Cybernetics
& Human Knowing: A Journal of Second-order
Cybernetics Autopoiesis and Cyber-Semiotics
Gregory Bateson. Essays for an Ecology
of Ideas
by Søren Brier, Ed.
Imprint Academic, Exeter, UK, 2005
Volume 12, No. 1-2
182 pp. illus. Price, n/a
ISBN: 1-84540-032-1.
Reviewed by Rob Harle (Australia)
harle@dodo.com.au
Cybernetics and Human Knowing, published
quarterly, is a transdisciplinary journal
concerning second-order cybernetics and
cyber-semiotic approaches to understanding.
"The journal is devoted to the new understandings
of the self-organising processes of information
in human knowing that have arisen through
the cybernetics of cybernetics" (p. 2).
The issue under review (Volume 12, No.
1 & 2) is dedicated to Gregory Bateson
(1904-1980) an Anthropologist, Social
Scientist, Cyberneticist and, arguably,
one of the most important social scientists
of the twentieth century. His two most
profound works were Mind & Nature
and Steps to an Ecology of Mind—hence,
this journal’s sub-title, Essays
for an Ecology of Ideas. Bateson,
whilst not actually coining the term cybernetics
himself, was a pioneer in this discipline
together with colleagues, Heinz von Foerster
and Norbert Wiener, among others. These
great thinkers did not necessarily call
themselves cyberneticists and worked
in fields as diverse as engineering, artificial
intelligence, mathematics, anthropology,
and in Bateson’s later years, psychotherapy
and anti-psychiatry, specifically.
The title of the Foreword, Patterns
That Connect Patterns That Connect,
seems like an infinite regression, but
it is more an infinite expansion, which
helps us understand how Bateson’s
"new systems thinking" covers such
diverse areas of human knowing. The hard-scientific
"way of knowing", of reductionism and
objective observation and treating objects
in isolation was the antithesis of Bateson’s
project. Nothing exists in isolation,
mind is not separate from body, politics
are not separate from physics, from poetry,
from biology, from life. Bateson had a
"primary interest in understanding wholeness,
rather than someone interested in pathology"
(p. 14). This approach was exemplified
in his attempt to understand such devastating
illnesses, such as schizophrenia.
The 11 essays in this volume, by authors
with background disciplines as diverse
as Bateson’s interests, are offered
as, "a gift to a creative spirit on his
100th birthday". The essays
cover disciplines, such as communications,
ecology, anthropology, philosophy, family
therapy, and education and learning. Some
are orientated towards extending Bateson’s
intellectual legacy, whilst others, such
as The Double Bind: Pathology and Creativity
written by Bateson’s daughter Mary,
touch on quite personal aspects of Bateson,
the man and father.
It goes without saying that this is a
specialist journal and although all the
contributors write enthusiastically and
some very creatively—Douglas Flemons,
May The pattern Be with You is
a real hoot—the subject matter is
quite complex and probably not all that
accessible for the lay reader. The journal
is illustrated with some charming black
& white images, mainly concerning
patterns in nature, together with a smattering
of extremely good poetry. The American
Society for Cybernetics (a society for
the art and science of human understanding)
also has its column that reports on the
ASC meeting in Toronto with its distinctive
Batesonian flavour.
This special issue of the Cybernetics
and Human Knowing Journal is a wonderful
tribute to a great thinker and visionary,
a man who was not at all afraid to think
"outside of the box" or to challenge any
existing beliefs that did not have a basis
in interconnectedness. "What pattern connects
the crab to the lobster and the orchid
to the primrose and all four of them to
me? And me to you?" he asks in Mind
and Nature. I believe as we increasingly
come to understand this interconnectedness
of all things, Bateson’s work will
gain even more respect and the recognition
it deserves.
