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Pathology Is A Relatively Easy Thing To Discuss, Health Is Very Difficult. This, Of Course, Is One Of The Reasons Why There Is Such A Thing As The Sacred, And Why The Sacred Is Difficult To Talk About, Because The Sacred Is Peculiarly Related To The Healthy. One Does Not Like To Disturb The Sacred, For In General, To Talk About Something Changes It, And Perhaps Will Turn It Into A Pathology.

-Gregory Bateson

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Pathology Is A Relatively

Gregory Bateson

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Pathology Is A Relatively Easy Thing To Discuss, Health Is Very Difficult. This, Of Course, Is One Of The Reasons Why There Is Such A Thing As The Sacred, And Why The Sacred Is Difficult To Talk About, Because The Sacred Is Peculiarly Related To The Healthy. One Does Not Like To Disturb The Sacred, For In General, To Talk About Something Changes It, And Perhaps Will Turn It Into A Pathology.

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Science, Like Art, Religion, Commerce, Warfare, And Even Sleep, Is Based On Presuppositions. It Differs, However, From Most Other Branches Of Human Activity In That Not Only Are The Pathways Of Scientific Thought Determined By The Presuppositions Of The Scientists But Their Goals Are The Testing And Revision Of Old Presuppositions And The Creation Of New.

The Pathology Is To Want Control, Not That You Ever Get It, Because Of Course You Never Do.

It Is, I Claim, Nonsense To Say That It Does Not Matter Which Individual Man Acted As The Nucleus For The Change. It Is Precisely This That Makes History Unpredictable Into The Future.

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.

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.

Desired Substance, Things, Patterns, Or Sequences Of Experience That Are In Some Sense "good" For The Organism - Items Of Diet, Conditions Of Life, Temperature, Entertainment, Sex, And So Forth - Are Never Such That More Of The Something Is Always Better Than Less Of The Something. Rather, For All Objects And Experiences, There Is A Quantity That Has Optimum Value. Above That Quantity, The Variable Becomes Toxic. To Fall Below That Value Is To Be Deprived.

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.

Logic Can Often Be Reversed, But The Effect Does Not Precede The Cause.

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

Members Of Weakly Religious Families Get, Of Course, No Religious Training From Any Source Outside The Family.

All Experience Is Subjective.

Somebody Was Saying To Picasso That He Ought To Make Pictures Of Things The Way They Are-objective Pictures. He Mumbled That He Wasn't Quite Sure What That Would Be. The Person Who Was Bullying Him Produced A Photograph Of His Wife From His Wallet And Said, "there, You See, That Is A Picture Of How She Really Is." Picasso Looked At It And Said, "she Is Rather Small, Isn't She? And Flat?"

Schizophrenia --its Nature, Etiology, And The Kind Of Therapy To Use For It--remains One Of The Most Puzzling Of The Mental Illnesses. The Theory Of Schizophrenia Presented Here Is Based On Communications Analysis, And Specifically On The Theory Of Logical Types. From This Theory And From Observations Of Schizophrenic Patients Is Derived A Description, And The Necessary Conditions For, A Situation Called The "double Bind"--a Situation In Which No Matter What A Person Does, He "can't Win." It Is Hypothesized That A Person Caught In The Double Bind May Develop Schizophrenic Symptoms

Women Watched For The Spectacular Performances Of The Men, And There Can Be No Reasonable Doubt That The Presence Of An Audience Is A Very Important Factor In Shaping The Men's Behavior. In Fact, It Is Probable That The Men Are More Exhibitionistic Because The Women Admire Their Performances. Conversely, There Can Be No Doubt That The Spectacular Behavior Is A Stimulus Which Summons The Audience Together, Promoting In The Women The Appropriate Behavior.

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.

Every Move We Make In Fear Of The Next War In Fact Hastens It.

Information Consists Of Differences That Make A Difference.

Making A Difference

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

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. Between Two And Three There Is A Jump. In The Case Of Quantity, There Is No Such Jump; And Because Jump Is Missing In The World Of Quantity, It Is Impossible For Any Quantity To Be Exact. You Can Have Exactly Three Tomatoes. You Can Never Have Exactly Three Gallons Of Water. Always Quantity Is Approximate.

In The Nature Of The Case, An Explorer Can Never Know What He Is Exploring Until It Has Been Explored.

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.

Money Is Always Transitively Valued. More Money Is Supposedly Always Better Than Less Money.

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

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.

The Only Way Out Is Spiritual, Intellectual, And Emotional Revolution In Which, Finally, We Learn To Experience First Hand The Interloping Connections Between Person And Person, Organism And Organism, Action And Consequence.

Those Who Lack All Idea That It Is Possible To Be Wrong Can Learn Nothing Except Know-how.

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

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.

After Mastery Comes Artistry And Not Before.

It Takes Two To Know One.

Perhaps The Attempt To Achieve Grace By Identification With The Animals Was The Most Sensitive Thing Which Was Tried In The Whole Bloody History Of Religion .

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.

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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'

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.

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.

No Organism Can Afford To Be Conscious Of Matters With Which It Could Deal At Unconscious Levels. Broadly, We Can Afford To Sink Those Sorts Of Knowledge Which Continue To Be True Regardless Of Changes In The Environment, But We Must Maintain In An Accessible Place All Those Controls Of Behavior Which Must Be Modified For Every Instance. The Economics Of The System, In Fact, Pushes Organisms Toward Sinking Into The Unconscious Those Generalities Of Relationship Which Remain Permanently True And Toward Keeping Within The Conscious The Pragmatic Of Particular Instances.

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Making A Difference

Yes, Metaphor. That's How The Whole Fabric Of Mental Interconnections Holds Together. Metaphor Is Right At The Bottom Of Being Alive.

The Creature That Wins Against Its Environment Destroys Itself.

Still More Astonishing Is That World Of Rigorous Fantasy Which We Call Mathematics.

Creative Thought Must Always Contain A Random Component.

Creative Thought

Let's Not Pretend That Mental Phenomena Can Be Mapped On To The Characteristics Of Billiard Balls.

Characteristics

Whatever The Ups And Downs Of Detail Within Our Limited Experience, The Larger Whole Is Primarily Beautiful.

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

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Life And 'mind' Are Systemic Processes.

What Is The Pattern That Connects The Crab To The Lobster And The Primrose To The Orchid, And All Of Them To Me, And Me To You?

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Pathology Is A Relatively Easy Thing To Discuss, Health Is Very Difficult. This, Of Course, Is One Of The Reasons Why There Is Such A Thing As The Sacred, And Why The Sacred Is Difficult To Talk About, Because The Sacred Is Peculiarly Related To The Healthy. One Does Not Like To Disturb The Sacred, For In General, To Talk About Something Changes It, And Perhaps Will Turn It Into A Pathology.

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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Characteristics

It Is Impossible, In Principle, To Explain Any Pattern By Invoking A Single Quantity.

We Do Not Know Enough About How The Present Will Lead Into The Future.

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.

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Play Is The Establishment And Exploration Of Relationship.

Information Is A Difference That Makes A Difference.

Making A Difference

Science Probes; It Does Not Prove.

Without Context Words And Actions Have No Meaning At All

Words And Actions

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.

The Meaning Of Your Communication Is The Response You Get.

There Are No Monotone "values" In Biology.

Rather, For All Objects And Experiences, There Is A Quantity That Has Optimum Value. Above That Quantity, The Variable Becomes Toxic. To Fall Below That Value Is To Be Deprived.

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

Prediction Can Never Be Absolutely Valid And Therefore Science Can Never Prove Some Generalization Or Even Test A Single Descriptive Statement And In That Way Arrive At Final Truth.

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.

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.

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."

The Map Is Not The Territory (coined By Alfred Korzybski), And The Name Is Not The Thing Named.

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.

Things Have To Be Done Fast In America , And Therefore Therapy Has To Be Brief.

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.

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?

Logic Is A Poor Model Of Cause And Effect.

Perhaps There Is No Such Thing As Unilateral Power. After All, The Man In Power Depends On Receiving Information All The Time From Outside. He Responds To That Information Just As Much As He Causes Things To Happen... It Is An Interaction, And Not A Lineal Situation.

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

People Are Going To Have To Make Themselves Predictable, Or The Machines Will Get Angry And Kill Them.

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.

Multiple Descriptions Are Better Than One.

We Are Most Of Us Governed By Epistemologies That We Know To Be Wrong

The Major Problems In The World Are The Result Of The Difference Between How Nature Works And The Way People Think.

No Organism Can Afford To Be Conscious Of Matters With Which It Could Deal At Unconscious Levels.

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.

The Rules Of The Universe That We Think We Know Are Buried Deep In Our Processes Of Perception.

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