ABSTRACT
In Gregory Bateson's words, "a world in which personal identity merges into all the processes of relationship in some vast ecological or aesthetics of cosmic interaction". He/she says, "that arrogant scientific philosophy is now obsolete, and in its place there is the discovery that man is only a part of a larger system and thatthe part can never control the whole. Bateson believes the creative process of nature is sacred and as such "it is that with which thou shalt not tinker". He/she also believes that people need to extend the concept of self, to transform it from the lineal to the cybernetic-with the circular feedback loops, characteristic of cybernetic systems. Bateson says that while a parable is only a parable, not empirical "data about human behavior", he asserts he is describing a phenomenon "almost universal" that which happens "when man commits the error of purposive thinking and disregards the systemic nature of the world" in which people live.
