Descartes used the metaphor of a tree to present human knowldege, its roots being metaphysics, the trunk physics, and the branches all the other sciences.

Capra unkowingly adopted this Cartesian metaphr as the guiding principle for his original investigation. He needed to remove physics as the central issue and eventually replaced it with Systems theory.

Bateson said that the cybernetic ewuivalent to logic is ocsillation. Heraclitus and Lao Tzu knew this and expressed mental connections in metaphors, not in "logic".

Bateson considered stories, parables, and metaphors to be the expressions of human thinking.

Bateson always emphasized "relationships"

Bateson loved to tell stories. Was usually animated and theatrical. Usually got carried away with the poetic beauty of complex patterns he would be describing.

Bateson felt that stories are the royal road to the study of relationships.

Bateson substituted "natural history" for "biology" probably to avoid the assocation with the mechanistic biology of our time.

Studied epistimology not as abstract philosophy, but as an extension of natural history.

Bateson's thermostat analogy to the fallacy of using logic to describe living phenomena. Logic is timeless whereas casuality involves time.

Heraclitus & Lao Tzu both used paradoxes to teach students. To make them aware of the dynamic nature of reality.

Socrates syllogism (items) vs. Bateson syllogism (patterns)

Jung created the term "collective unconscious" which linked the individual to humanity as a whole.

Jung saw the unconscious as a process involving collectively present dynamic patterns which he called archetypes. These are embedded in a web of relationships.

Jung's work is consistent with Systems Theory.

Erich Jantsch wrote "The Self Organizing Universe" - elaborated on Ilya Prigogines ideas. Also echoed Bateson's criteria (not to separate mind from matter - criteria for mind is indentical for life.

R.D. Lang's "Politics Of Experience" - he expressed a deep concern for understanding a metally ill patient by examining him in the context of his relations with other humans. Not the traditional Cartesian approach. Addressed psychiatric problems in existential terms.

Laing - mystics and schizophrenics find themselves swimming in the same ocean - the mystics swim wheras the schizpophrenics drown (unable to integrate the unusual transpersonal experiences).

Giordano Bruno - at the same time as Galileo, was burned and tortured for saying that there are infinite worlds.