When we think of coconuts or pigs, there are no coconuts or pigs in the brain.

Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) was an English anthropologist, social scientist, ecologist, and influential thinker of the twentieth century. He was an original advocate of systems thinking and cybernetics and inventor of the double-bind concept in psychiatry. He taught and wrote on subjects ranging from anthropology and epistemology to biology and evolution and was interested in how ideas can be approached in an interdisciplinary way.