Gregory Bateson

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

— Gregory Bateson

#devoted #fifty #i #life #professional

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. ↗

— Gregory Bateson

#change #claim #does #future #history

Logic can often be reversed, but the effect does not precede the cause. ↗

— Gregory Bateson

#does #effect #logic #often #precede

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

— Gregory Bateson

#course #families #family #get #members

Money is always transitively valued. More money is supposedly always better than less money. ↗

— Gregory Bateson

#better #less #money #more #supposedly

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. ↗

— Gregory Bateson

#deserts #education #forests #nature #nothing

Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions. ↗

— Gregory Bateson

#based #commerce #even #like #religion

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

#fired #instances #neurons #only #some

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

#energy #explain #explanations #genesis #i

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. ↗

— Gregory Bateson

#advisable #attributes #expect #interactions #least