It is to the Riddle of the Sphinx that I have devoted fifty years of professional life as an anthropologist.
It takes two to know one.
Number is different from quantity.
Interesting phenomena occur when two or more rhythmic patterns are combined, and these phenomena illustrate very aptly the enrichment of information that occurs when one description is combined with another.
No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels.
Perhaps the attempt to achieve grace by identification with the animals was the most sensitive thing which was tried in the whole bloody history of religion .
A major difficulty is that the answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx is partly a product of the answers that we already have given to the riddle in its various forms.
We do not know enough about how the present will lead into the future.
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?
It is of first-class importance that our answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx should be in step with how we conduct our civilisation, and this should in turn be in step with the actual workings of living systems.
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.
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.
Still more astonishing is that world of rigorous fantasy we call mathematics.
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.
The wise legislator will only rarely initiate a new rule of behaviour; more usually he will confine himself to affirming in law what has already become the custom of the people.
In the nature of the case, an explorer can never know what he is exploring until it has been explored.
Logic is a poor model of cause and effect.
Life and ‘Mind’ are systemic processes.
It is impossible, in principle, to explain any pattern by invoking a single quantity.
Logic can often be reversed, but the effect does not precede the cause.
Surrender to alcohol intoxication provides a partial and subjective shortcut to a more correct state of mind.