Gregory Bateson on Relational Communication: From Octopuses to Nations

This book develops Gregory Bateson's ideas regarding "communication about relationship" in animals and human beings, and even nations. It bases itself on Bateson's theory of relational communication, as he described it in the zoosemiotics of octopus, mammals, birds, and human beings. This theory includes, for example, the roles of metaphor, play, analog and digital communication, metacommunication, and Laws of Form. It is organized around a letter from Gregory Bateson to his fellow cybernetic thinker Warren McCulloch at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In this letter Bateson argued that what we would today call zoosemiotics, including Bateson's own (previously unpublished) octopus research, should be made a basis for understanding the relationship between the two blocs of the Cold War. Accordingly the book shows how Bateson understood interactive processes in the biosemiotics of conflict and peacemaking, which are analyzed using examples from recent animal studies, from primate studies, and from cultural anthropology. The Missile Crisis itself is described in terms of Bateson's critique of game theory which he felt should be modified by an understanding of the zoosemiotics of relational communication.

The book also includes a previously unpublished piece by Gregory Bateson on wolf behavior and metaphor/ abduction.

Auteur
Phillip Guddemi is by training a cultural anthropologist and longtime student of cybernetics, biosemiotics, and Gregory Bateson's work. He was fortunate enough to take classes from Bateson as an undergraduate. (As an anthropologist, he did fieldwork in Papua New Guinea as Gregory Bateson had done decades before.) He is the President of the Bateson Idea Group which works with the Gregory Bateson estate to further the exploration of Gregory Bateson's ideas and to administer his intellectual rights. He is also a Director of the International Bateson Institute, a nonprofit foundation for transcontextual research, inspired by three generations of Batesons, which examines the interactions within complex systems involving life.

Texte du rabat

This book develops Gregory Bateson's ideas regarding communication about relationship in animals and human beings, and even nations. It bases itself on Bateson's theory of relational communication, as he described it in the zoosemiotics of octopus, mammals, birds, and human beings. This theory includes, for example, the roles of metaphor, play, analog and digital communication, metacommunication, and Laws of Form. It is organized around a letter from Gregory Bateson to his fellow cybernetic thinker Warren McCulloch at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In this letter Bateson argued that what we would today call zoosemiotics, including Bateson's own (previously unpublished) octopus research, should be made a basis for understanding the relationship between the two blocs of the Cold War. Accordingly the book shows how Bateson understood interactive processes in the biosemiotics of conflict and peacemaking, which are analyzed using examples from recent animal studies, from primate studies, and from cultural anthropology. The Missile Crisis itself is described in terms of Bateson's critique of game theory which he felt should be modified by an understanding of the zoosemiotics of relational communication.

The book also includes a previously unpublished piece by Gregory Bateson on wolf behavior and metaphor/ abduction.

Contenu

1. The Carrier Wave, 0r the Mu Function: Bateson's Unique Contribution to the Understanding of the Analog and Nonverbal Registers of Animal and Human Communication

2. Negation and its Absence in the Context of Action Language

3. Nonhuman Relational Communication in Cats, Wolves, Dolphins, Octopus: Examples For Thinking Through the Concept

4. The Natural History of an Interview and the Infinite or Fractal Quality of Analog Information in Human Interaction

5. Play and Music as Forms of Relational Communication

6. Implications for the Concept of Double Bind in Psychological/Clinical Situations and Elsewhere

7. Implications for Human Action Writ Large, e.g. the Cuban Missile Crisis
8. Implications for Contemporary Theories of Autism