution

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.

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Science Probes; It Does Not Prove.

All Experience Is Subjective.

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.

The World Is Indeed Only A Small Tide Pool; Disturb One Part And The Rest Is Threatened.

If A Man Achieves Or Suffers Change In Premises Which Are Deeply Embedded In His Mind, He Will Surely Find That The Results Of That Change Will Ramify Throughout His Whole Universe.

There Are Times When I Catch Myself Believing That There Is Such A Thing As Something; Which Is Separate From Something Else.

What Is True Is That The Idea Of Power Corrupts. Power Corrupts Most Rapidly Those Who Believe In It, And It Is They Who Will Want It Most. Obviously, Our Democratic System Tends To Give Power To Those Who Hunger For It And Gives Every Opportunity To Those Who Don't Want Power To Avoid Getting It. Not A Very Satisfactory Arrangement If Power Corrupts Those Who Believe In It And Want It.

Creative Thought Must Always Contain A Random Component.

Creative Thought

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