Gregory Bateson (2000), Steps to an Ecology of Mind (first published 1971), Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. The 1999 foreword by Mary Bateson reminds the reader that much has changed since the first publication of Gregory Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind in 1971. It, however, makes an important point in that recent research on the human genome seems rather 'triumphalist' and can distract from the fact that the 'individual phenotype is formed by the interaction of multiple genetic factors, not by any one of them in isolation; and all of them are exposed in a complex dance with the surrounding environment, air and earth and other organisms' (2000: vii). This represents a shift of emphasis away from things to the interactions of things. The 'steps' of the title represent points of reference, a mechanism for drawing together diverse essays and disciplines such as anthropology, communication theory, psychology, biology and cybernetics. In very general terms, Bateson's argument is that minds are the aggregates of ideas and the 'the ecology of mind is an ecology of pattern, information, and ideas that happen to be embodied in things - material forms' (from his Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, 1972, quoted 2000: x). For Bateson, all ideas have to be understood within this broad ecological perspective whether understanding the words in a sentence or biological evolution. The ecological aspect is used to emphasise that ideas interact, in such a way that certain ideas dominate and other ideas become extinct, and as such seem to be subject to laws or limits. He asks: 'what are the necessary conditions for stability (or survival) of such a system or subsystem?' (2000: xxiii) This approach might be called 'recursive epistemology' (Peter Harries-Jones's phrase in Recursive Vision, 1995, quoted in Bateson, 2000: xiii) in that it articulates processes of knowing but also considers the relationship between the knower and the known (and therefore has much in common with contemporary anthropology that considers the subjectivity of the observer). The 'inductive' (rather than deductive) tradition within science is that progress is made through the analysis of data leading to new concepts, predictions lead to hypotheses that are further tested by the analysis of new data - gradually improved until these 'heuristic concepts' can be seen to become more 'fundamental' principles (2000: xxvii). However, the data on offer is not the equivalent of actual objects but representations of these objects, and therefore a certain transformation or recoding takes place between the object and the scientist. Furthermore, the selection of data is determined by what is it is possible to observe. The data is therefore never 'raw' or pure, but subject to transformations by the human subject and the instruments used. It is from this position of some scepticism over the verification of findings that the scientific process should proceed - and what Bateson calls a 'critical faculty' is required on the part of the scientist to balance this 'mass of quasi-theoretical speculation' (2000: xxviii). Bateson takes a similar position on art, emphasising not representation as such, but transformation - 'not the message, but the code' (2000: 130). And he is not interested in simply decoding the message but identifying the rules by which the code to uncover its meaning, the meaning of the code itself. Therefore, a particular form of art, communicates in that particular way and not in another form as it that kind of message (perhaps partly unconscious). This anthropological basis begins to see the production of art, and art as product, in terms of behaviours (Bateson, 2000: 147; and informs Roy Ascott's position; for instance, the application of cybernetic logic to learning in Bateson's 'The Logical categories of Learning and Communication,' pp. 279-308 can be compared to Ascott's radical pedagogy in 'The Construction of Change' 2003: 97-107). He says: 'in what form these rules exist we do not know, but presumably they are embodied in the very machinery which creates the transforms. [...] The explanatory world of substance can invoke no differences and no ideas but only forces and impacts. And, per contra, the world of form and communication invokes no things, forces, or impacts but only differences and ideas. (A difference that makes a difference is an idea. It is a "bit," a unit of information.)' (2000: 271-2; Bateson calls this 'double bind theory' informed by his understanding of reification). Bateson recommends that scientific research should begin from two positions: the observations and the related fundamental known principles. If the two do not correspond, the observations are faulty or there is new insight into knowledge. For Bateson, advances in scientific thought come from a 'combination of loose and strict thinking' in which looseness is measured against 'rigid concreteness' (2000: 75), just as the process of learning takes place through trial and error (2000: 287). The scientist begins with an analogy, perhaps even a wild one, and then tests the analogy against formulations borrowed from the field from which he borrows the analogy (rather like the concept 'reification', as the movement from abstraction to the concrete perhaps - but perhaps I am simply using a loose analogy but not following it here). In this connection, Bateson points to the difference between homology and analogy in Zoology - something is homologous where two things are similar on a structural level (such as elephant trunk and human nose) but analogous where they demonstrate a similar use (elephant trunk and human hand) (2000:80). In this way, homologies are evidently engaged with contextual structure rather than content. When Bateson uses the term 'context,' he is describing the ecology of ideas, and therefore any particular action is part of this ecological subsystem called context not an outcome or product of it. Paradoxes arise from this process precisely because the larger system is maintained by changes in its constituent subsystems (2000: 338-9; and as a consequence, this leads to his work around learning as not confined to participant in the learning environment). Drawing upon systems theory, he argues that in the distinction between form and substance that underlies an analysis of matter, too much attention has been paid to substance at the expenses of form and pattern. It is easy to see from this, his interest in 'metalogues' (2000: 3-60, a conversation addressing a particular problem, where the structure of the conversation itself is relevant to the subject. This is reflexive, as, for instance, in a discussion about evolutionary theory where the conversation itself evolves in a somewhat parallel manner. In more general terms, this interdisciplinary approach lends itself to the understanding of human societies based upon the basic analogy between society and organism as complex systems. Bateson's approach is more specifically informed by cybernetics that explains the course of events in terms of 'restraints', and that 'apart from such restraints, the pathways of change would be governed only by equality of probability' (2000: 405). In cybernetic observation, for example, a missing piece in a jigsaw puzzle is restrained by numerous factors including shape, colour, edges, orientation, etc.; similarly, a word in a sentence (in that, a certain letter is positioned as part of a text, and in so doing eliminates by restraint the other possibilities) or a part of an organism is explained through the analysis of restraints (Bateson, 2000: 406). In the case of the letter of the alphabet, information is quantified in negative terms as not being the other twenty-five possibilities - it is limited by the 'economics of alternatives' (2000: 409). A cybernetic explanation raises the question: 'is there a difference between "being right" and "not being wrong"?' (2000: 411). He is interested in the 'nontrivial' parallel of cybernetic explanation in considering information to other modes of logical or mathematical proof. Two other restraining concepts are important in cybernetic explanation: 'feedback' and 'redundancy'. An important part of cybernetics is concerned with the formal characteristics of causal circuits and the condition of their stability. I have talked about feedback elsewhere. The patterning or predictability of particular events within a larger aggregate of events is technically called 'redundancy' by communications engineers (Bateson, 2000: 412). For the monkey to type Shakespearian prose, he/she would have to recognise deviations from and the patterning of prose. In this way, communication can be seen to be patterning: 'If then we say that a message has "meaning" or is "about" some referent, what we mean is that there is a larger universe of relevance consisting of message-plus-referent, and that redundancy or pattern or predictability is introduced into this universe by the message.' (Bateson, 2000: 413) Redundancy exists if the receiver of a message can guess, despite some missing elements, the missing items with better than random success, hence differentiating between signal and noise. 'All that is not information, not redundancy, not form and not restraints - is noise, the only possible source of new patterns.' (Bateson, 2000: 416) Society: Bateson sees social change in these terms, as a slippage of the system in which there is the possibility that a variable my reach a point of crisis. The individual organism works in much the same way in that parts of the mind relate to the whole of the mind, so that a sense of consciousness and purpose arise. Bateson sees consciousness as put out of balance, as a pathology, by effective technology that supplements the purposes of consciousness (2000: 440). His concern is not technophobic, but that the feedback loops are not fully developed to maintain the balance of the system. Here is an ecological view in the clearest sense: 'It may well be that consciousness contains systematic distortions of view which, when implemented by modern technology, become destructive of the balances between man [sic], his [her] society, and his [her] ecosystem.' (Bateson, 2000: 446) He explains that the computations of the mind can be confused by contradictions: 'It is in our power, with our technology, to create insanity in the larger system of which we are parts.' (2000: 473) For Bateson, the rules of the game (following games theory), backed by computers, have been used to inform social and cultural policy. The rules become more and more dangerously rigid when the rules should be changed. There are many dangers in applying cybernetic theory unless it is recognised that there is also 'latent in cybernetics the means of achieving new and perhaps more human outlook, a means of changing our philosophy of control'. (2000: 485) He sees the greatest ecological need is the propagation of ideas about ecology (2000: 513). The problem remains how to communicate a better ecological perspective, whilst recognising that this is an ecological problem in itself. Plus c'est la meme chose, plus ca change - Bateson actually says the aphorism is wrong, that the reverse is the case: a constancy of some variable is maintained by changing other variables. The same logic applies to learning, and to social change. Dream (add to Debord): Dreams are considered metaphoric, in that they indirectly refer to the waking world. Unlike a play where the stage and theatrical apparatus allows the audience to understand the actions as illusion, in the dream, no such framing device is placed around the sense of reality unfolding. As Bateson sees it: 'The partial negative - "This is only metaphor" - is absent.' (2000: 428) Dualism: Western cultures abound in bipolarities - such as the politics of the right-left, sex differentiation, god and the devil, and are imposed on relatively non-dual phenomena such as old-young age, parent-child, labour versus capital, etc. according to Bateson; and in general, Western cultures lack the ability to apply triangular systems. The dualist tendency should not occlude the recognition of other systems, evident in other cultures (2000: 95). Degeneration: Borrowed from communications engineering, a 'regenerative' or 'vicious circle' is a chain of variables that progressively increases, leading to a greater intensity, a 'degenerative' or 'self-corrective' circle differs in that there will be feedback - such as a thermostat where the system self-corrects (Bateson, 2000: 109; thus, 'ordure real-time' is not generative and degenerative, but simply degenerative). Autonomy: In general, individual autonomy is related to the concept of 'free will' and is an essential component of democracy. Bateson asks what the relationship is between this positive expression of democratic spirit and 'compulsive negativism'. Although a negative viewpoint is of the same order of abstraction as autonomy, how do we make a judgement of the 'value' of such a position - through an evaluation of a particular habitual act or behaviour in relation to others and by setting it in a broader context (Bateson, 2000: 165; and here he is drawing upon the work of Margaret Mead).