“the distribution of flexibility among the many variables of a system is a matter of very great importance. The healthy system … may be compared to an acrobat on a high wire. To maintain the ongoing truth of his basic premise (“I am on the wire”), he must be free to move from one position of instability to another, i. e., certain variables such as the position of his arms and the rate of movement of his arms must have great flexibility, which he uses to maintain the stability of other more fundamental and general characteristics. If his arms are fixed or paralyzed (isolated from communication), he must fall.”

— Gregory Bateson , book Steps to an Ecology of Mind

7.4 Ecology and Flexibility in Urban Civilization
Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "the distribution of flexibility among the many variables of a system is a matter of very great importance. The healthy …" by Gregory Bateson?

Gregory Bateson 49

English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual … 1904–1980

Related quotes

“Lack of flexibility manifests itself as stress. …stress will occur when one or more variables of the system are pushed to their extreme values, which induces increased rigidity throughout the system.”

Fritjof Capra (1939) American physicist

Epilogue: Ecological Literacy
The Web of Life (1996)

“When a constant electric current flows along a cylindrical wire, its strength is the same at every part of the section of the wire. But if the current is variable, self-induction produces a deviation from this… induction opposes variations of the current in the centre of the wire more strongly than at the circumference, and consequently the current by preference flows along the outer portion of the wire. When the current changes its direction… this deviation increases rapidly with the rate of alternation; and when the current alternates many million times per second, almost the whole of the interior of the wire must, according to theory, appear free from current, and the flow must confine itself to the very skin of the wire. Now in such extreme cases… preference must be given to another conception of the matter which was first presented by Messrs. 0. Heaviside and J. H. Poynting, as the correct interpretation of Maxwell's equations as applied to this case. According to this view, the electric force which determines the current is not propagated in the wire itself, but under all circumstances penetrates from without into the wire, and spreads into the metal with comparative slowness and laws similar to those which govern changes of temperature in a conducting body.
…Inasmuch as I made use of electric waves in wires of exceedingly short period in my experiments on the propagation of electric force, it was natural to test by means of these the correctness of the conclusions deduced. As a matter of fact the theory was found to be confirmed by the experiments…”

Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894) German physicist

"On the Propagation of Electric Waves by Means of Wires" (1889) Wiedemann's Annalen. 37 p. 395, & pp.160-161 of Electric Waves
Electric Waves: Being Researches on the Propagation of Electric Action with Finite Velocity Through Space (1893)

“The management system of an organization must have compatible component parts if it is to function effectively. This conclusion has a very important implication; experiments in organizations must involve internally consistent changes. The traditional atomistic research design is not appropriate for experiments involving organizational theory or management systems. Every aspect of a management system is related to every other part and interacts with it.
The results obtained by altering a single variable or procedure while keeping all others the same usually will yield quite different results from those obtained when that variable is changed along with simultaneous and compatible changes in all other aspects of the management system. The true influence of altering one aspect of the system cannot be determined by varying it and it alone… In experiments involving organizational theory and management systems, therefore, a systems approach must be used. The organic integrity of each system must be maintained while experimental variations are being made.”

Rensis Likert (1903–1981) American statistician

Source: The Human Organization, 1967, p. 123

“Magnus has many good qualities… he is very versatile and he can play a lot of positions at a very high level. He's also very flexible. And he has this amazing talent for grinding on, as you say. So that combination I was unable to deal with.”

Viswanathan Anand (1969) Indian chess player

2013 World Chess Championship

“Thus use your frog…Put your hook through his mouth, and out at his gills;…and then with a fine needle and silk sew the upper part of his leg, with only one stitch, to the arming-wire of your hook; or tie the frog's leg, above the upper joint, to the armed-wire; and in so doing use him as though you loved him.”

Izaak Walton book The Compleat Angler

Part I, ch. 8.
The Compleat Angler (1653-1655)

“The Magician must be wary in his use of his powers; he must make every act not only accord with his Will, but with the properties of his position at the time.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Appendix VI : A few principal rituals – Liber Reguli.
Magick Book IV : Liber ABA, Part III : Magick in Theory and Practice (1929)
Context: The Magician must be wary in his use of his powers; he must make every act not only accord with his Will, but with the properties of his position at the time. It might be my Will to reach the foot of a cliff; but the easiest way — also the speediest, most direct least obstructed, the way of minimum effort — would be simply to jump. I should have destroyed my Will in the act of fulfilling it, or what I mistook for it; for the True Will has no goal; its nature being To Go.

“Lyndsay, with all his ancient coarseness…maintained for two centuries, even among the precise, his position as the popular poet of Scotland.”

David Lindsay (1490–1554) Scottish noble and poet

George Gordon The Discipline of Letters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946) p. 91.
Criticism

“Synthesis of systems is much more difficult. Here science and engineering begin to take on aspects of art. A systems designer or planner not only must construct systems that work harmoniously individually and in tandem, he must also know a lot about the environment that the system is intended to match. Consideration of environmental factors requires foresight and experience; no one can ever foresee all the variables of importance and a choice of which to include is often a difficult one to make.”

Arthur D. Hall (1925–2006) American electrical engineer

Source: Definition of System, 1956, p. 28

“The ability to work with systems of general equilibrium is perhaps one of the most important skills of the economist — a skill which he shares with many other scientists, but in which he has perhaps a certain comparative advantage.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, The Skills of the Economist, 1958, p. 15

“Rousseau has said in his Emile (book iv.): "Even though philosophers should be in a position to discover the truth, which of them would take any interest in it? Each one knows well that his system is not better founded than the others, but he supports it because it is his. …The essential thing is to think differently from others. With believers he is an atheist; with atheists he is a believer."”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

How much substantial truth there is in these gloomy confessions of this man of painful sincerity.
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), III : The Hunger of Immortality

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Gregory Bateson 49

Related quotes

Related topics