For a man to change the basic beliefs that determine his perception—his epistemological premises—he must first become aware that reality is not necessarily as he believes it to be.

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.