Dear LO,
Men Are Grass:
The Logic of Gregory Bateson
Candice Bradley
> Gregory Bateson argued that there were two kinds of logic: logic in barbara
> and logic in grass. Logic in barbara is the logic of mathematics and
> empirical science and non-living things. It goes:
>> Men die.
>> Socrates is a man (or, Socrates is mortal).
>> Socrates will die.
>
> Logic in grass is the logic of schizophrenics, metaphor and living things.
> It goes:
>>> Men die.
>>> Grass dies.
>>> Men are grass.
>>
>
> Of course, says Bateson, people are not grass. However, when thinking
> metaphorically, we can imagine many ways in which people are grass and the
> idea might even seem lovely to us. The world of living things, the world he
> called "Mind" (see Mind and Nature), is governed by this kind of
> metaphorical logic, in which one half of the body is a metaphor for the
> other (even in a crab where the claw is bigger on one side than on the
> other), and where there are similarities between species we call
> homomorphisms, and in the process of ontogeny, etc.
>
>>> An Acre of Grass
>>>
>>> W.B.Yeats
>>>
>>> Picture and book remain,
>>> An acre of green grass
>>> For air and exercize,
>>> Now strength and body goes;
>>> Midnight, an old house
>>> Where nothing stirs but a mouse.
>>> My temptation is quiet.
>>> Here at life's end
>>> Neither loose imagination,
>>> Nor the mill of the mind
>>> Consuming its rag and bone
>>> Can make the truth known.
>>> Grant me an old man's frenzy,
>>> Myself must I remake
>>> Till I am Timon and Lear
>>> Or that William Blake
>>> Who beat upon the wall
>>> Till Truth obeyed his call;
>>> A mind Michael Angelo knew
>>> That can pierce the clouds,
>>> Or inspired by frenzy
>>> Shake the dead in their shrouds;
>>> Forgotten else by mankind,
>>> An old man's eagle mind.
>>>
>>
>
>> Bateson's point was that we must be careful not to get barbara logic
>> mixed up with grass logic. If we do that as individuals, if we mistake
>> metaphor for reality, we are mentally ill. If we do that as scientists, we
>> think mechanistically -- we substitute the mechanical "barbara" logic of
>> the non-living world for the metaphorical, circular, "grass" logic of the
>> living world.
let's be warned and be careful...I kept wanting to change 'living' to
'loving', but I imagine that is wrong, and I would be censured for it.
Love,
Andrew
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