Gregory Bateson – visionary, misunderstood and disregarded creator of steps to an ecology of mind

Abstract

This article reassesses Gregory Bateson (1904 – 1980), a biologist, anthropologist, cyberneticist and epistemologist and his most famous work Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972). The article introduces his main conceptual contribution to the development of cybernetic epistemology, an innovative transdisciplinary way of thinking and empirical inquiry into the culture of mutually co-dependent patterns of relationship between psychological, biological, social and ecological systems and their environment. Bateson's ideas in the Steps are contextualised against the time of its first publication and the first reviews of his book. Some of his original concepts which had significant influence and continue to have influence in the fields of psychiatry and psychotherapy as well as in other disciplines are briefly summarised – e.g. symmetrical and complementary schismogenesis, double bind, deutero-learning, in addition to the metalogue as a way of dialogue. The widely spread traces of Bateson’s ideas and his position (especially the number of citations) in the contemporary context of numerous social and natural sciences are explored. The reader is reminded of a contradiction between the high number of citations of Bateson's works in contrast to the low degree of concrete realisation of his ideas in systems psychotherapy. The article is concluded with an interpretation of Bateson as a predominantly misunderstood and disregarded though visionary thinker whose complex, holistic, developmental, networking perspective regarding the patterns of co-adaptation and co-evolution of life forms seems – in the light of a threat of ecological destruction - extremely up-to-date and necessary.