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Exploring Bateson’s Syllogism in Grass in Systemic Design -178

Dan Lockton

Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, Netherlands

Gregory Bateson’s syllogism in grass expresses a form of abductive reasoning which can be used to generate and discuss metaphors, particularly in living systems and humans’ interrelations with them. This paper tentatively explores the possibilities of the syllogism in grass in a systemic design context as a creative method of provocation and reframing.

Keywords: systemic design, metaphors, syllogism in grass

This paper is illustrated throughout with examples of an AI image generator’s interpretations of the prompts “men are grass” and “people are grass” and related phrases in various permutations.

Posted September 2022

©­ Author, published by the Systemic Design Association

Open Access article published under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License. This permits anyone to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or form according to the licence terms.

Suggested Citation Format (APA)

Author(s) (20##). Article title. Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design (RSD#) Symposium. rsdsymposium.org/LINK.

by-nc-nd.eu