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

by Gregory Bateson (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
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 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #19,120 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #1 in	Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Anthropology > History & Philosophy
  #16 in	Books > Nonfiction > Philosophy > Modern
  #24 in	Books > Nonfiction > Philosophy > Consciousness & Thought

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

92 of 93 people found the following review helpful:

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

By	Garry Ray (Northern Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

65 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

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

By	David Ballard (University of Bath, UK) - See all my reviews

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

25 of 29 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

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. ....