[collected essays in anthropology, psychiatry, evolution, and epistemology]

Bateson is an absolutely brilliant thinker and is worth reading just for the insight into the way his mind works. He covers a wide variety of topics in these collected essays, with the joint thread being applying systems thinking, cybernetics, communication and information theory to these diverse fields - from psychiatry to evolutionary theory/biology to policy making and more. Another common thread in all of them is ecology of mind/ideas, with special emphasis on unexamined tenets of a culture. The consequences of Western civilization's 'man vs nature' idea being the prime, but not the only example. ( )

Started and couldn't finish. Not bad just not very interesting to me at this point.

Extremely intelligently written but at times quite hard to follow. Bateson was evidently an extremely intelligent man and his essay on "Morale and National Character" (written during the Second World War) was a masterpiece with a very remarkable insight and thesis regarding the fact that setbacks were a greater motivator to otherwise divergent English speaking groups (British and American) and an better motivator that successes. This he contrasted to the Germans, for whom the opposite was the case. His "metalogues" were also brilliant both in their content and the way in which their form highlighted the points he was trying to make.

However there were times when he overlooked the obvious. For example he described how he once asked his students (I am quoting/paraphrasing from memory) "What circumstances dictate that a given person will perceive events as being predetermined while another perceives them as being susceptible to control." He described the question as useful, but at no point did he appear to recognize that the the question contained the words "circumstances determine" and thus tacitly accepted pre-determination as a fact - albeit smugly the idea in via the back door and not actually acknowledging its presence as the elephant in the room.

That gripe notwithstanding, this is a fascinating book for anyone with an interest in psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology, philosophy, modern history, etc. ( )

Bateson summarizes his research agenda as an effort to identify elements for understanding Mind: the unit of analysis, difference; the analysand, that emergent complexity which attends certain differences interacting in specific ways. (Thus his title.) He builds from biological data and systematically integrates mental data, avoiding the sort of muddled thinking which often arises from theories about ideas or mental activity, and steadfastly opposing empirical reductionism. So: substance and form integrated into a metaphysical realism, steering a course between the Scylla of idealism and Charybdis of nominalism.

Bateson organises the essays here under six headings, and provides a précis of sorts with his notes at the end of each. Steps outlines his thinking and published work in broadest scope; speculate later books emphasize one or another of the six sections here. So if Mind & Nature focuses on evolution but skimps on hard examination of learning, here we see that each fits as one aspect of his overall thought. In Steps, Part 3 focuses on learning especially with respect to examples of alcoholism & schizophrenia, with Part 4 focusing on biology & evolution. These fit alongside Part 1's figurative examination of mind via Bateson's characteristic metalogues, which essays lead into Part 2 on the influence of information theory / cybernetics / logical types. Part 5 examines ecology & epistemology. Part 6 is the weakest in implementation, an ambitious effort to apply his thinking to pathology in environmental public policy.

//

Bateson's "essential minimal characteristics of a system ... of mind": [482]
• system operates with and upon difference [distinct from albeit linked to neurochemical basis of synaptic firings]
• system consists of closed loops / networks of pathways along which are transmitted differences / transforms of differences [ideas]
• many events in system energized by respondent part (e.g. metabolism) not triggering part [cybernetic not Newtonian causality]
• system capable of self-correction in the direction of homeostasis or runaway; self-correction implies trial and error
• to this add: architecture of logical types [Russell-Whitehead]

Implications / consequences include:
-- Mind is necessary & inevitable given above conditions; mind is immanent in the relevant complexity of communication; Paul in Galations, "God is not mocked"

-- The boundaries of a mind then are defined in terms of pathways for information (creatura) not in terms of bodies or physical attributes of system's various parts (pleroma), except insofar as these bodies correspond with pathways. The terms are an allusion to Jung's essay "Septem Sermones ad Mortuos"; likewise Bateson refers to a secret history of mind, drawing on familiar names but unfamiliar aspects of their thought (Samuel Butler, Carl Jung, Lamarck, Korzybski).

-- Vital role played by 'flexibility' or room for adaption on part of a system, allowing it to retain integrity across a range of changing stimuli / environmental constraints

-- Ideas are transforms of difference "out there", that is: outside the mind

-- Cybernetic explanation is a simulated form of mathematical proof; no other scientific explanation provides such a proof [401]

-- Cybernetic explanation is negative, not causal / positive explanation; that is, alternative outcomes are restrained, rather than a preferred outcome being selected [399]

-- Mammals are 'about' patterns more than about specific events or things. Distinct functional roles played by aniconic communication (verbal language) & iconic (kinesic & preverbal: body language, facial expression). Aniconic focus on items outside the self; iconic focus on relations between self and other minds. Iconic often become pathogenic when guided / determined by conscious purpose, precisely because consciousness always involves the possibility of trickery / semblance / dishonesty, and once this possibility is open, iconic language has no reliable means of independent affirmation. That is, I may say The cat is on the mat, and you may look for yourself and see if my words are corroborated by your own eyes. But when I say I love you, that assertion is not open to independent confirmation in the same way.

//

Evidently Bateson's characteristic examples were touchpoints as he returns to them in various essays, with varying amounts of detail or discussion depending perhaps on his thinking about them, or perhaps only as needed for the purpose of the specific essay. Intentionally or not, they are also comforting to see recur: the cat meowing for food best understood as saying not I love you but dependency; the mind defined by person-axe-tree; the house thermostat as rudimentary discussion of a governor; numerous others.

2014 reading paired with Dawkins to have a more detailed & firmer grasp of evolutionary biology. ( )