Bateson, Gregory (1904–1980)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trevor Merrill
Keyword(s):  
Social Scientist ◽  
Gregory Bateson ◽  
Ecology Of Mind

Gregory Bateson was an English anthropologist, social scientist, communications theorist, and cyberneticist. His most famous work, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972), is a compilation of essays in which he set forth important ideas on psychology, cybernetics, anthropology, and epistemology.

Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Gregory Bateson

1993 ◽  
Vol 163 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-268
Author(s):  
Sebastian Kraemer
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Gregory Bateson ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Ecology Of Mind ◽  
The World ◽  
Science Of Mind ◽  
Scientific Statement

This is not a book, but a collection of essays. Reconsidering it has been a difficult task. Some pieces are stunningly fresh and inspiring, others infuriating and confusing. It began happily enough. In the introduction, “The science of mind and order”, Bateson brilliantly frames the Old Testament as a scientific statement about order: “… and God divided the light from the darkness … and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament” (p. 29). Modern science has neglected form for substance, yet thinking – making sense of the patterns in the world – is entirely a matter of form. This is the point of Steps to an Ecology of Mind.

scholarly journals Gregory Bateson’s Ecology of Mind and the Understanding of Human Knowledge

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Elzbieta Magdalena Wasik
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Gregory Bateson ◽  
Ecology Of Mind ◽  
The World ◽  
Living Species ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Theoretical Foundations

<p>Departing from the biological notion of ecology that pertains to mutual relationships between organisms and their environments, this paper discusses theoretical foundations of research on the nature of human mind in relation to knowledge, cognition and communication conducted in a broader context of social sciences. It exposes the view, explicitly formulated by Gregory Bateson, that the mind is the way in which ideas are created, or just the systemic device for transmitting information in the world of all living species. In consequence, some crucial points of Bateson’s reasoning are accentuated, such as the recognition of the biological unity of organism and environment, the conviction of the necessity to study the ecology in terms of the economics of energy and material and/or the economy of information, the belief that consciousness distorts information coming to the organism from the inside and outside, which is the cause of its functional disadaptation, and the like. The conception of the ecology of an overall mind, as the sets of ideas, notions or thoughts in the whole world, is presented against the background of theoretical and empirical achievements of botany and zoology, anthropology, ethology and psychiatry, sociology and communication studies in connection with the development of cybernetics, systems theory and information theory.</p>

The Back End of the Probe

Runaway ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Chaney
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ecological Consciousness ◽  
Gregory Bateson ◽  
Ecology Of Mind ◽  
Dialectics Of Liberation

In this chapter, Allen Ginsberg's reaction to Gregory Bateson and the greenhouse effect is revisited and amplified as an instance of apocalyptic encounter, a central experience of the ecological consciousness and the prospect of ecocatastrophe. That amplification includes the creation of his much-anthologized poem, "Wales Visitation." The trajectory of Bateson's career as a scientist, writer, and public intellectual after 1967 is sketched. This includes a well-documented conference he facilitated in 1968 and the publication of Steps to an Ecology of Mind in 1972. The year following the events described in this book--1968--is widely recognized as a turning point toward increasing violence and backlash, and the rapid collapse of the liberal consensus that had seen the United States through the most turbulent years of the twentieth century. The epilogue invites the reader to regard that turning point in terms of the emergent ecological consciousness the book has placed in context. The epilogue, too, leaves Bateson at a turning point. In contrast to the other principle figures at the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation, whose public influence peaked in 1967, Bateson's time as a public intellectual had just begun.

Lines of Interpretation in Fields of Perception and Remembrance : The Multiscreen Array as Essay

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ross Gibson
Keyword(s):  
X Rays ◽  
Gregory Bateson ◽  
Vannevar Bush ◽  
Conventional Film ◽  
Ecology Of Mind

Referring to artworks such as Doug Aitken’s Eraser, Chantal Akerman’s gallery-version of From the East, Kogonada’s split-screen essays, and my own installation entitled Street X-Rays, this chapter analyses the insights that can be garnered from spatialized, multistranded exposition, as distinct from the linear disquisition afforded by the conventional film essay. To grasp the complexity of the affects and ‘messages’ generated by the installation works, the chapter draws on ‘ecology of mind’ principles, as best represented by the writing of Gregory Bateson and Vannevar Bush.

scholarly journals Asian Elephant Futures: A Causal Layered Analysis with Gregory Bateson in Mind

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-80
Author(s):  
Russell Clemens
Keyword(s):  
Human Population ◽  
Asian Elephant ◽  
First Century ◽  
Double Bind ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Natural Habitats ◽  
Gregory Bateson ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Ecology Of Mind ◽  
Causal Layered Analysis

Human population growth and dwindling fragmented natural habitats for elephants in Asia are leading to increasing conflict between humans and wild elephants. Sohail Inayatullah’s Causal layered analysis (CLA) is applied to understand the human–elephant conflict (HEC) situation. Gregory Bateson’s “ecology of mind” (EoM; epistemology, recurrence, abduction, and metaphor) is also employed to focus on possible implications of metaphor, epistemology, and social–psychological misalignments. The article aims to inform multidisciplinary practitioners on the relevance of applying both CLA and EoM to social–ecological issues in the twenty-first century. CLA and EoM are compatible and complementary multilayered approaches which, as metaphorical approaches, share mixed entailments. Bateson’s “double bind” theory is applied within CLA to explore the implications of possible Asian elephant extinction within the Anthropocene in respect to Indian (Hindu and Buddhist) cosmologies.

scholarly journals Where bonds become binds: The necessity for Bateson’s interactive perspective in biosemiotics

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-181
Author(s):  
Peter Harries-Jones
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Social Exchange ◽  
Intellectual Development ◽  
Gregory Bateson ◽  
Ecological Conditions ◽  
Ecology Of Mind ◽  
Strong Notion ◽  
Von Uexküll ◽  
Ethical Response

The paper examines important discrepancies between major figures influencing the intellectual development of biosemiotics. It takes its perspective from the work of Gregory Bateson. Unlike C. S. Peirce and J. von Uexküll, Bateson begins with a strong notion of interaction. His early writings were about reciprocity and social exchange, a common topic among anthropologists of the time, but Bateson’s approach was unique. He developed the notion of meta-patterns of exchange, and of the “abduction” of these metapatterns to a variety of other phenomena, in both biology and in game theory. Later, Bateson’s concept of ecology of mind, the product of interactive phenomena, was modified by a non-purposive cybernetics. Biosemiotics has yet to adopt Bateson’s interactive stance, which is absent from Peirce’s approach to communication, of Uexküll’s functional cycles, and of Hoffmeyer’s discussion of the relation between culture and environment. Rather than pursuing notions of appropriate “subjectivity” through changed ethical response to ecological conditions (Hoffmeyer’s discussion of empathy), the paper discusses the advantages of an approach that continues to focus on conditions of paradox and pathology. Specifically, Bateson’s resolution of the relation between culture and environment arises from situations of blocked communication where ecological bonds become binds.

The Curious Twist

Runaway ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Chaney
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Allen Ginsberg ◽  
Gregory Bateson ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
Ecology Of Mind ◽  
Irish Myth ◽  
Dialectics Of Liberation ◽  
Second Wave ◽  
Radical Movement

This chapter is set at the 1967 Congress for the Dialectics of Liberation, held over ten days in July in London. Drawing on transcripts and film of the event, the chapter presents a radical movement roiled by budding radicalisms: identity politics, second wave feminism, and an increasing commitment to militancy–all demonstrated in Stokely Carmichael’s divisive Congress appearances, both alone and on a panel with R. D. Laing, Emmett Grogan, and Allen Ginsberg. Amid this agitation, Gregory Bateson offered his synthesis of systems theory, cybernetics, and the ecology of mind. His speech is carefully explicated and annotated with Bateson's recent readings of T. H. White, Philip Wylie's The Magic Animal, and Irish myth. Bateson aligned with radical opinion in its critique of modernization, but it took that critique beyond the enduring problems of human aggression, political oppression, and psychic alienation, and into a more fundamental analysis of the instrumentalism at the heart of the modern worldview. Challenged by audience members over systems thinking as quietist and reactionary, Bateson defended his approach by explaining the greenhouse effect and the prospect of global warming/climate change. This was perhaps the first exposure of such concepts to a lay audience.

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