Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 6-1-2020 1:30 PM Resonance, a step towards a fluency for complexity: The science, language, and epistemology of Gregory Bateson Won Jeon, The University of Western Ontario Supervisor: Darnell, Regna, The University of Western Ontario A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the Master of Arts degree in Theory and Criticism © Won Jeon 2020 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Philosophy of Science Commons, and the Theory and Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Jeon, Won, "Resonance, a step towards a fluency for complexity: The science, language, and epistemology of Gregory Bateson" (2020). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 7034. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/7034 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Abstract This thesis confronts the urgency with which new language and vocabulary is required to move beyond linear assumptions in mainstream science and humanities, as well as global policy-making. I examine Gregory Bateson’s body of work in history and philosophy of science, psychiatry and psychotherapy, anthropology, biology and ecology designed to communicate the necessarily interdisciplinary consideration for a nonlinear and recursive investigation of the self, other, and environment. Such intellectual forays cannot dismissed as non-scientific. I offer definitions and contextualizations of key terms derived from cybernetics, new materialisms, and posthumanism (such as emergence, process, paradox, metaphor, fractality) to speak about the ramifying intricacies and pathologies in processes of knowing at various different scales.