July 4, 1980

Gregory Bateson (May 9, 1904 to July 4, 1980) was an English anthropologist, in his early professional years. After decades of thinking independently, his last book Mind and Nature: A necessary unity (1979) addressed the necessity for new categories to explain overlooked but obvious empirical data.

He says in his last book, by way of summarizing his concerns:

The pattern which connects is a metapattern. It is a pattern of patterns. It is that metapattern which defines the vast generalization that, it is patterns which connect.

(I mention page numbers 20, and 130, in the 1980 paperback edition in case you want to check his italicization, which I did not capture.) Bateson found it necessary to rethink many basic issues which at one time were obvious but which have been obscured by positivism. or in his words: a "rigid epistemology." He had to rethink issues of objective and subjective and the result was his contributions to gestalt therapy and cybernetics. This involves focus on that area of overlap in the phenomena of life. Here is an example:


In front of me on the table is a sleeping cat. While I was dictating the last hundred words, the cat changed her position. She was sleeping on her right side, her head pointing more or less away from me, her ears in a postition that did not suggest to me alertness, eyes closed, front feet curled up -- a familiar arrangement of the body of a cat. While I spoke and, indeed, was watching the cat for behaviour, the head turned toward me, the eyes remained closed, respiration changed a little, the ears moved to a half alert position; and it appeared, rightly or wrongly, that the cat was now still asleep, but aware of my existence and aware, perhaps, that she was part of the dictated material. This increase of attention happened before the cat was mentioned, that is before I began to dictate the present paragraph. Now, with the cat fully mentioned, the head has gone down, the nose is between the front legs, the ears have stopped being alert. She has decided that her involvement in the conversation does not matter.



The cat and the man are interacting systems, influencing each the other as well as larger systems. The informative thing is the patterns they share and also make together. 

Gregory Bateson began his research in a era which forbid, in a very unscientific manner, certain topics, and he had to pursue basic questions through new studies: anthropology instead of philosophy for example, for the man in search of knowledge about his own species. He was so far ahead of his time that he has not been forgotten, for his genius was never recognized beyond a small circle. That should change.