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“All science is an attempt to cover with explanatory devices-and thereby to obscure-the vast darkness of the subject. It is a game in which the scientist uses his explanatory principles according to certain rules to see if these principles can be stretched to cover the vast darkness. But the rules of the stretching are rigorous, and the purpose of the whole operation is really to discover what parts of the darkness still remain, uncovered by explanation. But this game has also a deeper, more philosophic purpose: to learn something about the very nature of explanation, to make clear some part of that most obscure matter-the process of knowing. (Epilogue, 1958)” — Gregory Bateson
All science is an attempt to cover with explanatory devices-and thereby to obscure-the vast darkness of the subject. It is a game in which the scientist uses his explanatory principles according to certain rules to see if these principles can be stretched to cover the vast darkness. But the rules of the stretching are rigorous, and the purpose of the whole operation is really to discover what parts of the darkness still remain, uncovered by explanation.
But this game has also a deeper, more philosophic purpose: to learn something about the very nature of explanation, to make clear some part of that most obscure matter-the process of knowing.
(Epilogue, 1958)