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A Recursive Vision: Ecological Understanding and Gregory Bateson

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A Recursive Vision: Ecological Understanding and Gregory Bateson A Recursive Vision Ecological Understanding and Gregory Bateson Gregory Bateson was one of the most original social scientists of this century. He is widely known as author of key ideas used in family therapy - including the well-known condition called 'double-bind.' He was also one of the most influential figures in cultural anthropology. In the decade before his death in 1980, Bateson turned towards a con- sideration of ecology. Standard ecology concentrates on an ecosystem's biomass and on energy budgets supporting life. Bateson came to the conclusion that understanding ecological organization requires a com- plete switch in scientific perspective. He reasoned that ecological phe- nomena must be explained primarily through patterns of information and that only through perceiving these informational patterns will we uncover the elusive unity, or integration, of ecosystems. Bateson believed that relying upon the materialist framework of knowledge dominant in ecological science will deepen errors of inter- pretation and, in the end, promote eco-crisis. He saw recursive pat- terns of communication as the basis of order in both natural and human domains. He conducted his investigation first in small-scale social settings; then among octopuses, otters, and dolphins. Later he took these investigations to the broader setting of evolutionary analy- sis and developed a framework of thinking he called 'an ecology of mind.' Finally, his inquiry included an ecology of mind in ecological settings - a recursive epistemology. This is the first study of the whole range of Bateson's ecological thought - a comprehensive presentation of Bateson's matrix of ideas. Drawing on unpublished letters and papers, Harries-Jones clarifies themes scattered throughout Bateson's writings, revealing the concep- tual consistency inherent in Bateson's position, and elaborating ways in which he pioneered aspects of late twentieth-century thought. PETER HARRIES-JONES is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology, York University. This page intentionally left blank PETER HARRIES-JONES A Recursive Vision: Ecological Understanding and Gregory Bateson UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1995 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-0636-1 ISBN 0-8020-7591-6 Printed on acid-free paper Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Harries-Jones, Peter, 193 7- A recursive vision : ecological understanding and Gregory Bateson Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8020-0636-1 (bound) ISBN 0-8020-7591-6 (pbk.) 1. Bateson, Gregory. 2. Knowledge, Theory of. 3. Ecology - Philosophy. I. Title. GN2I.B383H37 1995 121'.092 C94-932802-2 University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Social Science Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Contents Acknowledgments ix A Brief Biographical Chronology of Gregory Bateson xi A Note on Reference Style xv Introduction 3 Bateson and the Environment 4 Bateson and the Science of Ecology 5 'Ecological Understanding Must Be Ecological' 7 Epistemology and Recursion 8 Presentation of Ideas 9 Chapter Outline 11 Holism 14 1 The Youngest Bateson 16 W.B. ... the Eminent Anti-Darwinist 17 Like Father Like Son? 18 Between Art and Science 20 Fieldwork and Margaret Mead 21 Naven: The Observer Observing 23 Steps: Battling for an Epistemology 25 Ecology: A 'Post-Political' Movement? 29 Conclusion 32 2 A Theory of Consciousness 35 Mutual Casual Connectedness 37 The 'Logic' of Addiction 38 Alcoholism and Control 39 vi Contents The 'Power' of Prayer 41 Learning as Causality 43 Epistemology and Social Power 44 Some Difficulties of Interpretation 45 A Theory of Consciousness 48 Pattern and Gestalt 51 Summary: Alternative Causality 54 3 The Map Is Not the Territory: Time, Change, and Survival 57 Indeterminacy 60 Field Theory: Whitehead and Lewin 62 Time and Change 63 Atomic Succession: Whitehead's Pattern of Events 65 The Map Is Not the Territory 67 'Time Binding': Mapping and Indexing 68 How Mind Is Part of the System It Seeks to Explain 70 Problems of Biperspectivism 72 Mind and Information 74 Adaptation and Survival 76 4 Metaphors for Living Forms 81 Ideas - 'My Fortification' 83 Hopscotch - a Matrix of Ideas 85 Radical Software 88 The Family - a Circle and Its Presence 91 Metalogues 92 Working the Metaphor 93 Parables: Stories for Evoking Gestalt 99 5 Cybernetics - Janus of Modernity 103 Negentropy and the Arrow of Time 106 Ross Ashby's Homeostat: Adaptive Feedback 108 Redefining Noise and Error 113 The Foundational Science 116 A Brief Ceremony - 1984 118 6 Communication and Its Embodiment 122 The Body-Mind Problem 124 Context as a Framing Device 127 Contents vii Coding: Analogue and Digital 129 Codes as Rules 131 Double Bind: The Implicit and the Explicit in Communica- tive Rules 134 Redundancy and Metaphor 139 7 Mind and Nature 145 Animal and Interspecies Communication 146 Evolutionary Coding 150 Reflexiveness in Evolution 155 'Time Grains' 156 Darwinism versus Co-evolution 160 The Turning Point 164 8 Recursion 168 Difference - a Truly Psychological Concept 173 Abduction as Qualitative Method 177 Modularities 180 Autopoiesis: The Bootstrapping of Form 183 Self-Referencing Feedback 184 Recursive Fittedness - a New Beginning 186 Biological Autonomy 188 9 The Pattern Which Connects 192 Bateson and Environmental Activism 194 'Blaming Our Silly Selves' 196 Ecological Understanding - Ethics or Aesthetics? 198 The Processes of Perception 199 Perception as an Ecological Phenomenon 204 Laws of Form: A Logic of Recursive Unity 207 From Active Perception to Active Aesthetics 209 10 Visions of Unity 212 'Last Lecture' 2l6 Transcendent Mind 2l8 Faith and Its Defences 22O Gaps and Connectivity 222 Self and System 224 A Topological Picture of Recursive Coupling 227 A Recursive Vision 232 viii Contents Appendix 1: Two Models of Ecology Compared: Odum and Bateson 235 Appendix 2: Models of Recursive Hierarchy: Logical Types and Double Bind 243 Appendix 3: Bateson's Model of Co-evolution 252 Appendix 4: Scan, Interface, and Double Vision: A Model for Perceiving Ecological Wholes 261 Notes 267 Select Bibliography 321 Author Index 343 Subject Index 347 Acknowledgments I would like to thank York University, Ontario, for a Research De- velopment Fellowship during 1988-9 and a Sabbatical Leave Fellowship in 1990, without which research and writing of this book would have been impossible. My thanks go to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Coun- cil of Canada, which awarded me travel grants to international con- ferences in 1985, 1986, 1988, and 1990 and also contributed a small research grant in 1987 in relation to this book. Thanks, too, to the Social Science Federation of Canada for a publication grant. The Fac- ulty of Arts, York University, provided a minor research grant to con- sult the Bateson archives in Santa Cruz, California. A long time ago, Paul Buckley, then head of the program Ideas of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, interviewed Gregory Bateson and, following the interview, planted a seed in my mind. More recently, I am grateful to Mary Catherine Bateson for initial support in this enterprise and for permission both to consult the Bateson archives and to publish material from them. Rodney Donaldson, Gregory Bate- son's archivist, has also shared his ideas, given his full encouragement, and provided invaluable aid in giving context to Bateson's publications. He also generously shared - before publication - the contents of his edition of Bateson's later essays, A Sacred Unity: Further Steps to an Ecology of Mind, and the bibliography therein. My thanks go to Ty Cashman, Ernst von Glasersfeld, and Fred Steier, all of the American Society for Cybernetics, to Professor Robert Paine of Memorial University, St John's, Newfoundland, and to Dr Sandra Wallman, President of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, and - jointly - to Paul x Acknowledgments Medow of the Department of Economics, York University, and L'ln- stitut de la Vie, Paris, for inviting me to various conferences and giving me an opportunity to share my thoughts on Bateson's work. Each conference proved to be a valuable source of ideas. Peter Timmerman of the International Federation of Institutes for Advanced Studies, To- ronto, undertook a critical reading of the first part of the manuscript and made a series of well-taken comments. Thanks, too, to the readers for University of Toronto Press for further suggestions. My special thanks to Howard and Carol Robertson of Santa Cruz for friendship and wonderful hospitality, which made research visits to the university library in Santa Cruz a great pleasure. And my very special thanks to my wife, Rosalind Gill, as academic companion, for a variety of valuable suggestions in drafting, editing, and making the book more readable, and for unwavering emotional support through- out a long (too long?) project. It is to R.M.G. that I dedicate this book. A Brief Biographical Chronology of Gregory Bateson 9 May 1904 born, Grantchester, Cambridgeshire, England; son of William Bateson (b. 8 Aug. 1861) and Caroline Beatrice Bateson (b. 1870?) 1913-17 preparatory school at Warden House, Deal, Kent 1917-21 public school at Charterhouse, Godalming, Surrey 1922-6 Cambridge University. Natural science tripos, 1924; anthropological tripos, 1926, under A.C. Haddon 8 Feb. 1926 death of William Bateson (father) 1927-30 anthropological fieldwork among the Baining and Sulka of New Britain and among the latmul of New Guinea, where he first meets Margaret Mead 1930 M.A. in anthropology Adapted from Rodney E. Donaldson, Gregory Bateson Archive: A Guide/Catalog, 4 vols. (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International Dissertation Information Serv- ice, 1987), 1:5-9 xii A Biographical Chronology 1931-7 research fellow, St John's College, Cambridge.
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