Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology [Paperback]

Gregory Bateson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226039056 | ISBN-13: 978-0226039053 | Publication Date: March 10, 2000 | Edition: 1

Gregory Bateson was a philosopher, anthropologist, photographer, naturalist, and poet, as well as the husband and collaborator of Margaret Mead. With a new foreword by his daughter Mary Katherine Bateson, this classic anthology of his major work will continue to delight and inform generations of readers.

"This collection amounts to a retrospective exhibition of a working life. . . . Bateson has come to this position during a career that carried him not only into anthropology, for which he was first trained, but into psychiatry, genetics, and communication theory. . . . He . . . examines the nature of the mind, seeing it not as a nebulous something, somehow lodged somewhere in the body of each man, but as a network of interactions relating the individual with his society and his species and with the universe at large."—D. W. Harding, New York Review of Books

"[Bateson's] view of the world, of science, of culture, and of man is vast and challenging. His efforts at synthesis are tantalizingly and cryptically suggestive. . . .This is a book we should all read and ponder."—Roger Keesing, American Anthropologist

Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) was the author of Naven and Mind and Nature.

Product Details

• Paperback: 565 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (March 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226039056
• ISBN-13: 978-0226039053
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #29,711 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

80 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Back in print at last!, March 26, 2000

By 

David Ballard - See all my reviews

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

It is unbelievable that this masterpiece has been out of print for so long. I have been looking fruitlessly for a copy for some years, having eventually had to return a loan copy. I am delighted that it is available again.

Organised as a collection of relatively short essays, this has a legitimate claim to be the outstanding book of the 20th century for anyone interested in mind, change, evolution, systems thinking, ecology, epistemology, organisations, therapy and more. Be warned - it can be very dense in places, but the effort is worth it. On the right day it's really stimulating - on a bad day, I'd read something easier!

'Form, Substance and Difference', 'Conscious Purpose versus Nature' and 'The Logical Categories of Learning and Communication' are absolutely central texts for anyone considering how we need to respond to the current world crisis. Other key papers include 'The cybernetics of "Self": A theory of alchoholism' and 'Social Planning and the Concept of Deutero Learning'. If you work in the field of Organisational Development you will probably be familiar with some of the content through the many writers who have built on Bateson's work. Fritjof Capra writes about him a great deal. The original is best though.

The fact that it is back in print is tremendous. How can something this good have been out of print for so long?

David Ballard

35 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow!, November 3, 2000

By 

Yuri Kuzyk (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

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

It's unfortunate that Bateson died before postmodern thought really made it over the Atlantic since it appears he was quite concerned about many of the old views held by North American philosophers. The chapters concerning contextualization and language use echo what Foucalt, Lyotard and Derrida have been trying to get across except Bateson really managed to put these ideas into somewhat more accessible form.

Bateson was around for the beginnings of information theory and cybernetics and again, he was probably very disappointed in their state when he died. However, if one now looks at what people like Perlovsky and Chaitin have worked on one may begin to see that science is finding more and more problems with maintaining even the idea of objectivity.

In particular, if one looks at the work of Wilson ("Spikes, Decisions, and Actions") and Prigogine then the theory of objectivity within the physical world comes falling down. The only book close to giving a complete overview like Bateson managed is Jantsch's "Self-Organizing Universe", now out of print.

This is well worth reading and pondering. One can only hope more people begin to realize that we have a great opportunity for advancing ourselves (instead of rushing towards anhilation)if we can just change some of present system of thought.

33 of 40 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. ....