Steps to an Ecology of Mind


Steps to an Ecology of Mind is a collection of Gregory Bateson's short works over his long and varied career. Subject matter includes essays on anthropology, cybernetics, psychiatry, and epistemology. It was originally published by Ballantine Books in 1972.

Part I: Metalogues

The book begins with a series of metalogues, which take the form of conversations with his daughter Mary Catherine Bateson. The metalogues are mostly thought exercises with titles such as "What is an Instinct" and "How Much Do You Know." In the metalogues, the playful dialectic structure itself is closely related to the subject matter of the piece.
DEFINITION: A metalogue is a conversation about some problematic subject. This conversation should be such that not only do the participants discuss the problem but the structure of the conversation as a whole is also relevant to the same subject. Only some of the conversations here presented achieve this double format.
Notably, the history of evolutionary theory is inevitably a metalogue between man and nature, in which the creation and interaction of ideas must necessarily exemplify evolutionary process.

  • Why Do Things Get in a Muddle?
  • Why Do Frenchmen?
  • About Games and Being Serious
  • How Much Do You Know?
  • Why Do Things Have Outlines?
  • Why a Swan?
  • What Is an Instinct?

Part II: Form and Pattern in Anthropology

Part II is a collection of anthropological writings, many of which were written while he was married to Margaret Mead.

Part III: Form and Pathology in Relationship

Part III is devoted to the theme of "Form and Pathology in Relationships." His essay on alcoholism examines the alcoholic state of mind, and the methodology of Alcoholics Anonymous within the framework of the then-nascent field of cybernetics.
  • Social Planning and the Concept of Deutero-Learning was a "comment on Margaret Mead's article "The Comparative Study of Culture and the Purposive Cultivation of Democratic Values," 01942, Science, Philosophy and Religion, Second Symposium)
  • A Theory of Play and Fantasy
  • Epidemiology of a Schizophrenia
  • Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia
  • The Group Dynamics of Schizophrenia
  • Minimal Requirements for a Theory of Schizophrenia
  • Double Bind, 1969
  • The Logical Categories of Learning and Communication
  • The Cybernetics of "Self": A Theory of Alcoholism

Part IV: Biology and Evolution

  • On Empty-Headedness Among Biologists and State Boards of Education
  • The Role of Somatic Change in Evolution
  • Problems in Cetacean and Other Mammalian Communication
  • A Re-examination of "Bateson's Rule"

Part V: Epistemology and Ecology.

  • Cybernetic Explanation
  • Redundancy and Coding
  • Conscious Purpose Versus Nature
  • Effects of Conscious Purpose on Human Adaptation
  • Form, Substance, and Difference

Part VI: Crisis in the Ecology of Mind

  • From Versailles to Cybernetics
  • Pathologies of Epistemology
  • The Roots of Ecological Crisis
  • Ecology and Flexibility in Urban Civilization