Steps to an Ecology of Mind
Encyclopedia
Steps to an Ecology of Mind is a collection of Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. He had a natural ability to recognize order and pattern in the universe...

's short works over his long and varied career. Subject matter includes essays on anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

, cybernetics
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...

, psychiatry
Psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...

 and epistemology. It was originally published by Chandler Publishing Company in 1972 (republished 2000 with forward by Mary Catherine Bateson
Mary Catherine Bateson
Mary Catherine Bateson is an American writer and cultural anthropologist.A graduate of the Brearley School, Bateson is the daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. Since 1960, she has been married to Barkev Kassarjian, a professor of business management at Babson College...

).

The book begins with a series of metalogues, which take the form of conversations with his daughter Mary Catherine Bateson
Mary Catherine Bateson
Mary Catherine Bateson is an American writer and cultural anthropologist.A graduate of the Brearley School, Bateson is the daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. Since 1960, she has been married to Barkev Kassarjian, a professor of business management at Babson College...

. The metalogues are mostly thought exercises with titles such as "What is an Instinct" and "How Much Do You Know." In the metalogues, the playful dialectic
Dialectic
Dialectic is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to Indic and European philosophy since antiquity. The word dialectic originated in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato in the Socratic dialogues...

 structure itself is closely related to the subject matter of the piece.

Part I: Metalogues

DEFINITION: A metalogue is a conversation about some problematic subject. This conversation should be such that not only do the participants discuss the problem but the structure of the conversation as a whole is also relevant to the same subject. Only some of the conversations here presented achieve this double format.



Notably, the history of evolutionary theory is inevitably a metalogue between man and nature, in which the creation and interaction of ideas must necessarily exemplify evolutionary process.

  • Why Do Things Get in a Muddle? (01948, previously unpublished)
  • Why Do Frenchmen? (01951, Impulse ; 01953, ETC.: A Review of General Semantics, Vol. X)
  • About Games and Being Serious (01953, ETC.: A Review of General Semantics, Vol. X)
  • How Much Do You Know? (01953, ETC.: A Review of General Semantics, Vol. X)
  • Why Do Things Have Outlines? (01953, ETC.: A Review of General Semantics, Vol. XI)
  • Why a Swan? (01954, Impulse)
  • What Is an Instinct? (01969, Sebeok, Approaches to Animal Communication)

Part II: Form and Pattern in Anthropology

Part II is a collection of anthropological writings, many of which were written while he was married to Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist, who was frequently a featured writer and speaker in the mass media throughout the 1960s and 1970s....

.
  • Culture Contact and Schismogenesis (01935, Man, Article 199, Vol. XXXV)
  • Experiments in Thinking About Observed Ethnological Material (01940, Seventh Conference on Methods in Philosophy and the Sciences ; 01941, Philosophy of Science, Vol. 8, No. 1)
  • Morale and National Character (01942, Civilian Morale, Watson)
  • Bali: The Value System of a Steady State (01949, Social Structure: Studies Presented to A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, Fortes)
  • Style, Grace, and Information in Primitive Art (01967, A Study of Primitive Art, Forge)

Part III: Form and Pathology in Relationship

Part III is devoted to the theme of "Form and Pathology in Relationships." His essay on alcoholism
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...

 examines the alcoholic state of mind, and the methodology of Alcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous is an international mutual aid movement which says its "primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety." Now claiming more than 2 million members, AA was founded in 1935 by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith in Akron, Ohio...

 within the framework of the then-nascent field of cybernetics
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...

.
  • Social Planning and the Concept of Deutero-Learning was a "comment on Margaret Mead's article "The Comparative Study of Culture and the Purposive Cultivation of Democratic Values," 01942, Science, Philosophy and Religion, Second Symposium)
  • A Theory of Play and Fantasy (01954, A.P.A. Regional Research Conference in Mexico City, March 11 ; 01955, A.P.A. Psychiatric Research Reports)
  • Epidemiology of a Schizophrenia (edited version of a talk, "How the Deviant Sees His Society," from 01955, at a conference on "The Epidemiology of Mental Health," Brighton, Utah)
  • Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia (01956, Behavioral Science, Vol. I, No. 4)
  • The Group Dynamics of Schizophrenia (01960)
  • Minimal Requirements for a Theory of Schizophrenia (01959)
  • Double Bind, 1969 (01969)
  • The Logical Categories of Learning and Communication (01968)
  • The Cybernetics of "Self": A Theory of Alcoholism (01971)


Part IV is a collection of writings on "Biology and Evolution."

Part V is devoted to "Epistemology and Ecology."

Part VI is entitled "Crisis in the Ecology of Mind."

See also

  • Double bind
    Double bind
    A double bind is an emotionally distressing dilemma in communication in which an individual receives two or more conflicting messages, in which one message negates the other. This creates a situation in which a successful response to one message results in a failed response to the other , so that...

  • Systems philosophy
    Systems Philosophy
    Systems philosophy is the study of the development of systems, with an emphasis on design and root cause analysis. Systems philosophy is a form of systems thinking....

  • Systems thinking
    Systems thinking
    Systems thinking is the process of understanding how things influence one another within a whole. In nature, systems thinking examples include ecosystems in which various elements such as air, water, movement, plants, and animals work together to survive or perish...

  • Social sustainability
    Social sustainability
    Social sustainability is one aspect of sustainability or sustainable development. Social sustainability encompasses human rights, labor rights, and corporate governance...

  • Philosophy of mind
    Philosophy of mind
    Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...

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