Tony Crook
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264003
- eISBN:
- 9780191734151
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264003.003.0005
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Global
This chapter describes the famous occasion when three anthropologists met up on the Sepik River in 1932/3 – and which infamously led to Margaret Mead eventually leaving Reo Fortune for Gregory ...
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This chapter describes the famous occasion when three anthropologists met up on the Sepik River in 1932/3 – and which infamously led to Margaret Mead eventually leaving Reo Fortune for Gregory Bateson. It also looks as much to the anthropologists as to their ethnographies to suggest that a view of one is available in the view of the other. The chapter furthermore presents an interest in how Stocking makes economy of exposition – just ‘one sentence’ – speak so much, and in what he does not need to say; whereas saying it any other way involves a long story to make the same point. Additionally, it intends to use the events instead to look at the commentary and contemporary practices in order to explore continuities in anthropological quasi-scientism sensitivities concerning the proximity between social relations, analytical relations, and ethnography. Mead's art is one of extraordinary clarity, giving hard edges to what it depicts. When the three anthropologists met up in Kankanamun, they did so acting with a number of others in mind. Blackberry Winter recalls as ‘compass points’.Less
This chapter describes the famous occasion when three anthropologists met up on the Sepik River in 1932/3 – and which infamously led to Margaret Mead eventually leaving Reo Fortune for Gregory Bateson. It also looks as much to the anthropologists as to their ethnographies to suggest that a view of one is available in the view of the other. The chapter furthermore presents an interest in how Stocking makes economy of exposition – just ‘one sentence’ – speak so much, and in what he does not need to say; whereas saying it any other way involves a long story to make the same point. Additionally, it intends to use the events instead to look at the commentary and contemporary practices in order to explore continuities in anthropological quasi-scientism sensitivities concerning the proximity between social relations, analytical relations, and ethnography. Mead's art is one of extraordinary clarity, giving hard edges to what it depicts. When the three anthropologists met up in Kankanamun, they did so acting with a number of others in mind. Blackberry Winter recalls as ‘compass points’.
Nathaniel Brennan
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780520291508
- eISBN:
- 9780520965263
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520291508.003.0008
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter, by Nathaniel Brennan, discusses the efforts of the Museum of Modern Art Film Library to make use of captured enemy motion pictures on behalf of the federal government’s wartime ...
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This chapter, by Nathaniel Brennan, discusses the efforts of the Museum of Modern Art Film Library to make use of captured enemy motion pictures on behalf of the federal government’s wartime intelligence programs during World War II. While the chapter presents an overview of the film library’s governmental intelligence work, ranging from matters of storage to the challenges of training analysts, the central case study examines the work of British anthropologist Gregory Bateson, whose work at the film library consisted of trying to define an objective approach to the study of culture through cinema and the preparation of a test film that would instruct American soldiers about the peculiarities of the German character. Although Bateson’s plans did not materialize, the efforts of Margaret Mead to adapt Bateson’s anthropological film methodology for the Cold War nonetheless influenced the development of postwar film studies and the analysis of national cinemas.Less
This chapter, by Nathaniel Brennan, discusses the efforts of the Museum of Modern Art Film Library to make use of captured enemy motion pictures on behalf of the federal government’s wartime intelligence programs during World War II. While the chapter presents an overview of the film library’s governmental intelligence work, ranging from matters of storage to the challenges of training analysts, the central case study examines the work of British anthropologist Gregory Bateson, whose work at the film library consisted of trying to define an objective approach to the study of culture through cinema and the preparation of a test film that would instruct American soldiers about the peculiarities of the German character. Although Bateson’s plans did not materialize, the efforts of Margaret Mead to adapt Bateson’s anthropological film methodology for the Cold War nonetheless influenced the development of postwar film studies and the analysis of national cinemas.
Deborah Weinstein
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801451416
- eISBN:
- 9780801468155
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801451416.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter illustrates how several clinicians became interested in family pathology through their research and clinical efforts related to schizophrenia. It focuses on a research project that was ...
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This chapter illustrates how several clinicians became interested in family pathology through their research and clinical efforts related to schizophrenia. It focuses on a research project that was organized by anthropologist Gregory Bateson in Palo Alto in 1952. This project discusses the historical nexus of schizophrenia, communication, and the family through a close analysis of the research group's development of the theory of the double bind. The chapter shows how the family came to be understood as a system by examining the role of cybernetics in shaping family therapists' understanding of schizophrenia and family processes. Family therapists relied on a systems framework to justify their therapeutic interventions, as well as to theorize their own relationship as therapists to their patients.Less
This chapter illustrates how several clinicians became interested in family pathology through their research and clinical efforts related to schizophrenia. It focuses on a research project that was organized by anthropologist Gregory Bateson in Palo Alto in 1952. This project discusses the historical nexus of schizophrenia, communication, and the family through a close analysis of the research group's development of the theory of the double bind. The chapter shows how the family came to be understood as a system by examining the role of cybernetics in shaping family therapists' understanding of schizophrenia and family processes. Family therapists relied on a systems framework to justify their therapeutic interventions, as well as to theorize their own relationship as therapists to their patients.
Montgomery McFate
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- June 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190680176
- eISBN:
- 9780190943059
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190680176.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, Conflict Politics and Policy
Gregory Bateson was an anthropologist who conducted fieldwork in New Guinea; worked for the OSS; introduced the concept of cybernetics into social science; developed the double bind theory of ...
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Gregory Bateson was an anthropologist who conducted fieldwork in New Guinea; worked for the OSS; introduced the concept of cybernetics into social science; developed the double bind theory of schizophrenia; and was a figure in the 1970s California counterculture. What can we learn from the life and legacy of Gregory Bateson with relevance to information operations? This chapter suggests how three of Bateson’s concepts might be employed. The first concept discussed is Bateson’s idea of the premise, cultural ‘facts’ considered to be true and axiomatic for members of a culture that weave together to create a coherent, intrinsic logic. The second concept with applicability to information operations is Bateson’s concept of schismogenesis, the patterns inherent in a social system that produce either equilibrium or disequilibrium and which, Bateson believed, could be manipulated to produce intended effects. The third and final concept considered in this chapter is the frame, a heuristic mechanism for organizing experience and guiding action that affects how we understand the world and how the world understands us.Less
Gregory Bateson was an anthropologist who conducted fieldwork in New Guinea; worked for the OSS; introduced the concept of cybernetics into social science; developed the double bind theory of schizophrenia; and was a figure in the 1970s California counterculture. What can we learn from the life and legacy of Gregory Bateson with relevance to information operations? This chapter suggests how three of Bateson’s concepts might be employed. The first concept discussed is Bateson’s idea of the premise, cultural ‘facts’ considered to be true and axiomatic for members of a culture that weave together to create a coherent, intrinsic logic. The second concept with applicability to information operations is Bateson’s concept of schismogenesis, the patterns inherent in a social system that produce either equilibrium or disequilibrium and which, Bateson believed, could be manipulated to produce intended effects. The third and final concept considered in this chapter is the frame, a heuristic mechanism for organizing experience and guiding action that affects how we understand the world and how the world understands us.
Anthony Chaney
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469631738
- eISBN:
- 9781469631752
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469631738.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Environmental History
The introduction claims that ecological consciousness and its sensitivity to environmental crisis--called an apocalyptic encounter--is the foremost intellectual experience of the post-World War II ...
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The introduction claims that ecological consciousness and its sensitivity to environmental crisis--called an apocalyptic encounter--is the foremost intellectual experience of the post-World War II period. Gregory Bateson's double-bind concept distilled ecological thought's challenge to modern perception and human instrumentality. Bateson's extension of the double-bind concept from the psychiatric clinic to human-environmental relations is proposed as a vehicle to better grasp the change ecological consciousness calls for. This argument is placed in two contexts: the broad context of modern disenchantment, and the narrower 1960s context of the debate over the nature of revolution. The first involves postmodern transformations broadly described as the cognitive revolution, complexity studies, and the science of interrelatedness. Bateson drew on science's traditions in natural history to build on the communication theory, information theory, and systems theory pioneered at the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics. The second context involves Bateson's appearance at the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation in London in 1967, where he introduced a counterculture audience to the greenhouse effect and the prospect of climate change. A historical examination of ecological consciousness is defended as a way to approach the emotional force field surrounding the topic of environmental deterioration and global warming.Less
The introduction claims that ecological consciousness and its sensitivity to environmental crisis--called an apocalyptic encounter--is the foremost intellectual experience of the post-World War II period. Gregory Bateson's double-bind concept distilled ecological thought's challenge to modern perception and human instrumentality. Bateson's extension of the double-bind concept from the psychiatric clinic to human-environmental relations is proposed as a vehicle to better grasp the change ecological consciousness calls for. This argument is placed in two contexts: the broad context of modern disenchantment, and the narrower 1960s context of the debate over the nature of revolution. The first involves postmodern transformations broadly described as the cognitive revolution, complexity studies, and the science of interrelatedness. Bateson drew on science's traditions in natural history to build on the communication theory, information theory, and systems theory pioneered at the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics. The second context involves Bateson's appearance at the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation in London in 1967, where he introduced a counterculture audience to the greenhouse effect and the prospect of climate change. A historical examination of ecological consciousness is defended as a way to approach the emotional force field surrounding the topic of environmental deterioration and global warming.
Anthony Chaney
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469631738
- eISBN:
- 9781469631752
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469631738.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, Environmental History
This chapter is set at the 1967 Congress for the Dialectics of Liberation, held over ten days in July in London. Drawing on transcripts and film of the event, the chapter presents a radical movement ...
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This chapter is set at the 1967 Congress for the Dialectics of Liberation, held over ten days in July in London. Drawing on transcripts and film of the event, the chapter presents a radical movement roiled by budding radicalisms: identity politics, second wave feminism, and an increasing commitment to militancy–all demonstrated in Stokely Carmichael’s divisive Congress appearances, both alone and on a panel with R. D. Laing, Emmett Grogan, and Allen Ginsberg. Amid this agitation, Gregory Bateson offered his synthesis of systems theory, cybernetics, and the ecology of mind. His speech is carefully explicated and annotated with Bateson's recent readings of T. H. White, Philip Wylie's The Magic Animal, and Irish myth. Bateson aligned with radical opinion in its critique of modernization, but it took that critique beyond the enduring problems of human aggression, political oppression, and psychic alienation, and into a more fundamental analysis of the instrumentalism at the heart of the modern worldview. Challenged by audience members over systems thinking as quietist and reactionary, Bateson defended his approach by explaining the greenhouse effect and the prospect of global warming/climate change. This was perhaps the first exposure of such concepts to a lay audience.Less
This chapter is set at the 1967 Congress for the Dialectics of Liberation, held over ten days in July in London. Drawing on transcripts and film of the event, the chapter presents a radical movement roiled by budding radicalisms: identity politics, second wave feminism, and an increasing commitment to militancy–all demonstrated in Stokely Carmichael’s divisive Congress appearances, both alone and on a panel with R. D. Laing, Emmett Grogan, and Allen Ginsberg. Amid this agitation, Gregory Bateson offered his synthesis of systems theory, cybernetics, and the ecology of mind. His speech is carefully explicated and annotated with Bateson's recent readings of T. H. White, Philip Wylie's The Magic Animal, and Irish myth. Bateson aligned with radical opinion in its critique of modernization, but it took that critique beyond the enduring problems of human aggression, political oppression, and psychic alienation, and into a more fundamental analysis of the instrumentalism at the heart of the modern worldview. Challenged by audience members over systems thinking as quietist and reactionary, Bateson defended his approach by explaining the greenhouse effect and the prospect of global warming/climate change. This was perhaps the first exposure of such concepts to a lay audience.
Anthony Chaney
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469631738
- eISBN:
- 9781469631752
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469631738.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Environmental History
The anthropologist Gregory Bateson has been called a lost giant of twentieth-century thought. In the years following World War II, Bateson was among the group of mathematicians, engineers, and social ...
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The anthropologist Gregory Bateson has been called a lost giant of twentieth-century thought. In the years following World War II, Bateson was among the group of mathematicians, engineers, and social scientists who laid the theoretical foundations of the information age. In Palo Alto in 1956, he introduced the double-bind theory of schizophrenia. By the sixties, he was in Hawaii studying dolphin communication. Bateson’s discipline hopping made established experts wary, but he found an audience open to his ideas in a generation of rebellious youth. To a gathering of counterculturalists and revolutionaries in 1967 London, Bateson was the first to warn of a “greenhouse effect” that could lead to runaway climate change.
Blending intellectual biography with an ambitious reappraisal of the 1960s, Anthony Chaney uses Bateson’s life and work to explore the idea that a postmodern ecological consciousness is the true legacy of the decade. Surrounded by voices calling for liberation of all kinds, Bateson spoke of limitation and dependence. But he also offered an affirming new picture of human beings and their place in the world—as ecologies knit together in a fabric of meaning that, said Bateson, “we might as well call Mind.”Less
The anthropologist Gregory Bateson has been called a lost giant of twentieth-century thought. In the years following World War II, Bateson was among the group of mathematicians, engineers, and social scientists who laid the theoretical foundations of the information age. In Palo Alto in 1956, he introduced the double-bind theory of schizophrenia. By the sixties, he was in Hawaii studying dolphin communication. Bateson’s discipline hopping made established experts wary, but he found an audience open to his ideas in a generation of rebellious youth. To a gathering of counterculturalists and revolutionaries in 1967 London, Bateson was the first to warn of a “greenhouse effect” that could lead to runaway climate change.
Blending intellectual biography with an ambitious reappraisal of the 1960s, Anthony Chaney uses Bateson’s life and work to explore the idea that a postmodern ecological consciousness is the true legacy of the decade. Surrounded by voices calling for liberation of all kinds, Bateson spoke of limitation and dependence. But he also offered an affirming new picture of human beings and their place in the world—as ecologies knit together in a fabric of meaning that, said Bateson, “we might as well call Mind.”
Anthony Chaney
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469631738
- eISBN:
- 9781469631752
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469631738.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Environmental History
This chapter investigates how double-bind theory was received by the psychiatric community with respect to contested views of the etiology and treatment of schizophrenia. A moral model of ...
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This chapter investigates how double-bind theory was received by the psychiatric community with respect to contested views of the etiology and treatment of schizophrenia. A moral model of schizophrenia is contrasted with a medical model of an earlier, more rigorously defined dementia praecox. The treatment of schizophrenics in the United States, especially during and after the world wars, is described as pragmatic and eclectic. The double-bind theory's environmental, biological, interactive model of the disease was met with hope among clinicians and helped shape new treatments such as group therapy and family therapy. As the double-bind group continued its work, Gregory Bateson was conflicted with his research team over fundamental matters of science: he recommended an approach that focused on pattern and relationship; they, more conventionally, focused on substance and measurement. His collaboration with Frieda Fromm-Reichmann lead to the Natural History of an Interview research project. It also took Bateson further from clinical work and toward research with octopi and the editing of the journals of an early 19th-century schizophrenic, later published as Perceval's Narrative.Less
This chapter investigates how double-bind theory was received by the psychiatric community with respect to contested views of the etiology and treatment of schizophrenia. A moral model of schizophrenia is contrasted with a medical model of an earlier, more rigorously defined dementia praecox. The treatment of schizophrenics in the United States, especially during and after the world wars, is described as pragmatic and eclectic. The double-bind theory's environmental, biological, interactive model of the disease was met with hope among clinicians and helped shape new treatments such as group therapy and family therapy. As the double-bind group continued its work, Gregory Bateson was conflicted with his research team over fundamental matters of science: he recommended an approach that focused on pattern and relationship; they, more conventionally, focused on substance and measurement. His collaboration with Frieda Fromm-Reichmann lead to the Natural History of an Interview research project. It also took Bateson further from clinical work and toward research with octopi and the editing of the journals of an early 19th-century schizophrenic, later published as Perceval's Narrative.
Anthony Chaney
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469631738
- eISBN:
- 9781469631752
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469631738.003.0013
- Subject:
- History, Environmental History
In this chapter, Allen Ginsberg's reaction to Gregory Bateson and the greenhouse effect is revisited and amplified as an instance of apocalyptic encounter, a central experience of the ecological ...
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In this chapter, Allen Ginsberg's reaction to Gregory Bateson and the greenhouse effect is revisited and amplified as an instance of apocalyptic encounter, a central experience of the ecological consciousness and the prospect of ecocatastrophe. That amplification includes the creation of his much-anthologized poem, "Wales Visitation." The trajectory of Bateson's career as a scientist, writer, and public intellectual after 1967 is sketched. This includes a well-documented conference he facilitated in 1968 and the publication of Steps to an Ecology of Mind in 1972. The year following the events described in this book--1968--is widely recognized as a turning point toward increasing violence and backlash, and the rapid collapse of the liberal consensus that had seen the United States through the most turbulent years of the twentieth century. The epilogue invites the reader to regard that turning point in terms of the emergent ecological consciousness the book has placed in context. The epilogue, too, leaves Bateson at a turning point. In contrast to the other principle figures at the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation, whose public influence peaked in 1967, Bateson's time as a public intellectual had just begun.Less
In this chapter, Allen Ginsberg's reaction to Gregory Bateson and the greenhouse effect is revisited and amplified as an instance of apocalyptic encounter, a central experience of the ecological consciousness and the prospect of ecocatastrophe. That amplification includes the creation of his much-anthologized poem, "Wales Visitation." The trajectory of Bateson's career as a scientist, writer, and public intellectual after 1967 is sketched. This includes a well-documented conference he facilitated in 1968 and the publication of Steps to an Ecology of Mind in 1972. The year following the events described in this book--1968--is widely recognized as a turning point toward increasing violence and backlash, and the rapid collapse of the liberal consensus that had seen the United States through the most turbulent years of the twentieth century. The epilogue invites the reader to regard that turning point in terms of the emergent ecological consciousness the book has placed in context. The epilogue, too, leaves Bateson at a turning point. In contrast to the other principle figures at the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation, whose public influence peaked in 1967, Bateson's time as a public intellectual had just begun.
Anthony Chaney
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469631738
- eISBN:
- 9781469631752
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469631738.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, Environmental History
This chapter interrogates Gregory Bateson's message to the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation in particular, and his ecology of mind in general, on the question of defeatism and despair. If ...
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This chapter interrogates Gregory Bateson's message to the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation in particular, and his ecology of mind in general, on the question of defeatism and despair. If human partiality and purposive action introduce errors into the larger system, and if at scale, these errors are systemically destructive, how are human beings to respond to the social and environmental problems they face? Transcripts from Bateson's final appearance on a congress panel dramatize these questions. Actions and answers offered by Stokely Carmichael, R. D. Laing, and Emmett Grogan, the congress's most discussed participants, are examined. These figures took the position that solutions can be found in the ancient call for individual heroism. Bateson, in contrast, called for an indirect, non-purposeful class of actions that generate love of systemic integrity. These actions include the practices of art, ritual, non-utilitarian science, and "the best of religion." These practices may provide pathways to systemic correction. Because they come from a position of dependence, they call for trust. The debate between Reinhold Niebuhr and Richard Niebuhr is revisited concerning the moral significance of human agency in order to underscore Bateson's argument for the immanence of mind in nature.Less
This chapter interrogates Gregory Bateson's message to the Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation in particular, and his ecology of mind in general, on the question of defeatism and despair. If human partiality and purposive action introduce errors into the larger system, and if at scale, these errors are systemically destructive, how are human beings to respond to the social and environmental problems they face? Transcripts from Bateson's final appearance on a congress panel dramatize these questions. Actions and answers offered by Stokely Carmichael, R. D. Laing, and Emmett Grogan, the congress's most discussed participants, are examined. These figures took the position that solutions can be found in the ancient call for individual heroism. Bateson, in contrast, called for an indirect, non-purposeful class of actions that generate love of systemic integrity. These actions include the practices of art, ritual, non-utilitarian science, and "the best of religion." These practices may provide pathways to systemic correction. Because they come from a position of dependence, they call for trust. The debate between Reinhold Niebuhr and Richard Niebuhr is revisited concerning the moral significance of human agency in order to underscore Bateson's argument for the immanence of mind in nature.
Edith Wyschogrod
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823226061
- eISBN:
- 9780823235148
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823226061.003.0016
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter shows that the double bind, the claim that no matter what one does one cannot win, not only plays a role in determining the development of schizophrenia, as ...
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This chapter shows that the double bind, the claim that no matter what one does one cannot win, not only plays a role in determining the development of schizophrenia, as Gregory Bateson maintains, but is intrinsic to the emergence of the moral life. It views the double bind as a prior condition for deciding that a contemplated act is evil and for the sense of obligation that enters into the avoidance or pursuit of ends that are deemed to be evil. It argues further that double binds arise not only in individual but also in sociohistorical contexts in which otherness is in conflict with collective rules. The route taken in support of these claims will, of necessity, be circuitous. It begins with Emmanuel Levinas's premise that ethics originates in alterity, in the otherness of the other person, whose very existence, as it impinges upon the self, is experienced as a proscription against exerting violence against that other.Less
This chapter shows that the double bind, the claim that no matter what one does one cannot win, not only plays a role in determining the development of schizophrenia, as Gregory Bateson maintains, but is intrinsic to the emergence of the moral life. It views the double bind as a prior condition for deciding that a contemplated act is evil and for the sense of obligation that enters into the avoidance or pursuit of ends that are deemed to be evil. It argues further that double binds arise not only in individual but also in sociohistorical contexts in which otherness is in conflict with collective rules. The route taken in support of these claims will, of necessity, be circuitous. It begins with Emmanuel Levinas's premise that ethics originates in alterity, in the otherness of the other person, whose very existence, as it impinges upon the self, is experienced as a proscription against exerting violence against that other.
Bruce Clarke
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816691005
- eISBN:
- 9781452949406
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816691005.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter analyzes the theory of metabiotic autopoietic systems back to biotic autopoiesis and its subsequent developments, and towards the Gaia hypothesis. The theories of cognition from the ...
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This chapter analyzes the theory of metabiotic autopoietic systems back to biotic autopoiesis and its subsequent developments, and towards the Gaia hypothesis. The theories of cognition from the previous chapters are rooted in the cellular sentience proposed by biological systems theory and validated by contemporary molecular biology and microbial ecology, all of which resulted in a corresponding conception of the biosphere. The chapter begins with tracing the history of the word ecology, citing Gregory Bateson’s collection of professional papers, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, as an influential work of the natural concept towards “an ecology of ideas.” Felix Guattari formulated his own ecological theory in The Three Ecologies, which can be juxtaposed to that of Bateson’s. The chapter explores Bruno Latour’s research on the film Avatar and its application of Gaian science, aka Earth system science.Less
This chapter analyzes the theory of metabiotic autopoietic systems back to biotic autopoiesis and its subsequent developments, and towards the Gaia hypothesis. The theories of cognition from the previous chapters are rooted in the cellular sentience proposed by biological systems theory and validated by contemporary molecular biology and microbial ecology, all of which resulted in a corresponding conception of the biosphere. The chapter begins with tracing the history of the word ecology, citing Gregory Bateson’s collection of professional papers, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, as an influential work of the natural concept towards “an ecology of ideas.” Felix Guattari formulated his own ecological theory in The Three Ecologies, which can be juxtaposed to that of Bateson’s. The chapter explores Bruno Latour’s research on the film Avatar and its application of Gaian science, aka Earth system science.
Henry Sussman
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823232833
- eISBN:
- 9780823241170
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823232833.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Amid radical transformation and rapid mutation in the nature, transmission, and deployment of information and communications, this book offers a status report and theoretically nuanced update on the ...
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Amid radical transformation and rapid mutation in the nature, transmission, and deployment of information and communications, this book offers a status report and theoretically nuanced update on the traditions and medium of the book. What, it asks, are the book's current prospects? The study highlights the most radical experiments in the book's history as trials in what the author terms the Prevailing Operating System at play within the fields of knowledge, art, critique, and science. The investigations of modern systems theory, as exemplified by Gregory Bateson, Anthony Wilden, and Niklas Luhmann, turn out to be inseparable from theoretically astute inquiry into the nature of the book. The author's primary examples of such radical experiments with the history of the book are Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book (both the text and Peter Greenaway's screen adaptation), Stéphane Mallarmé's Un coup de des jamais n'abolira le hasard, Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project, Jacques Derrida's Glas, Maurice Blanchot's Death Sentence, and Franz Kafka's enduring legacy within the world of the graphic novel. In the author's hands, close reading of these and related works renders definitive proof of the book's persistence and vitality. The book medium, with its inbuilt format and program, continues, he argues, to supply the tablet or screen for cultural notation. The perennial crisis in which the book seems to languish is in fact an occasion for readers to realize fully their role as textual producers, to experience the full range of liberty in expression and articulation embedded in the irreducibly bookish process of textual display.Less
Amid radical transformation and rapid mutation in the nature, transmission, and deployment of information and communications, this book offers a status report and theoretically nuanced update on the traditions and medium of the book. What, it asks, are the book's current prospects? The study highlights the most radical experiments in the book's history as trials in what the author terms the Prevailing Operating System at play within the fields of knowledge, art, critique, and science. The investigations of modern systems theory, as exemplified by Gregory Bateson, Anthony Wilden, and Niklas Luhmann, turn out to be inseparable from theoretically astute inquiry into the nature of the book. The author's primary examples of such radical experiments with the history of the book are Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book (both the text and Peter Greenaway's screen adaptation), Stéphane Mallarmé's Un coup de des jamais n'abolira le hasard, Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project, Jacques Derrida's Glas, Maurice Blanchot's Death Sentence, and Franz Kafka's enduring legacy within the world of the graphic novel. In the author's hands, close reading of these and related works renders definitive proof of the book's persistence and vitality. The book medium, with its inbuilt format and program, continues, he argues, to supply the tablet or screen for cultural notation. The perennial crisis in which the book seems to languish is in fact an occasion for readers to realize fully their role as textual producers, to experience the full range of liberty in expression and articulation embedded in the irreducibly bookish process of textual display.
Michael E. Staub
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226771472
- eISBN:
- 9780226771496
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226771496.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
In his first book, The Divided Self: A Study in Sanity and Madness (1960), Scottish psychoanalyst Ronald D. Laing presents a case study of a psychotic and concludes that the family colluded to kill ...
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In his first book, The Divided Self: A Study in Sanity and Madness (1960), Scottish psychoanalyst Ronald D. Laing presents a case study of a psychotic and concludes that the family colluded to kill the patient’s sense of selfhood. There are four interwoven assumptions in the patient’s story: the social rather than biological etiology of madness, the malleability of the human mind, the suggestion that shamming and inauthenticity poison human relations, and the idea of a sick society. The emergence of family-focused theories to explain the onset of schizophrenia came at a time when a biological etiology for mental illness had yet to be discovered. This chapter examines intrafamilial investigations into the etiology of schizophrenia, focusing on the work of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann and her concept of the “schizophrenogenic mother”; Lyman C. Wynne’s experiments in which he combined psychotherapy of a schizophrenic patient with twice-weekly meetings with parents; and Gregory Bateson’s “double bind” theory.Less
In his first book, The Divided Self: A Study in Sanity and Madness (1960), Scottish psychoanalyst Ronald D. Laing presents a case study of a psychotic and concludes that the family colluded to kill the patient’s sense of selfhood. There are four interwoven assumptions in the patient’s story: the social rather than biological etiology of madness, the malleability of the human mind, the suggestion that shamming and inauthenticity poison human relations, and the idea of a sick society. The emergence of family-focused theories to explain the onset of schizophrenia came at a time when a biological etiology for mental illness had yet to be discovered. This chapter examines intrafamilial investigations into the etiology of schizophrenia, focusing on the work of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann and her concept of the “schizophrenogenic mother”; Lyman C. Wynne’s experiments in which he combined psychotherapy of a schizophrenic patient with twice-weekly meetings with parents; and Gregory Bateson’s “double bind” theory.
Ryan White
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231171007
- eISBN:
- 9780231539593
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231171007.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
In many respects the “thesis statement” of the book as a whole, this chapter attempts to theorize the meaning of paradoxical statements in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Sanders ...
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In many respects the “thesis statement” of the book as a whole, this chapter attempts to theorize the meaning of paradoxical statements in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Sanders Peirce. Utilizing and extending Gregory Bateson’s theory of communication, this essay observes a distinction between content and form which then entails a “second-order” observation as articulated in the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann. Form is theorized as radical discontinuity, a concept without identity, the “double consciousness.” This thesis not only allows Emerson and Peirce to be drawn into the purview of systems theory, but it also discovers an unheralded “posthumanist” tradition in American thought.Less
In many respects the “thesis statement” of the book as a whole, this chapter attempts to theorize the meaning of paradoxical statements in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Sanders Peirce. Utilizing and extending Gregory Bateson’s theory of communication, this essay observes a distinction between content and form which then entails a “second-order” observation as articulated in the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann. Form is theorized as radical discontinuity, a concept without identity, the “double consciousness.” This thesis not only allows Emerson and Peirce to be drawn into the purview of systems theory, but it also discovers an unheralded “posthumanist” tradition in American thought.
Harry Berger
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823257478
- eISBN:
- 9780823261550
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823257478.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter illustrates how the categorization of metaphor and metonymy as two fundamental tropes arises from the distinction between the literal and figurative uses of language. In this ...
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This chapter illustrates how the categorization of metaphor and metonymy as two fundamental tropes arises from the distinction between the literal and figurative uses of language. In this distinction, metonymy is a detour from literal usage but ultimately returns to it; whereas metaphor is a more permanent detour. The chapter then tackles the concept of redundancy in relation to the language of cybernetics. Max Black states that receiving a correct message results in the reduction of uncertainty. Redundancy is a repetition for emphasis that is intended to ensure the accuracy of meaning, increase comprehension, and lessen the probability of wrong guessing. Gregory Bateson defines redundancy as the patterning of particular events within a larger aggregate of events, a relationship between whole and part, much like how the metonymizing process takes place.Less
This chapter illustrates how the categorization of metaphor and metonymy as two fundamental tropes arises from the distinction between the literal and figurative uses of language. In this distinction, metonymy is a detour from literal usage but ultimately returns to it; whereas metaphor is a more permanent detour. The chapter then tackles the concept of redundancy in relation to the language of cybernetics. Max Black states that receiving a correct message results in the reduction of uncertainty. Redundancy is a repetition for emphasis that is intended to ensure the accuracy of meaning, increase comprehension, and lessen the probability of wrong guessing. Gregory Bateson defines redundancy as the patterning of particular events within a larger aggregate of events, a relationship between whole and part, much like how the metonymizing process takes place.
Adam B. Seligman and Robert P. Weller
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- April 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190888718
- eISBN:
- 9780190888749
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190888718.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology, Religion and Society
Chapter 6 analyzes the workings of memory and metaphor as Jewish and Christian civilizational tropes. It focuses on the role of blood in both traditions to explicate the different understandings of ...
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Chapter 6 analyzes the workings of memory and metaphor as Jewish and Christian civilizational tropes. It focuses on the role of blood in both traditions to explicate the different understandings of past, present, and future within Judaism and Christianity. The analysis ranges from ancient to modern times and from religiously constituted communities to membership in the modern nation-state. The chapter ends with an exploration of the particular “double bind” aspect of Judeo-Christian relations that has plagued both right from their inception. This double bind is just one example of a much broader problem of living with differences that cannot be simply reconciled, but which we can learn to accept by recognizing the relevance of the grounds of memory, mimesis, and metaphor.Less
Chapter 6 analyzes the workings of memory and metaphor as Jewish and Christian civilizational tropes. It focuses on the role of blood in both traditions to explicate the different understandings of past, present, and future within Judaism and Christianity. The analysis ranges from ancient to modern times and from religiously constituted communities to membership in the modern nation-state. The chapter ends with an exploration of the particular “double bind” aspect of Judeo-Christian relations that has plagued both right from their inception. This double bind is just one example of a much broader problem of living with differences that cannot be simply reconciled, but which we can learn to accept by recognizing the relevance of the grounds of memory, mimesis, and metaphor.
