Gregory Bateson

Gregory Bateson (born May 9, 1904 in Grantchester , Cambridgeshire , † July 4, 1980 in San Francisco ) was an Anglo-American anthropologist , biologist , social scientist , cyberneticist and philosopher . His areas of work included anthropological studies, the field of communication theory and learning theory , as well as questions of epistemology , natural philosophy , ecology and linguistics . Bateson did not treat these scientific fields as separate disciplines, but as different aspects and facets in which his systemic-cybernetic way of thinking comes into play.

Bateson's thoughts and work were mainly shaped by the philosophical considerations of Plato , the psychological considerations of Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung , the type theory of Bertrand Russell and cyberneticists such as Norbert Wiener , Warren McCulloch , John von Neumann and Claude Shannon with his information theory . For his part, Bateson had a great influence on systems and family therapy and influenced various theoretical currents in sociology and anthropology .

biography

Gregory Bateson was born on May 9, 1904 in Grantchester, England, the third son of the geneticist William Bateson . In 1922, Gregory Bateson began to study zoology at the University of Cambridge , then anthropology from 1925, traveled to New Guinea as part of his studies and completed it with a dissertation on a New Guinea tribe called Iatmul , which was printed in the journal Oceania in 1932 . Bateson later traveled again to the Iatmul in New Guinea. His first book was called Naven: A Survey of the Problems Suggested by a Composite Picture of the Culture of a New Guinea Tribe Drawn from Three Points of View.

During his time in New Guinea, Bateson first met the anthropologist Margaret Mead , whom he married three years later. Her research in Bali in 1936 with a focus on Balinese character formation resulted in a pioneering report in his medium for the time. Mead's research relied primarily on film and photographic documentation. In 1938, Bateson and Mead's daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson, was born. She later became an ethnologist and wrote down her memories of her parents in the book With the Eyes of a Daughter . A year later the family moved to the USA; From 1942, during the Second World War, Bateson worked as a social scientist for the Office of Strategic Services in India, China, Burma and Ceylon. After the war, Bateson was visiting professor at the New School for Social Research in New York, Harvard University , the University of California Medical School in San Francisco, and the Veterans Administrations Hospital, where he conducted ethnographic interviews with psychiatrists. In 1951 he married a second time. This second marriage lasted eight years, followed by a third marriage.

Between 1946 and 1953, Bateson was one of the leading figures of the Macy Conferences , at which scientists from various disciplines laid the foundations of systems theory and cybernetics. Bateson's scientific career focused from 1951 to 1962 at Stanford University near Palo Alto , where he accepted a visiting professorship. During this time, his studies and books increasingly dealt with communication theory and psychology. He developed his well-known double bond theory . In 1965, Bateson was invited by the Oceanic Foundation in Hawaii to collaborate on research into animal and human communication, research aimed at demonstrating creativity in dolphins , for example . He stayed in Hawaii for seven years as an associate researcher, during which time he wrote most of the texts that later appeared in the collection of articles, Ecology of Mind . In 1973 Bateson accepted a visiting professorship at Kresge College, and three years later he became a member of the Board of Directors of the University of California. He was also accepted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1976 . In 1978, six years after moving to California from Hawaii, Bateson wrote his last book, Mind and Nature; two years later he died in the alternative Esalen Institute in San Francisco.

His daughter from third marriage, Nora Bateson (* 1969), put together the one-hour documentary film portrait An Ecology Of Mind in 2010 .

Bateson's work

Easy and strict thinking

Bateson did not see himself as a representative of a specific specialist discipline, but as a cyberneticist , systemicist or ecologist - terms that he used almost synonymously. At the same time he resisted being absorbed by certain social currents. Bateson criticized the reductionist thinking of established science on the one hand, but also any form of anti-intellectual tendencies in the so-called counterculture and the American student movement on the other . Although he spent the end of his life at the Esalen Institute - the center of alternative therapies and spiritual life forms - he always remained suspicious of any form of esoteric thought.
In addition to Bateson's general systemic approach, the combination of loose and strict thinking is a characteristic of his way of working. Loose thinking here stands for a rather speculative approach based on fantasy and intuition; strict thinking, on the other hand, for logical inference and formal analysis.

Structural functionalism in early anthropological works

Gregory Bateson's first published works, his dissertation and Naven, were shaped by the structural functionalism of Bronisław Malinowski and especially of Alfred Radcliffe-Brown : Bateson attempts to supplement the categories of classical ethnology with terms such as structure and function: his methodology is rooted in the Collection of observations and data from cultural life and the further differentiation into isolated and functional, culturally standardized behavior. If the particular appears standardized and functional and thus elevated to the general level, the researcher can speak of a premise . Those premises can now be linked syllogistically , the results of which are arranged and illustrate the essence of the respective culture, the cultural structure. In addition to the cultural structure results in the social structure (social structure), the social function of a company to satisfy the needs of groups of individuals being.
Bateson suspects a configuration in a culture that norms the people in it. In the configuration ethos and eidos are distinguished. The ethos represents the standardized organization of emotionality and instincts , Eidos a standardization of the intellect that manifests itself in the cultural structure. The manifestation of the standardized intellect is explained in the abstracting way from the premises via the logic inherent in the specific culture to the concept of culture.
In Naven , Bateson therefore illuminates institutions that functionally interlock and serve the needs of groups in three ways. The structural perspective, i.e. the eidos, the affective perspective, i.e. the ethos, and the sociological perspective serve as analytical cornerstones.

Beginning with Naven , answers to cultural questions are firmly established at Bateson, which he will represent to the end: he distrusts statements about intercultural similarities, he advocates cultural relativism , and he denies the idea of ​​human beings as a mere product of culture as well as a mere product Product of its genes, and understands it as something that grows out of culture and genetic disposition. Also in Naven his concept of schismogenesis - introduced by him in cultural contact and schismogenesis  - is further developed and becomes a central concept.

Learning theory

Bateson's studies in the context of psychological warfare for the USA during the Second World War mark the beginning of his learning theory, which he later refined: These studies concentrate on the one hand on the development and jurisdiction of national characters and morals and, in principle, schismogenic relationship patterns in interculturality , and on the other hand on the cause for individual and collective character traits that do not have to be understood solely from the genetic disposition of the person, but also as the sum of learning .

Bateson establishes a hierarchy of learning types inspired by Bertrand Russell's type theory :

• Learning 0: The lowest level of learning is the reception of information of a rigid nature - a certain reaction is learned in connection with a certain stimulus.
• Learning 1: also called “proto-learning” by Bateson, is a form of learning in which a specific reaction to a specific “ context ” is learned. The context results from the mutual classifications of the stimuli.
• Learning 2: This involves learning "proto-learning", also called "Deutero learning" by Bateson. It results in habits and states of mind and thus affects character and communication.
• Learning 3: The fourth level is the reorganization of what has been learned through Deutero learning; This form of learning is rare, it amounts to the annihilation of the self and is either the result of the subject's free decision or the consequence of contradicting learning. Or: Learning III is the conscious insight into how the mind works. According to Bateson, the consequence of this insight is psychotic decompensation or "enlightenment" (Wolfgang Walker: Adventure Communication. Klett-Cotta-Verlag, p. 80).
• Learning 4: Fifth-order learning is a change in fourth-order learning and probably only occurs in the phylogenetic - ontogenetic interaction.

Communication theory

In 1951, Bateson published, together with the psychiatrist Jürgen Ruesch, Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry. In addition to ontogenetic analyzes, Bateson in particular tries to draw a formal picture of communication on the basis of studies of communication between machines, animals and humans. In 1952 Bateson explored together with Don D. Jackson , John H. Weakland and Jay Haley in the so-called Palo Alto group Paradoxes of Abstraction in Communication, the title of the research project, with a focus on the resulting mental illnesses. The first fundamental theories on human communication, namely the double bond theory , were the result of this work.

The basic conditions of any communication are perception and the complex processing of information in an organism that knows how to exist in a subject-object relationship , as well as gestalt perception and levels of abstraction in the communicator. Communication therefore functions in introspection as well as between interacting subjects, groups and cultures: If this is the case, the world appears in the subject after coding, and its weighting is subjectively modified after an evaluation of the image parts. The world, which is consequently, in principle, strongly subjectively interpreted, is further subjectified by every message or piece of information: information motivates by saying something about itself, information constituted by the subject about the past (the news aspect of every piece of information) and about the future (the command aspect of everyone Information).

In communication between people, metacommunication is an extremely important pillar of mutual understanding: Metacommunication is, if you will, a communicative overtone or an actually pronounced message that classifies another message, puts it in a different context or in a more precise context. Contradictions between communication and meta-communication, correspondingly communicative paradoxes, are part of play, humor and creativity, but outside these areas they are pathological and, according to Bateson's theory (which is no longer recognized today), may lead to schizophrenia , or with the additional perspective of learning theory to the double bond .

In Bateson's theories, the concept of context is central. Context is to be understood as a pattern in time: communication, actions, states are meaningless or misleading without context - they cannot explain themselves, but have to be put in relation. So in human communication (as well as in the communication of the genetic programming of the unicellular organism with the actual becoming of the unicellular organism) the context is required.

Mind and nature

Bateson, the biologist, focuses on phylogenesis in his search for patterns in the world of common knowledge . Patterns exist in the body structure of a phenotype , within the body structure: a taxon  - and finally between taxa. A distinction is made between phylogenetic homology and serial homology: Phylogenetic homology is interspecific similarity and similarity between taxa, serial homology is the repetition of patterns within a living being .

Bateson adds the terms: Serial homology is a first-order connection, phylogenetic homology is a second-order connection, and ultimately the comparison of the phylogenetic-homological comparison is a third-order connection. In this way, Bateson finds the formal-abstract idea that the decisive pattern must be a meta-pattern, thus a connection of high order.

Bateson illustrates the logic of the metamattern by comparing two syllogisms :

• Modus Barbara:

  All Greeks are human.

  All people are mortal.

  So: All Greeks are mortal.

• Grass mode:

  People die.

  Grass dies.

  People are grass.

While Bateson explains facts in the inanimate world through the Barbara mode , facts in the animate world are to be understood in the logic of the Gras mode. Since patterns and relationships are decisive in the living, a logic that focuses on seemingly autonomous things, as happens in the Barbara mode, is out of place. Bateson formulates the idea here that the living and its facts must be understood in a metaphorical or poetic language. But what is the condition for the evolutionary meta-pattern? It's the mental process.

Bateson opposes René Descartes ' separation of spirit and matter in advance . The transcendent spirit is rejected: With the introduction of Carl Gustav Jung's terms pleroma (which represents the inanimate, matter or the world of energy) and creatura (which represents the animate, the spirit or the .) He rejects the belief in the dualism of body and soul World of information). So here Bateson introduces a cybernetic definition of the term: Spirit (the world of information) is the world of difference. An organism that reacts to a nerve impulse does not react primarily to the energy, but to the difference that has arisen. For Bateson, a mental process is perception of differences, perception of information and also the exchange of information, consequently communication on the smallest and largest level, in interculturality as well as in epigenesis , in evolution. Thinking and evolution work according to the same ( stochastic ) mental process.

Bateson characterizes the systems with the possibility of mental process by assigning them a total of six characteristics:

1. "A mind ( mind ?) Is an aggregate of interacting parts or components."
   • The parts of the aggregate can themselves be sub-spirits. In the case of an infinitely deeper division of the sub-spirits up to subatomic particles, one can no longer speak of spirits, since they lack complexity or organization and interaction of diverse parts.
2. "The interaction between parts of the mind is triggered by differences."
   • Differences are potential information. Actual information is differences that make a difference, differences that change. The differences should by no means be understood as material entities, rather differences are dimensionless, Platonic ideas .
3. "The mental process needs collateral energy."
4. "The mental process demands circular (or even more complex) chains of determination ."
   • Circular self-regulation is necessary so that the mental process does not escalate schismogenetically or stagnate. By means of positive and negative feedback , changes are corrected in a functioning mental process, thus creating stability . From the ontogenetic perspective, changes can be intercepted by mutations .
5. "In mental processes, the effects of differences must be understood as transformations (i.e. coded versions) of previous events."
   • The transformation of differences can take place in analog, digital, template-like and ostensive coding. Digitally coded, the difference can only go two ways - it prevents or motivates a reaction. Coded analogously, the transformation in the mental process varies with the magnitudes of the difference. In the template-like coding, the first state determines the subsequent state. The ostensive coding reveals the whole in the perception of parts.
6. "The description and classification of these transformation processes reveals a hierarchy of logical types that are inherent in the phenomena."
   • Logical types are a necessary characteristic of any mental process.

With the six conscious characteristics, the individual must naturally be redefined. "The individual nexus of pathways that I refer to as 'I' is no longer so precious because this nexus is only part of the larger mind."

ecology

Bateson's theory of the spirit and thus the theory of nature is expressed in the form of cybernetic ethics or social criticism  - in The Roots of Ecological Crises , Bateson lists manifestations of prevalent, purpose-oriented character traits and ways of life that endanger the world and oneself :

1. It's about us against the environment.
2. It's about us against other people.
3. It depends on the individual (or individual society or individual nation).
4. We can have one-sided control over the environment and we must strive for that control.
5. We live within an infinitely expanding “limit”.
6. Economic determinism is common sense .
7. Technology will do it for us.

The criticism of human life is above all a criticism of the idea of ​​power; Man believes he is committed to the insatiable myth of power and does not understand the circular-causal system in which he works - deadly fallacies for nature and man.

So Bateson distinguished (in his book "Steps to an Ecology of Mind" from 1972) between two ideal societies and ecologies: a "schismogenic society" (which strives for ever more growth and ever more differentiations and innovative differences, such as the " occidental-western world "), as well as a" steady-state society ", in that the people living in such societies (e.g. in Bali) are initially concerned with achieving and maintaining a dynamic balance (although this remains questionable whether such “steady-state societies” really existed).

religion

Bateson's image of religion was strongly influenced by his ecological considerations. Bateson grew up in an atheist family. However, his father had already made it a point to impart religious knowledge and the Bible to his sons so that they would not become “mindless atheists”. Bateson remained atheist in the sense that he rejected all supernatural beings and supernatural powers. The Saints and the foundations of spirituality he sought rather within the ecological relationships, which he prefers in terms of homologies , analogies and metaphors wanted to describe ( "syllogisms in grass"):

It becomes clear that metaphor is not just nice poetry, it is not either good or bad logic, but is in fact the logic on which the biological world is built, the main characteristic and the organizing glue of this world of mental processes which I tried to sketch you out.

In Mind and Nature , Bateson already expressed the idea that in his next work he would deal with “the beautiful , the sacred and the consciousness ”, because these phenomena, in his view puzzling in many ways, were related. In fact, he wrote a few chapters, which his daughter Mary Catherine Bateson supplemented with her own chapters and brought out as a joint work Angels Fear (German: Where angels hesitate ). In these texts, with his postulate of a unity of the biosphere, Bateson turns against the prevailing beliefs that settle between materialism and supranaturalism .

Bateson sees the origin of religion not, like many other researchers of his time, in magical thinking , but in totemism , and thus in the spiritual bond with the ecological environment. On the other hand, he presented magical practices as a degenerate form of religion, since the pursuit of certain purposes took the place of a reflection on the ecological context: he was convinced, wrote Bateson, that rain dances were not originally used to make it rain, but represented an expression of the connection with the environment. In this context, Bateson spoke of the god " Eco " (eco).

Bateson calls for an unconscious and uncommunicative religious practice in which the whole, the organizational aggregates that surpass the individual and human beings, are honored through the experience of the unritualized saint. The uncommunicative and unconscious plays a major role: If the sacred is made conscious, a purpose is assigned to the useless and the essence of the unsubstantial idea is inverted in a reification, whether the current scientific method of knowledge.

effect

Bateson played a crucial role in the development of cybernetics. He introduced systems-theoretical and cybernetic approaches to the social and human sciences for the first time and is now considered the spiritual father of systemic therapy . The founders of the Palo Alto Group were among his students, including the therapist and writer Paul Watzlawick . In this context, Bateson is also known for the development of the psychological double bond theory. His assumption that double messages are largely responsible for the development of schizophrenia, however, did not stand up to empirical studies.

Bateson's writings on systems theory influenced the sociological theory of Niklas Luhmann and ultimately the personal systems theory of Eckard König / Gerda Volmer, who see themselves with their theory in the tradition of Bateson. In addition, a temporary assistant ( John Grinder ) and a temporary student and neighbor of Batesons ( Richard Bandler ) developed neuro-linguistic programming .

Although he formulated and systemically established many biological principles that are still valid today, he left the least traces in biology, but certainly in aesthetics , where more recent publications take up his ideas.

Socially, Bateson had some impact on the New Age movement , but was critical of it.

Quotes

• Aesthetics is attention to the pattern that connects. (From Where Angels Hesitate. ).
• Information is a difference that makes a difference. (From the ecology of the mind. P. 582).
• One man wanted to know how the mind is in his computer, so he asked him, 'Do you expect that you will ever think like a human being?' After a while the computer replied: 'That reminds me of a story.' (From spirit and nature. P. 22).
• The living being that wins in the fight against its environment destroys itself. (From the ecology of the spirit. ).
• Strictness alone is crippling death, fantasy alone is mental illness (Aus Geist und Natur. P. 265).

Selected Works

• Gregory Bateson, Mary Catherine Bateson: Where Angels Hesitate. On the way to an epistemology of the sacred. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-518-29369-9 .
• Gregory Bateson: Mind and Nature. A necessary unit. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-518-57603-8 .
• Gregory Bateson: Naven - A Survey of the Problems suggested by a Composite Picture of the Culture of a New Guinea Tribe drawn from Three Points of View. Stanford University Press, Stanford 1958, ISBN 0-8047-0520-8 .
• Gregory Bateson: Ecology of Mind. Anthropological, psychological, biological and epistemological perspectives. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-518-57628-3 .
• Gregory Bateson, DD Jackson, J. Haley, et al. a .: Schizophrenia and family. Contributions to a new theory. (1969). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-518-28085-6 .
• Gregory Bateson, Jürgen Ruesch: Communication. The social matrix of psychiatry. Carl Auer Systeme Verlag, Heidelberg 1995, ISBN 3-927809-40-3 .

literature

Independent literature

• Edmond Marc, Dominique Picard: Bateson, Watzlawick and the School of Palo Alto. Philo, Berlin a. a. 2000, ISBN 3-8257-0106-9 .
• Wolfram Lutterer: On the trail of ecological awareness. An analysis of the complete works of Gregory Bateson. Libri Books, Freiburg i.Br. 2000, ISBN 3-89811-699-9 .
• Wolfram Lutterer: Gregory Bateson. An introduction to his thinking. Carl Auer Systems Verlag, Heidelberg 2002, ISBN 3-89670-237-8 .
• John Brockman (Ed.): About Bateson, Essays on Gregory Bateson. Dutten, New York 1977, ISBN 0-525-47469-2 .
• Mary Catherine Bateson: Our Own Metaphor. A personal account of a conference on the effects of conscious purpose on human adaptation. Smithsonian Institute Press, 1972, ISBN 1-56098-070-2 .
• Wolfgang Walker: Adventure Communication. Bateson, Perls, Satir, Erickson and the Beginnings of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP). Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-608-91976-7 .
• Nora Bateson: An Ecology of Mind. 2010. A film portrait about Gregory Bateson, produced by his daughter, Nora Bateson.

Essays

• Jeffrey A. Bell: Philosophizing the Double-Bind: Deleuze Reads Nietzsche. In: Philosophy Today. 4, 1995, pp. 371-390.
• Eric Bredo: Bateson's Hierarchical Theory of Learning and Communication. In: Educational Theory. 39, 1989, pp. 27-46.
• Paola Dell'Erba: Gregory Bateson: Comunicazione verbale e non-verbale. In: Studi Filosofici. 23, 2000, pp. 353-370.
• Tim Parks: Unlocking the Mind's Manacles, an essay on Gregory Bateson and his Italian disciples. In: New York Review. vol. XLVI no.17, 7/10/1999.
• Thomas E. Peterson: Whitehead, Bateson and Readings and the Predicates of Education. In: Educational Philosophy and Theory. 1, 1999, pp. 27-41.
• M. Yoshikawa: Culture, Cognition and Communication. In: Communication and Cognition. 17, 1984, pp. 377-386.

fiction

• Tim Parks: Dreams of Rivers and Seas. German by Ulrike Becker. Kunstmann, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-88897-579-0 .

Gregory Bateson served as a template for the character of Albert James and his ideas in this novel. The author regards this novel as an eulogy to the scientist.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ film with German subtitles at mindjazz.
2. ^ Paul Watzlawick : Human communication. Forms, disorders, paradoxes. ISBN 3-456-82825-X .
3. ↑ Gregory Bateson: Mind and Nature. A necessary unit. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1987, chap. 1, v. a. Pp. 18-19.
4. ↑ Gregory Bateson, Jay Haley, Don D. Jackson, John Weakland: Preliminary Studies on a Theory of Schizophrenia. 1956, p. 274.
   Gregory Bateson, Mary Catherine Bateson: Where Angels Hesitate. On the way to an epistemology of the sacred. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1993, p. 45.
5. ↑ Gregory Bateson, Mary Catherine Bateson: Where Angels Hesitate. On the way to an epistemology of the sacred. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1993, chap. 2: The world of spiritual processes, v. a. Pp. 44-50.
6. ↑ Bateson, Haley, Jackson (1956), pp. 114 ff.
7. ↑ Gregory Bateson: Mind and Nature. A necessary unit. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1987, chap. IV, v. a. Pp. 113-114.
8. ^ Bateson, Haley, Jackson (1956), p. 115.
9. ↑ Gregory Bateson: Ecology of Mind. P. 597.
10. ↑ Gregory Bateson: The Roots of Ecological Crises. In: Ecology of Mind. P. 631.
11. ↑ Gregory Bateson, Mary Catherine Bateson: Where Angels Hesitate. On the way to an epistemology of the sacred. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1993, chap. V: “Neither supernatural nor mechanical” (pp. 76–96).
12. ↑ Gregory Bateson, Mary Catherine Bateson: Where Angels Hesitate. On the way to an epistemology of the sacred. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1993, pp. 44-50.
13. ↑ Gregory Bateson, Mary Catherine Bateson: Where Angels Hesitate. On the way to an epistemology of the sacred. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1993, p. 50.
14. ↑ Gábor Paál: What is beautiful? Aesthetics and Knowledge. Würzburg 2003, ISBN 3-8260-2425-7 .
15. ↑ An Ecology of Mind.
16. ↑ Deutschlandfunk Kultur. September 29, 2009. Retrieved September 13, 2017.

Web links

• Literature by and about Gregory Bateson in the catalog of the German National Library
• An Ecology of Mind in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Gregory Bateson: Towards a Schizophrenia Theory.
• Gregory Bateson and the Palo Alto group.
• Beats Biblionetz: Gregory Bateson.
• Jeffrey A. Bell: Philosophizing the Double-Bind: Deleuze reads Nietzsche. (PDF; 280 kB).
• Ansgar Fabri, Burkhart Brückner: Biography of Gregory Bateson. In: Biographical Archive of Psychiatry (BIAPSY).