Gregory Bateson: A man walking is never in balance, but always correct...

Multiple descriptions are better than one.

Gregory Bateson

description multiple

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?

Gregory Bateson

knowing answers heart

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.

Gregory Bateson

toxic variables fall

It is impossible, in principle, to explain any pattern by invoking a single quantity.

Gregory Bateson

patterns principles insomnia

In the nature of the case, an explorer can never know what he is exploring until it has been explored.

Gregory Bateson

explorers cases knows

Logic is a poor model of cause and effect.

Gregory Bateson

logic poor causes

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

Gregory Bateson

often-is causes doe

Logic cannot model causal systems, and paradox is generated when time is ignored [as in logic].

Gregory Bateson

ignored paradox logic

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.

Gregory Bateson

receiving information men

Information consists of differences that make a difference.

Gregory Bateson

making-a-difference information differences

What we mean by information - the elementary unit of information - is a difference which makes a difference, and it is able to make a difference because the neural pathways along which it travels and is continually transformed are themselves provided with energy. The pathways are ready to be triggered. We may even say that the question is already implicit in them.

Gregory Bateson

making-a-difference differences mean

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

theory-of-evolution deep-understanding long

There are no monotone "values" in biology.

Gregory Bateson

biology values

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.

Gregory Bateson

technology today way

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

quantity different numbers

We do not know enough about how the present will lead into the future.

Gregory Bateson

enough knows

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.

Gregory Bateson

important doubt men

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

Gregory Bateson

training source religious

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

next able perception

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

details stress culture

A man walking is never in balance, but always correcting for imbalance.