Ecopragmatist Vignettes from Nora Bateson’s

“An Ecology of Mind: A Daughter’s Portrait of Gregory Bateson” (2010)

Nora remembers:

He was always learning—from everyone and everything around him— from the dog, from the

fish tank, from the scientists who came to visit, from poetry, from art work, from me. And as a

child, I learned from him that learning never stops.

* * *

... I used to sit on the floor beside him drawing pictures and listening while he gave lectures. Even

then, it seemed to me that he was peering through a trap door to the inner workings of life.

2

Behind the Scenes I

Why "Vignettes"?

On one level, I've chosen the visual-artistic format because Nora Bateson's movie

"speaks" to me personally. In it I hear my sister and me conversing with our parents.

What they taught and said to us years ago is progressively revealing deeper and richer

signification—in their respective domains. Likewise, Nora mentions a couple of times

that she is still learning from her father. The movie is also a truly rewarding match for

my current research focus on the early pragmatists, Charles Sanders Peirce, William

James, and John Dewey, and more specifically, on (co)evolution as a general idea (in

Mead's 1936 terms) and epistemology-done-right.

On another level, the "vignette"-style discourse fulfills my intent to sample more

broadly rather than cover a smaller selection of the points that the four scholars have

in common on the topics of interest above. Using the movie as a matrix, my task has

been to "type" them and their similarities accordingly (see diagram). From the movie,

I use transcribed text (marked off by italics throughout) and screenshots. The

pragmatists are represented through their writings. Where needed, I also quote from

or refer to Bateson’s publications. The import of and the links among juxtaposed texts

and images are partly explicated and partly implied, and the reader is free to retrace

and/or re-vision my perspective.

Last but not least, the cinematographic essay's amalgam of visual and auditory,

intellectual and artistic, personal and public seems to merit a response in kind, a

similarly "multimodal" approach. Therefore my presentation combines text and

images, analysis and description, fact and emotion. In view of the presentation genre's

verbal parsimony, I convey messages by visual means as well, such as figure/ground

formatting and layout contrast/symmetry, inviting readers to furnish their own context

and interpretation.

Academically unorthodox, this paper is in form and content Batesonian by looking at

—and presenting—things "from another angle" (p. 4), and pragmatist, I believe, in

multiple other ways. Its "elicitative" multimodality can hopefully encourage a partic-

ipatory reading, which will fill spaces that are open for the mind-and-heart.

Lynne Alexandrova

LOGIC/SEMIOTICS

cosmic mind geodesy

algorithm

ecology of mind PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

CYBERNETICS

observation/experimentation

relationality/relatedness physiology

psychiatry

PSYCHOLOGY/PHILOSOPHY OF MIND

biology

knowledge/knowing

(public) education

"deuterolearning"

sociality/social concerns logic

psychology

learning to learn / for life

ANTHROPOLOGY PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

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LEGEND: 1) RELATIVE POSITION indicates THEMATIC AFFINITY; 2) FONT STYLE: 2a) what I don't touch on 2b) shared analytics 2c) "DISCIPLINE" BEST KNOWN FOR

Credits: I give the movie makers full credit for all their images and quotes used here, unless there are explicit alternative attributions,and plead with the Moiras of Copyright

for leniency on the grounds of non-commercial CCL ©. It is my hope that, under similar circumstances, the reader/file user will be similarly inclined.

3

Behind the Scenes II

Fractality in Nature: peacocks, snowflakes, seashells, lightning bolts

Credit: ecoist website

Epistemological "Fractality" as Batesonian Pattern That Connects

The ecopragmatist vignettes presented here contribute toward a study of epistemological

fractality, in this case cross-generationally, by comparing Bateson's intellectual legacy to that of

Peirce, James, and Dewey (see diagram on p. 2). I chose Bateson's cinematographic portrait as

the matrix in part because I came up with the metaphor of the fractal (Benoît Mandelbrot 1983) in

my search for what might qualify as instantiations of his "pattern that connects."* Fractality has

been noted in natural (non-artefactual) (a)biotics (see photos on the left), including the human

body, but also in artefactual art and technology―in visual, tactile, auditory form. Therefore it

is a possible logical extension to assume ontogenetic and phylogenetic epistemological (and

informational, if considered as separate) fractality as well. Epistemological fractality can be

expected to operate in the virtual medium of the (human) mind, and, depending on the

terminological scope allowed, possibly in, e.g., (non)human neuronal networks and DNA.

Given that knowing and the known associate with natural knowers, from a biological evolut-

ionary perspective the question of epistemological recursion overtime would appear to be an

outcome/factor of species (dis)continuity, (non)robustness, as the case may be. The self-similar-

ities noted between Bateson and pragmatist thought could be upgraded from the individual to

the group/species epistemology level if no direct connection is traced between his ideas and

theirs. At this point, I have only come across Bateson's use of the term "abduction" (see Addenda

p. 31), commonly associated with Peirce's logic, where its meaning is not as broad (1957, p. 235

ff). As to biological/generalized evolution, and even more so relationality and continuity, as

theoretical concepts (irrespective of the literal terms in circulation), which recur in the work of

the four scholars, they would have travelled along broader/longer cultural-historical channels.

The highlights from Bateson's intellectual legacy, presented in Nora Bateson's documentary,

consistently echo tenets of classical pragmatism. Just a look at the bird's eye view diagram

above, ineluctably non-comprehensive, and in that way imprecise, clearly shows temporal (and

lateral) self-similarity. It is, understandably, of the kind that precludes identity of recurring

knowledge structures, which can be visualized as differently scaled (as with standard fractals),

yet it supports identifiable resemblance. What may have special significance is that self-

similarity obtains for a combination of epistemological traits, which, by reducing the

probability of randomness, may be pointing to persistent, periodically resurfacing fractal flows

at the level of populational knowledge. __________________________________________________________

* "What is the pattern that connects?" is Bateson’s staple question which, as Nora Bateson explains, was never

meant to be answered because of continual change, but (predictably) was to serve as a stimulus for thought.

4

This is a movie about how Gregory Bateson thought... says Nora Bateson

look at the thing

be it an earth worm,

a number sequence, a tree,

a formal definition of addiction,

*anything at all*

from another angle

5

Would Pragmatism Accept the Comparison? Would Bateson Mind?

The early pragmatists—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), the founder, William James (1842-1906), his closest associate, and John Dewey (1859-

1952), almost a generation later—were all interdisciplinary, pioneering thinkers. They knew no other way than to search for, adapt and combine the

latest discoveries, test theories in practice, and keep an open mind. In a way, James speaks for the three of them when he explains pragmatism:

No particular results then, only an attitude of orientation, is what the pragmatic method means. The attitude of looking away from first things, principles,

"categories," supposed necessities; and looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts...

[giving credit to Papini for the metaphor] It lies in the midst of our theories like a corridor in a hotel. Innumerable chambers open out of it...

...borrowing a word from Papini, ... she [= pragmatism] unstiffens our theories. She has in fact no prejudices whatever, no obstructive dogmas, no rigid canons

of what shall count as proof... She will entertain any hypothesis, she will consider any evidence...

But you see already how democratic she is. Her manners are as various and flexible, her resources as rich and endless, and her conclusions as friendly as those

of mother nature. ["What Pragmatism Means" 1907/1978, pp. 30, 32, 43, 44, italics added]

* * *

Gregory Bateson's (1904-1980) mind opens into many chambers, too, and unstiffening thinking was what he was brilliant at.

In the movie Bateson recaps his life journey as follows:

From biology at the beginning, into anthropology, into systems of

ideas, pathology of systems of ideas, and then to systems of ideas

which are how we are all trying to live together. And ”all” includes

animals and plants as well as human beings.

See also the graph on p. 2 above for his major areas of schol-

arship.

6

Evolution Meets Ecology: Bateson

Evolution of life, which was a hereditary interest for Bateson, one might say, was also a major tributary of pragmatism that, by analogy, flowed into

James's, Dewey's, and Peirce's thought in the various fields their scholarship branched off in. Combining Darwinian and pre-Darwinian notions of

evolution, they studied patterns of change, variability, and adaptability related to, for example, psychology, society, education, going even to the cosmic

level for Peirce as it did for Bateson. The early pragmatists saw knowledge itself as evolving, growing, the new superseding or adapting the old in view

of new evidence. The term "ecology" did not appear in their work, but the express priority all of them gave to relationality had similar effects/uses.

* * *

In "Pathologies of Epistemology" (1969) Bateson writes:

Darwin proposed a theory of natural selection and evolution in which the unit

of survival was either the family line or the species or subspecies or something

of the sort. But today it is quite obvious that this is not the unit of survival in

the real biological world. The unit of survival is organism plus environment.

[italics in original] We are learning by bitter experience that the organism which

destroys its environment destroys itself.

If, now, we correct the Darwinian unit of survival to include the environment

and the interaction between organism and environment, a very strange and

surprising identity emerges: the unit of evolutionary survival turns out to be

identical with the unit of mind. [italics mine]

[Steps to an Ecology of Mind 1972/2000, p. 491]

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Ergo: EEEVVVOOOLLLUUUTTTIIIOOONNN MMMEEEAAANNNSSS EEECCCOOOLLLOOOGGGYYY IIINNN HHHIIISSSTTTOOORRRIIICCCAAALLL PPPEEERRRSSSPPPEEECCCTTTIIIVVVEEE,,, AAANNNDDD EEECCCOOOLLLOOOGGGYYY MMMEEEAAANNNSSS AAA CCCRRROOOSSSSSS---SSSEEECCCTTTIIIOOONNN OOOFFF EEEVVVOOOLLLUUUTTTIIIOOONNN

(1) Evolution is Co-Evolution, where Co = Ecological

(2) Unit of Co-Evolutionary Survival = organism + environment + relations between them

7

Evolution Meets Ecology: Darwin

Following the quote above (p. 6), Bateson correctly revokes the blame laid on "nineteenth-century evolutionists." As a matter of fact, Darwin did

appreciate the co-dependence of organisms. If evolutionary theory later came to be applied to organisms or species in isolation, this is a systemic pattern

that manifests through atomistic/dichotomistic extremes that may still persist today (see Bredo 1994 for resilient mechanistic biases in cognitive science,

psychology, (theory of) education).

After reviewing the dependence for pollination of certain types of orchidaceous flowers on certain types of bees, which may themselves be impacted by

field mice, which are in turn impacted by cats, Darwin concludes that "it is quite credible that the presence of a feline animal in large numbers in a

district might determine, through the intervention first of mice and then of bees, the frequency of certain flowers in that district!" This excerpt is

immediately preceded by an important generalization:

Battle within battle must be continually recurring with varying success; and yet in the long run the forces are so nicely balanced, that the face of nature

remains for long periods of time uniform, though assuredly the merest trifle would give the victory to one organic being over another. Nevertheless, so

profound is our ignorance, and so high our presumption, that we marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being; and as we do not see the cause,

we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or invent laws on the duration of the forms of life!

I am tempted to give one more instance showing how plants and animals remote in the scale of nature, are bound together by a web of complex relations.

[Chapter III "Struggle for Existence," The Origin of Species 1872, not paginated]

8

How Co-Evolution Works and... How We (Can/Should) Participate

As in many other places, in Art as Experience (1934), Dewey writes that "the interaction of live creature and environing conditions is involved in the

very process of living." This is how "experience occurs continually."

[chapter "Having an Experience," reprinted in Experience, Nature, and Freedom, p. 150]

* * *

Bateson in the movie:

The horse and the tundra, the

grassy plains, are interlocked. It’s

an evolution in which, now, the

grass needs the horse as much as

the horse needs the grass.

In an essay on urban civilization:

...the mountain lion when he kills

the deer is not acting to protect the

grass from over-grazing...

Herein lies the charm and terror of

ecology―that the ideas of this

science are irreversibly becoming

a part of our own ecological

system. (Steps, p. 512, italics

added)

9

A Relational “Mental” System

Peirce's work earned Arthur W. Burks's (1996) categorization as a dis-

tributed philosophic system of sorts (incorporating, a.o.t., cosmic "pan-

psychism") which, in its totality, he characterized as "evolutionary prag-

matic idealism." Peirce saw mentality and continuity as characteristics

of the cosmos, which are closely related, with semiosis, predicated on

interpretatively linked signs, ensuring all-pervasive commucability. E.g.

chemical valence guiding an element's behavior is how nature "thinks."

=> "and the planets [or ideas] which way to turn," Peirce might have added.

For Bateson, communication is system connectivity. He did take a keen

interest specifically in connectivity for "living things," (F.Capra) but would

his systems thinking, or cybernetic view of the mental, or ecologism exclude

abiotics? Apparently not, if his "unit of evolutionary survival" comprises

organism, environment and relations between the two, which equals his unit of

mind (p. 6). In the movie, he talks about an organism being a "bundle of

ideas," so wouldn’t gold or fire be, to start with? In Steps to an Ecology of

Mind, his likely best known book (referenced here as Steps), he writes:

Ecology, in the widest sense, turns out to be the study of the interaction

and survival of ideas and programs (i.e., difference, complexes of differen-

ces, etc.) in circuits. [Steps, p. 491]

His model, then, in some principled respects resonates with (implications of)

Peirce's semiotic cosmology, and vice versa.

Bateson’s famous puzzle―and, perhaps, its solution, too?

For a spell-out of his theoretical perspective, see also Addenda, p. 31.

10

Footnote: The Biotics/Abiotics Interface

When Nora Bateson explains that for her father mind was more than the brain in your head, she gives as examples the way a tree root grows around a

rock and the way river otters play. One would expect that the systems/ecological mode of thinking would be consistent with a share of "mentality" being

granted to the rock and the river as the explicit abiotics mentioned along with the tree roots and the playful otters. The conceivable sand and pebbles that

the river washes over would partake as well, and so would the wind and the singing of birds, the clouds and the sun, reflected in the river…

11

Art and Experience

In Art as Experience (1934), where organism-environment transactions are seen as making up the continuity of experience, and of life (see quote on p.

8), Dewey writes:

In an emphatic artistic-esthetic experience [i.e., art creation and perception], the relation is so close that it controls simultaneously both the doing

and the perception. Such vital intimacy of connection cannot be had if only hand [of a painter] and eye [of a viewer] are engaged. When they do

not, both of them, act as organs of the whole being, there is but a mechanical sequence of sense and movement, as in walking that is automatic.

Hand and eye, when the experience is esthetic, are but instruments through which the entire live creature, moved and active throughout,

operates.

[chapter "Having an Experience," reprinted in Experience, Nature, and Freedom, p. 167, italics added]

* * *

Expression through the arts

was considered by Gregory

to be the most

honest&pure

form of

human communication

12

Art, Nature, and the Mind

In his talk "The Laws of Habit," James presents five maxims, the fourth of which advocates maintaining useful habits. He speaks in Darwin's words,

... poetry of many kinds gave me great pleasure; and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also

said that pictures formerly gave me considerable, and music very great delight. I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it

nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music... My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of

large collections of facts; but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive...

The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the

emotional part of our nature. " [excerpt from Darwin's autobiography, quoted in "The Laws of Habit," Talks to Teachers, italics added]

* * *

For the Batesons, the arts were practically continuous with nature and the mind—expressive, inspiring, healing.

William Bateson ...a formidable intellect... read Shakespeare and Blake to his boys at the breakfast table, and sought through his plants and studies for

the genius of nature. You might be surprised to learn that the heavy doses of science that the Batesons took on were inspired by the arts. They saw the arts

as extensions of the masterpiece that nature is...

13

Mind and Life

Selected classics:

"How to Make Our Ideas Clear" (Peirce 1878)

Formulated a maxim of logic, the pragmatic maxim

The Principles of Psychology (James 1890)

Developed the “stream of thought” concept

How We Think (Dewey 1910)

Experiential/-mental thinking

Bateson foregrounds social concerns, similarly to Dewey, and traces a

direct connection between humanity’s problems and fallacious thinking.

I believe that this massive aggregation of threats to man and his ecological

systems arises out of errors in our habits of thought at deep and partly

unconscious levels. As therapists, clearly we have a duty. First to achieve

clarity in ourselves; and then to look for every sign of clarity in others and to

implement them and reinforce them in whatever is sane in them.

["Pathologies of Epistemology" 1969, Steps, p. 495, italics added]

The above suggests to solve problems starting with correcting thinking.

Or, on the ecological/systems view of two-way connectivity/productive

circularity, perhaps of both.

14

On Educating (including Dewey's 70 years of active publishing, especially in/on pedagogy):

Here we see James educating teachers how to educate, based on an experience of his at the cusp of two cultures:

We have lately had a number of accomplished Hindoo visitors at Cambridge, who talked freely of life and philosophy. More than one of them has confided to

me that the sight of our faces, all contracted as they are with the habitual American over-intensity and anxiety of expression, and our ungraceful and distorted

attitudes when sitting, made on him a very painful impression... "I do not see," said one, "how it is possible for you to live as you do, without a single minute

in your day deliberately given to tranquillity and meditation. It is an invariable part of our Hindoo life to retire for at least half an hour daily into silence, to

relax our muscles, govern our breathing, and meditate on eternal things. Every Hindoo child is trained to this from a very early age." The good fruits of such a

discipline were obvious in the physical repose and lack of tension, and the wonderful smoothness and calmness of facial expression, and imperturbability of

manner of these Orientals. I felt that my countrymen were depriving themselves of an essential grace of character... this ceaseless over-tension, over-motion,

and over-expression are working on us grievous national harm.

I beg you teachers to think a little seriously of this matter. Perhaps you can help our rising generation of Americans toward the beginning of a better set of

personal ideals.

["The Laws of Habit," Talks to Teachers, also see the chapter on habit from The Principles of Psychology, n.p., italics added]

* * *

Nora’s answer in the movie: Gregory’s concept of mind was

that it’s much more than the brain in your head. It’s the tree

root that grows around a rock, or the way river otters play.

* * *

Bateson on the modularity of knowledge in higher education (and,

indeed, beyond it): It is more than fashionable, it is inculcated by our

great universities, who believe that there is such a thing as

psychology, which is different from sociology ... and that the world is

made of separable items of knowledge, in which, if you were a student

you could be examined, by a series of disconnected questions, called

true or false quizzes, quiz bits, as you might say.

And the first point I want to get over to you is that the world is not like

that at all. Or, let us be more polite, the world in which I live is not

like that at all.

15

Fallacious Thinking: (mis-)Defining, Disconnecting, Dichotomizing...

Bateson asks the audience "How would you describe this?" He demon-strates

that the choice is ultimately a "matter of convenience. And that's all." Analogic

picture thinkers, scientists,... psychotics would "slice up"/see the figure in

different ways. Yet, on his scenario, they would not be "in disagreement about

the figure" on the blackboard, i.e., in a sense "reality."

On the whole we can get a certain amount of agreement about, you know,

what's really there, but we cannot get an agreement about ways of describing

it. And we use in the description a whole mass of concepts, of intervening

variables and mentionables...

Adding to the above quote the standpoint of the "real scientists," who look for

and argue about "a relation that isn't there," the question Bateson asks is very

much along the lines of Alfred Korzybski's map being mistaken for the

territory. Or, what James and Dewey noted as the fallacy of reading one's

theory into a phenomenon, in psychology and philosophy, respectively.

In a way, one can think of traditional dichotomies (Platonist or Cartesian) and atomistic theorizations (Locke and Hume, the 19th century associationists), which both

Bateson and the pragmatists strove to overcome, as a fallout from the map/territory problem in its various aspects. Peirce was expressly concerned with expression

and terminology in science and philosophy, to the point of formulating a "pragmatic maxim" for clarifying ideas/meanings (first published in 1878). The pragmatic

maxim, or, as James (1898) dubbed it, the principle of pragmatism, can assist with any of the above challenges at different levels of misinterpretation, by elucidating

the actual meanings (i.e., the effects/uses in practice of the semiotic objects) of concepts.

* * *

Bateson takes the issue of thought/nature

(or reality) discrepancy to another level:

You have probably been taught that you

have five fingers. That is on the whole

incorrect. That is the way language

subdivides things into things. Probably

the biological truth is that in the growth

of this thing in your embryology, which

you would scarcely remember, what was

important was not five but four relations

between pairs of fingers.

Like the pragmatists, Bateson prioritized function, for them evolutionary, for him ecological/systemic/cybernetic, too

16

From “Pathologies of Epistemology” to Relating & Connecting... to Beauty

The pragmatists steered clear of rationalistic separations and dichotomizations, exploring connections and multiple possibilities, as Bateson did.

Peirce theorized the notion of cosmic continuity, consistent with continuity in mathematics, and developed his influential logic of relatives (see Burks 1996).

James had an expressly relational approach. For example, his staple "stream of thought (a.k.a. consciousness)" (1890/1950) concept captures the way a new

thought leverages off the preceding thought and anticipates the following one, analogous to the behavior of Peirce's interpretatively connected semiotic signs.

Dewey saw humans as continuous with their environment, knowledge and the known as coevolving with each other, and with the knower, as well as according to

the social situation. He elaborated the reflex arc concept in psychology (the stimulus-response S-R mechanism) and showed that actions/activities condition and

flow into each other, with organs switching S-R functions in the process (1896). Many of his works have relational titles: The School and Society (1899), The Child

and the Curriculum (1902), Democracy and Education (1916)... The effort toward dissolving dualisms distinguishes his entire career.

* * *

Bateson invites us to look at a hand not as bananas dangling from a stick, but as a "nest of relations." Seen in this way, an object might turn out to be prettier,

as the rose illustrates. He continues, "as a correction of our epistemology, you might find that the world was more beautiful than you thought." If so, can the

bananas, the girl and the man (Nora and Bateson) be included on a par with the biotics in Bateson’s puzzle above (p. 9) and Goethe’s leaf, stem, and bud?

Nests

of

Relations

Hand~Bananas~Rose

What is imaginatively illustrated by the movie, although it is not verbalized, is the eco-evolutionary significance of the recursion within and the loose

symmetry between the human hand with its fingers and finger joints, and specimens of sea & plant life (see sea star & fractal photos above). Recalling those

parallels, one can well imagine unobvious, yet very real dependencies at the ecology-evolution interface. Would fractality enhance the beauty of relatedness?

17

Change in “Undergoing”; in Thinking and Acting I

The pragmatists conceived of mind itself as an evolutionary development, i.e., as necessary for survival. Bateson asks the questions they asked: What (kind of

thinking) should/does influence individual lives and the course of history?; What is the criterion, and the mechanism, for the right way to go: change?

stability?; How (much) and what can/should humans "undergo" vs. "control" (in Dewey’s sense)? Their answers are in many respects similar. The issue of

responsibility is worth noting, since whether undergoing or acting, an organism can have a choice in the matter of change or be deprived of it.

The double bind as the trigger?

Evolutionary incentive, even?

Bateson's favorite example, in his words, of a

"formal double bind of the simplest kind" is

the predicament of the bread-and-butterfly in

Through the Looking Glass: if he stays away

and safe from hot coffee and tea, he starves, if

he finds cream, his designated nourishment,

his head made of sugar dissolves in it. Oh, and

his wings are made of thin slices of buttered

bread, obviously, which is strongly reminis-

cent of what would go nicely with coffee&tea.

But also “creative imperative” aspect =>

The movie gauges the Change Continuum, from a venue for advancement, and

creativity to disconcerting uncertainty and risk---as if traversing the same territory

as Dewey in the The Quest for Certainty. Bateson says:

The world in which you are placed is rather a strange world, because it doesn’t

contain anything … only… news. Reports of difference, reports of change, preferences

for change, preferences for stability, etc. etc. etc.... From the moment I discovered that

it [the word "stable"] was an error, I was living in a world of ideas....

Here we are, floating in a world that consists of nothing but change,… And in this

world, we float, we talk, and we talk as if there were a static element in the world.

Change itself is unchangeable, so flexibility becomes a guarantee for stability (as

security, not conservatism). Nora recalls: if one said "I used to think it might be

like this, but now I’m starting to think it might be like this," her father considered

it as a sign of having learned. There wasn't "any sort of concrete value being

placed on the stability of opinion, in fact, it was just the opposite."

18

Change in “Undergoing”; in Thinking and Acting II

Peirce: What genuine naturalism compared to logic can do for (natural ) science

Modern science has been builded after the model of Galileo, who founded it on il lume naturale [the light of nature]. That truly inspired prophet had said that of two

hypotheses, the simpler is to be preferred; but I was formerly one of those who, in our dull self-conceit fancying ourselves more sly than he, twisted the maxim to

mean the logically simpler, the one that adds the least to what has been observed... It was not until long experience forced me to realise that subsequent discoveries

showed me every time to be wrong, while those who understood the maxim as Galileo had done, early unlocked the secret, that the scales fell from my eyes and my

mind awoke to the broad and flaming daylight that it is the simpler Hypothesis in the sense of the more facile and natural, the one that instinct suggests that must be

preferred; for the reason that unless man have a natural bent in accordance with nature's, he has no chance of understanding nature at all. Many tests of this principal

and positive fact, relating as well to my own studies as to the researches of others, have confirmed me in this opinion... Oh, no! I am forgetting that armor,

impenetrable by accurate thought, in which the rank and file of minds are clad! They may, for example get the notion that my proposition involves a denial of the

rigidity of the laws of association: it would be quite on a par with much that is current. [possibly associationism in psychology, criticised , e.g., by James 1907 for its atomistic

bias?] I do not mean that logical simplicity is consideration of no value at all, but only that its value is badly secondary to that of simplicity in the other sense.

["A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God" (1908), repr. in Peirce on Signs (1991), pp. 272-273, italics in orig.]

Dewey: Historical change necessitates change in philosophy to lead humanity into the future

But while it is a sign of an illiberal mind to throw away the fertile and ample ideas of a Spinoza, a Kant, or a Hegel, because their setting is not logically adequate, it is

surely a sign of an undisciplined one to treat their contributions to culture as confirmations of premises with which they have no necessary connection...

... Idealism easily becomes a sanction of waste and carefulness,* and realism a sanction of legal formalism in behalf of things as they are―the rights of the possessor.

We thus tend to combine a loose and ineffective optimism with assent to the doctrine of take who take can: a deification of power... Faith in the power of intelligence

to imagine a future which is the projection of the desirable in the present, and to invent the instrumentalities of its realisation, is our salvation. And it is a faith which

must be nurtured and made articulate: surely a sufficiently large task for our philosophy.

["The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy" (1917), in a volume on the "pragmatic attitude," repr. in On Experience, Nature, and Freedom (1980), pp. 22, 69]

* The editor here replaced "carefulness" with "carelessness." I revoke the change, interpreting "carefulness" as (over)cautiousness, e.g., blocking action, and thinking, to start with.

Bateson: Ecological design, dissemination, and implementation of ecological theory

Is it important that the right things be done for the right reasons?... I believe that these [ecological] ideas are not evil, and that our greatest (ecological) need is the

propagation of these ideas as they develop―and as they are developed by the ecological processes of their propagation.

If this estimate is correct, then the ecological ideas implicit in our plans are more important than the plans themselves... It will not in the long run pay to "sell" the

plans by superficial ad hominem arguments which will conceal or contradict the deeper insight.

["Ecology and Flexibility in Urban Civilization," conference talk, 1970, Steps, pp. 512-513]

19

BUT... is Bateson’s “ecology of mind” (a) philosophy?

Do you read ontology/metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics in the transcripts of excerpts from the movie and from publications below?

From Ecology of Mind Section: Could one detect here Jamesian/Deweyan (general) evolution + Peircean cosmic mental evolution?

23:00 min G.B.: I’ve been bothered a little bit in the last few days by people who say, What do you mean "ecology of mind"? And, approximately,

what I mean is the various sorts of stuff that goes on in one’s head, in one’s behavior, and dealing with other people, and walking up and down

mountains, and getting sick and getting well, and all that.. That all that stuff interlocks, and in fact constitutes a network. And you’ve got this sort of

complicated living, partly struggling, partly cooperating tangle that you’d find on the side of any of these mountains, with trees and various plants and

animals that live there. In effect, an ecology.

24:30 min G.B.: The notion that an animal, really, should be thought of as a tangle of ideas, which have to live together, in him, more or less. An

evolutionary principle, which is, then, the evolution of ideas, not the evolution of animals… That the units of evolution are essentially ideas. Where

anatomy is a body of ideas. Bilateral symmetry, the two sides of the body is an idea, on which other ideas have to be built. For example, that the horse

and the tundra, the grassy plains, are interlocked. It is, now, an evolution in which the grass needs the horse as much as the horse needs the grass.

And if you want grass, if you want what’s called a "lawn," in the suburbs, you will first of all go and buy a mower, which will be the teeth of the horse,

to cut the grass. You will then go and you will buy a roller. And the roller crushes the grass down, and makes it make turf. And finally, you’ll end up

going and buying a sack of manure, because you have to be at least the other half of the horse too, you see.

Add to the above: "the unit of evolutionary survival [organism + environment + relations] turns out to be identical with the [cybernetic] unit of mind" (p. 6).

* * *

From Epistemology Section: What could Bateson’s view have done for the poor "image" of epistemology at the time of the early pragmatists?

27:00 min Fritjof Capra He naturally asked himself, What is it to know? How do we know? And so he got into epistemology. And he saw it as a part of

natural science, part of biology, or natural history. He didn’t see it as an abstract philosophical field.

27:50 min We go into the Chalk Boot Story about the arbitrariness of parsing reality and the many competing concepts we get bound and bounded by.

Add to the above Nora’s “[t]here wasn't any sort of concrete value being placed on the stability of an opinion, in fact, it was just the opposite" (p. 17).

* * *

=> The above reads like a worthy peer of James’s (1907) answer to his article title "What pragmatism means":

1) method, "attitude of orientation" (represented by Peirce’s maxim) + 2) theory of truth/knowledge (James, Dewey)

20

Applying the pragmatic maxim (p. 15), and taking into account the variables set off by quotes,

let us consider the following questions (rhetorical, for me):

o If "we" were to reject Gregory Bateson’s ideas

wouldn't we be going against their actual import?

o If we were to question their "philosophic status,"

wouldn't we be trying to cut a forest from its trees?

21

Coda I: Bateson

The 1980 clip below plays as the credits run at the end of the movie. It bears the weight of a message distilled throughout a lifetime, and the

movie, 30 years later, sounds in unison with it.

I hope that may have given you some

entertainment, something to think

about, and I hope [the recording you

just heard] may have done

something to set you

Q: What is

an ecology

of mind?

Poring through his work, I am con-

tinually reminded that an ecology of

mind is a slippery and rigorous friend.

Nora Bateson's movie 2010

free from thinking in material and

logical terms, when you are in fact

trying to think about living things.

Excerpted from a recording

by & of Gregory Bateson, 1980

TEST Q (“squirrel”-type dilemmas)

Applying Peirce's pragmatic maxim:

Does Bateson’s rejection of "material"

and "logical" pit him against, e.g.,

Food for thought:

Aren't there also triple, multiple binds?

mental ecology = ecological mentality?

A: What

isn’t?

whether we "see" it or not!!!

Dewey's material (e.g., in science)

James’s practical (e.g., in philosophy)

Peirce's logic (e.g., of relatives)?

22

Coda II: Epistemological “Fractality” Redux

The multimodal discourse above has explored epistemological self-similarity that may obtain between Bateson and the early pragmatists. The vignette below makes it

clear that according to Peirce and James the “fractal” can be tracked far into the past. The quote by Peirce names Socrates, Aristotle, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley,

Auguste Comte, which means the entire temporal length of the Western philosophical tradition. A couple of obvious questions to ask, thus, would be, Whose work

exhibits this particular pattern of self-similarity in more recent years and the present?, and What is the fractal’s future?

Charles S Peirce

William James

Photo credits: wikipedia.org

… Any philosophical doctrine that should be completely new could hardly fail to prove completely false; but the rivulets at the head of the

river of pragmatism are easily traced back to almost any desired antiquity.

Socrates bathed in these waters, Aristotle rejoices when he can find them. They run where least one would suspect them, beneath the

dry rubbish-heaps of Spinoza. Those clean definitions that strew the pages of the Essay on Humane Understanding (I refuse to correct the

spelling), had been washed out in these same pure springs. It was this medium, and not tar water, that gave health and strength to

Berkeley’s earlier works, his Theory of Vision and what remains of his principles. From it the general views of Kant derive such clearness

as they have. Auguste Comte made still more—much more—use of this element; as much as he saw his way to using.

Unfortunately, however, both he and Kant, in their rather opposite ways, were in the habit of mingling these sparkling waters with a

certain mental sedative, to which many men are addicted—and the burly business men, very likely to their benefit, but which plays sad

havoc with the philosophical constitution. I refer to the habit of cherishing contempt for the close study of logic.

[Historical Affinities and Genesis, Peirce: Collected Papers, vols. 5&6, pp. 6-7; manuscript dated 1906; italics added]

Recall also the telling subtitle of a book by James, and a foundational reading on pragmatism: Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old

Ways of Thinking (1907/1978).

NB! I would like to note that the self-similarity patterns identified here for Bateson and the pragmatists (cf. my provisional label "Bateson’s ecopragmatism") would

be much broader than what Peirce had in mind in the quote above, likely targeting the maxim specifically (consider the italicised "clearness" and "close study of

logic"), though this certainly does not preclude expansion through its many applications and implications. James would have allowed more latitude in view of his

quote on p. 5 (consider the way he unpacks pragmatism as "only an attitude of orientation") and his definition of what pragmatism means on p. 19, compared to which

I have aimed for more concrete (bundles of) notions to map out the parallel.

23

how about . . .

The Beginning

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The Beginning,

…with the "charms and terrors" of

ecology (p. 8), and us humans, in mind?…

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POSTSCRIPT

26

Bateson had his Jokes and Joys

A computer was asked whether it computes that it might someday think

like a human. After awhile its response came out as:

Bateson's "definition" of a psychotic in contrast to the normal, who see a

boot in the chalk figure, or geometric shapes, not something drawn in chalk:

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with

Margaret

Mead

at the Esalen

Institute

with

Joe & Jane

Wheelwright

27

Interviewees'

"ecologies of mind":

After viewing a therapy session recording for a few hundred times!!!, Mary

Catherine Bateson concluded that the pathology was not in the child, in the

mother, in the father, or in the therapist (which, she notes, is "the way we’re

trained to think about causality"). It was in the relationship, in its pattern.

* * *

...he asked the question, What is there about our way of perceiving that

makes us not see the delicate interdependencies in the ecological systems

that give it its integrity? We don’t see them and therefore we break them.

28

His mind was big! But, then, his heart was as big as his mind.

You put those two together―that’s what was

so exciting about living with Gregory Bateson.

He was not interested in specializing in a narrow field. He was interest-

ed in larger patterns...in how things are connected, and especially how

living things are connected.

Paraphrasing, haemoglobin's significance is not its chemical structure, or

its history, but what it's in relation to―O2, helping the organism to proc-

ess energy. [cf. Bateson's system relationality, also the pragmatic maxim]

You get to a meta level, where you get an enormous leverage to your

understanding. Mathematics is one method, and social patterns are

another... the ability to see the same pattern in different context...

29

Jerry Brown, Governor of California, on the multiple binds of governance

re regulating industrial production, unemployment, damage to the environ-

ment: improve one, upset another. His conclusion:

The qualitative shift that is needed would take extraordinary vision

and imagination…

To make a better world: The way you make sense of that coffee cup is not

the way I make sense of it. I respect your way. In fact, I'd like to know about it.

* * *

Re the Macy conferences: What came out of that group was the trunk of a

tree that became computers, and the internet, and everything else…

The [system's] complexity is going to continually baffle you, until you really

engage, and what you engage with is cybernetic understanding.

His inspirational quality was really quite extraordinary.

30

ADDENDA

31

From: Gregory Bateson

(1904 - 1980)

Gregory Bateson died on July 4, 1980, at the age of 76,

survived by his wife, Lois; three children, Mary

Catherine, John, and Nora; and his adopted son, Eric.

Mary Catherine, the child of his marriage to Margaret

Mead, is Dean of Faculty at Amherst College and, like

her parents, an anthropologist. We have been able to

make use Gregory of the fine biography by David

Lipset, Gregory Bateson, The Legacy of a Scientist

(Prentice-Hall 1980) in preparing this article.

=====================================

In his search for significant similarities

meaning, Bateson believed (and here he

with Mary Catherine Bateson

and contrasts in systems involving communication and

picks up emphases of Vico and such Romantic protest-

ors against empiricism as Blake) that it was legitimate to

use intuitions based on aspects of order glimpsed in the

examination of any complex "cybernetic" system (and

perhaps based, ultimately, on our own sense of ourselves

as organized systems of person/environment) to explore

other organized realms. He called this abduction "the

lateral extension of abstract components of description"

(1979:142), which he took to be as important as deduction

and induction. "Metaphor, dream, parable, allegory, the

whole of art, the whole of [social?] science, the whole of

religion, the whole of poetry, totemism … the organizat-

ion of facts in comparative anatomy―all these are instan-

ces or aggregates of instances of abduction …" He then, characteristically, pushed the idea further in his search for analogies of order. "But obviously

the possibility of abduction extends to the very roots also of physical science, Newton's analysis of the solar system and the periodic table of the

elements being historical examples" (1979: 142-143).

Bateson's growing theoretical emphasis on the adaptational nature of human thought and behavior led to a close fit between his intellectual and

moral positions. He was deeply disturbed by the decimation of aboriginal populations, by the degradation of ecological systems, by economic

oppression, and by senseless wars and arms races; but he took them and the countless other disasters and fearsome omens of contemporary life to be

manifestations of a limited number of deeper disorders of a systemic nature, some or all of which could be defined in the formal terms of cybernetic

systems of communication and meaning that comprised, for him, life, mind, and society. One of the causes of these breakdowns, he thought, involves

the peculiar nature of human consciousness as an adaptive system. In his view, as we have noted, consciousness is dominated by purposefulness, and

purposeful thought has a linear structure. That is, it establishes goals and devises means for attaining them without being governed by, or even aware of,

the circular and reticulate structure of cause and effect that orders the systems in which purposeful action takes place.

[text and photo from: www.interculturalstudies.org/Bateson/biography.html, bolding added; orig.: R.I.Levy & R.Rappaport, American Anthropologist 84(2), June 1982, pp. 379-394]

32

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New York, 1970. Published in Steps, with the addition of the concluding section VI. pp. 502-513.

--------------- (1979) Mind and nature: A necessary unity. New York: E. P. Dutton.

Bredo, Eric (1994) Reconstructing educational psychology: Situated cognition and Deweyan pragmatism. Educational Psychologist 29(1), 23-35.

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--------------- (1980) Experience, nature, and freedom. Edited and with an introduction by Richard J. Bernstein. Indianapolis and New York: The Bob

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James, Williams (1890/1950) The principles of psychology. New York: Dover.

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lynne.alexandrova@mail.utoronto.ca

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