Small Arcs of Larger Circles: Framing through Other Patterns

by Nora Bateson

In the description below I have veered from the language of formal prose. To address the depth of these mechanistic habits of thinking is to go downstairs below our verbal conscious awareness, and that requires other language. We treat prose seriously and give it credibility, and consider this form of communication to be rational and precise. Words in prosaic syntax have gravitas in our culture. They appear to offer conceptual stability. But this stability is an impossibility that scientific and non-fictional discourse fail to account for. Science changes all the time; discoveries are perishable and get replaced by new discoveries as old knowledge is expanded upon and, at times, eclipsed by perpetual learning. Descriptions in this form are still stuffed with metaphors, still wound around invisible narratives. In fact, it is reasonable and responsible to ask whether life, love, or culture can really be described with words. To discuss the patterns and processes of the living world we will need to open the form, open the genres of our communication.