inter-stratal tension

the pattern which connects

Feb 17

eldoncontext, epistemology, suitable quotations bateson No Comments

I remember the boredom of analyzing sentences and the boredom later, at Cambridge, of learning comparative anatomy. Bothe subjects, as taught, were torturously unreal. We could have been told something about the pattern which connects: that all communication necessitates context, that without context, there is no meaning, and that contexts confer meaning because there is a classification of contexts. The teacher could have argued that growth and differentiation must be controlled by communication. The shapes of plants and animals are the transforms of messages. Language itself is a form of communication. The structure of the input must somehow be reflected as structure in the output. Anatomy must contain an analogue of grammar because all anatomy is a transform of message material, which must be contextually shaped. And finally, contextual shaping is only another term for grammar.
So we come back to the patterns of connection and the more abstract, and more general (and most empty) proposition that, indeed, there is a pattern of patterns of connection.

Gregory Bateson (1979) from the Introduction to “Mind and Nature”.