Inner Calm :-))) In defence of Mr. Nagy, I would like to confirm that Bateson does write: "Science Never Proves Anything", before exploring why. (Bateson 1980 pp 34 - 37). And in defence of "crap up your ass", I would add that he also writes: "I warned some pages back that we would encounter emptiness, and indeed it is so. Mind is empty, it is no-thing. It exists only in ideas, and these again and again are no-things. Only the ideas are immanent, embodied in their examples. And the examples are, no-things. The claw, as an example is not the 'Ding an stch'; it is precisely not 'the thing in itself'. Rather its what the mind makes of it, namely an example of something or other." (Bateson p 20) One finds support for Bateson's latter assertion from some unlikely sources, for example: "Where does consciousness take place? Everyone, or almost everyone replies in my head. This is because when we introspect, we seem to look inward on an inner space somewhere behind our eyes. But what on earth do we mean by 'look'. We even close our eyes sometimes to introspect even more clearly. Upon what?  . . . We not only locate this space inside our own heads. We also assume it is there in others. In talking with a friend, maintaining periodic eye-to-eye contact, we are always assuming a space behind our companion's eyes into which we are talking, similar to the space we imagine inside our own heads where we are talking.    And this is the very heartbeat of the matter, For we know perfectly well that there is no such space in anyone's head at all! There's nothing inside my head or yours except physiological tissue of one sort or another. And the fact that it is predominantly neurological tissue is irrelevant." (Jaynes 1976 pp 44-45) The problem that we are encountering I hinted at in my original reply to your inquiry. In order to reach 'truth', something that others have alluded to here, we are of necessity forced to encounter the 'infinite set of all sets'. Others have wandered here in recent times. When considering System Theory, for example it has been stated: "All we can say about practically everything is almost nothing”. (Boulding, 1956) When we arrive at such a position we might think that we will find ourselves stuck like a bluebottle on flypaper, or the great Spinoza forced to earn our living grinding lenses, whilst becoming blind due to the hazard glass particles that go with that profession. In short, Spinoza’s position being “that it is not by willing that we shall be liberated from our state of bondage: we cannot do so at will – which is the only way open to a Cartesian. But this does not exhaust all possibilities. A person can grow, come to wisdom, change in his perspective on things, and so in himself, in the course of his life as a result of his experiences: he may come to se beauty in things, find love and gratitude in his heart and humbleness before the events of nature. He may come to gradually participate in the change that is coming about in him in this way. Ultimately he becomes the author of the change although he could neither have foreseen or willed it”. (Dilman p 139) But if Spinoza is correct, and such a state cannot be willed then in the meantime are we not better corresponding across continents, and entering into banter via the Internet? Even if such banter is sometimes conducted in the language of WITW, (American English); when the Queen’s English vernacular demands not that one ‘shoves crap up another’s ass’, but rather that one ‘shoves shite, (SOD p 1977), up the unfortunate arse, (SOD p 108)’. I trust you will agree that Queen’s English phrasing to be more traditional, and therefore perhaps may be considered to be more courteous and appropriate to Internet correspondence? With kind regards ;-))) Stephen References: Bateson 1980 Mind and Nature. London Flamingo Edition Boulding (1956) General Systems Theory. Management Science (2) 3. Dilman (1999) Free Will. London: Routledge Jaynes (1976)  Revised Edition (1990). The Evolution of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the BiCameral Mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company The Shorter Oxford Dictionary (SOD) (1973) Oxford University Press