Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity

 GREGORY BATESON (1904 - 1980)

 
    

 

 

 

 

"If order exists, look 
for restraints"
George Bateson

 

 

 

 

"We create the world we perceive, not because of lack of a concept of reality, but because each individual selects and edits reality to conform to his beliefs"
George Bateson

 

Anthropologist, philosopher, author, photographer and filmmaker, naturalist and  poet; He was one of the most important social scientists of this century. Strongly opposing those scientists who attempted to ‘reduce’ everything to mere matter, he was intent upon the task of re-introducing ‘Mind’ back into the scientific equations - writing two famous books Steps to an Ecology of Mind, and Mind & Nature as part of this task. From his point of view Mind is a constituent part of ‘material reality’ and it is thus nonsensical to try to split mind from matter. Before being championed by the counter-culture of the 1960’s Bateson had been busy in the 20’s and 30’s as an anthropologist in Bali, and in helping to found the science of cybernetics among many other things. Adopted by many thinkers in the anti-psychiatry movement because he provided a model and a new epistemology for developing a novel understanding of human madness, and also for his invention of the theory of the double bind. 

La ciencia de la cibernética:

Because his research crossed the disciplinary boundaries of cybernetics, animal communication, ethnography, psychology, and biological evolution, it is particularly hard to unify and summarize. Critics have highlighted the concepts of system and environment as central in his work and thinking. This is meant to explain how a change in some part of a system results in responses or feedback from other parts of the system in a process that concurrently defines the chief characteristics of its component parts. Because of its width and depth Bateson never became a central figure in any discipline although he achieved a certain degree of popularity outside of the academy. Bateson’s presence in anthropological writings today is largely limited to footnotes and congratulatory notes. His work in cybernetics is receiving renewed attention in cultural studies approaches to systems theory.

 

 
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