Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology Psychiatry Evolution and Epistemology: Amazon.ca: Gregory Bateson: Books

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Back In Print, Finally., Aug 15 2001

By

G. N. Ray - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology Psychiatry Evolution and Epistemology (Paperback)

After my paperback copy of SEM decayed from several readings, I was more than a little disappointed to see that it had gone out of print. I'm glad that its finally back.

Absolutely, Bateson is a "sloppy thinker," just as Picasso was a "sloppy painter" by the standards of Vermeer and Rembrandt. And really a comparison to artists - not formal theorists - is the metric by which Bateson should be judged.

Why is it that Bateson attracts such loyalty? Because his writing illustrates a *process* of thinking, rather than a specific indisputable conclusion. Those who expend the time and effort to read Bateson - and in particular SEM - are rewarded with the certainty that the thinking process is as interesting as any possible conclusion. And it is somewhat more than "clever" that in the SEM dialogues, Bateson uses the very structure and form of his writings to illustrate the content he's explaining.

Indeed it is precisely that uncertainty which vexes "formal" theorists (such as the reviewer below). Bateson - as a systems thinker - was always more interested in process and context than in defining any literal end result. After all, what possible "proof" could be offered that dolphins are second-order thinkers because they can learn about learning?. How on earth could proof be gained that icons and verbalizations are mediated by dreaming?

I would offer this question to Bateson's critics: if his thinking is so irredeemably sloppy, what then is his lasting appeal? Why does he - among all the philosophers and scientists of the 20th century - continue to have such a loyal following? Name a single cybernetician or epistomologist who is commonly cited in contemporary philosphical thinking.

Answer: there are none. So the bigger question is not why Bateson is popular, but why systems thinking (of which Bateson was a practitioner) is so absent from American academia. That fact is an indictment of something, but is certainly is not Gregory Bateson.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars This book is an old friend., July 24 2001

By

Kira R. Signer (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology Psychiatry Evolution and Epistemology (Paperback)

Out of the hundreds of books that I was forced to read through high school and college, maybe five caught my imagination. This was one of them. Before anyone was really interested in thinking about thinking, Bateson sat down and did so. He was attempting to raise a bunch of questions that might help some to in-form their search for understanding in the world, or at least for points to be curious about, which in his mind is where science has to begin if it wants to know anything. It certainly helped to inform my thinking.

Not only did Bateson do a bang-up job of getting me to think in interesting or useful or maybe somewhat cleaner ways, he's actually pretty good at writing. ....

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Oh No, April 28 2001

By

Roo Ruf Neck - See all my reviews

This review is from: Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology Psychiatry Evolution and Epistemology (Paperback)

no, no- Bateson wasn't a sloppy thinker at all. Yet, he wasn't fond of interiors or dead thoughts. His limitations (and i don't pretend to consider that my greatest capacities begin anywhere near his greatest limits)rest in his eternal (as it should be, i think) struggle with epistemology. Throught his later years he seemed to have a guiding intuition that there was not yet an adequit epistemology to address our modern crises. He would probably be the first to admit he only took small steps in helping this situation. His steps, however small, misguided and/or sloopy, were nevertheless extremely creative and point in a significant direction. If he had read Rudolf Steiner's "Truth and Knowledge" he would have laughed quite a bit, died later, and then re-read it in a much graver (pun intended) tone. Or not, but...

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