"Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions"
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Bateson’s jab is aimed at science’s favorite self-image: the clean, assumption-free machine that grinds raw reality into truth. By placing science in a lineup with art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, he collapses the prestige hierarchy. The point isn’t that science is “just another belief system,” but that it’s another human practice - and human practices run on hidden defaults.
The sentence works because it’s both leveling and surgical. “Presuppositions” is a dry word with sharp consequences: what counts as evidence, which questions are worth asking, what kinds of explanations feel satisfying, where the observer stands in relation to the observed. Bateson, a systems thinker and cybernetician-adjacent anthropologist, spent his career tracing feedback loops and the ways frames shape outcomes. In that context, presuppositions aren’t embarrassing biases to be scrubbed away; they’re the operating system. Ignore them and you mistake your method for reality itself.
The inclusion of “sleep” is the quiet flex. Sleep sounds purely biological, yet it’s structured by assumptions too: when it “should” happen, what it’s for, how we interpret dreams, what we call rest versus laziness. Bateson’s subtext is that even our most “natural” states are mediated by models.
Politically, the line reads as a warning against technocratic certainty. Science has unmatched tools for correcting itself, but it never starts from nowhere. Bateson is asking for epistemic humility: interrogate the frame before you worship the findings.
The sentence works because it’s both leveling and surgical. “Presuppositions” is a dry word with sharp consequences: what counts as evidence, which questions are worth asking, what kinds of explanations feel satisfying, where the observer stands in relation to the observed. Bateson, a systems thinker and cybernetician-adjacent anthropologist, spent his career tracing feedback loops and the ways frames shape outcomes. In that context, presuppositions aren’t embarrassing biases to be scrubbed away; they’re the operating system. Ignore them and you mistake your method for reality itself.
The inclusion of “sleep” is the quiet flex. Sleep sounds purely biological, yet it’s structured by assumptions too: when it “should” happen, what it’s for, how we interpret dreams, what we call rest versus laziness. Bateson’s subtext is that even our most “natural” states are mediated by models.
Politically, the line reads as a warning against technocratic certainty. Science has unmatched tools for correcting itself, but it never starts from nowhere. Bateson is asking for epistemic humility: interrogate the frame before you worship the findings.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
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