According to Charlton (2008), whose overview of Bateson’s work serves as a useful companion to our sojourn, it is precisely this “refusal to stay within the bounds of single disciplines” (ibid.: 1) that explains why Bateson’s work remains largely neglected to this day, albeit its significant legacy within certain spheres of the natural and social sciences and (post)humanities. Bateson’s insistence that only a different, better, epistemology can tackle the world’s deepening crises by correcting the disastrous “self-conscious purposiveness” that guides much of today’s destructive thinking and behavior, is one that speaks directly to the reading group’s opening provocation of the Anthropocene not only as a new geological epoch, but as a new epoch of thought.Īnthropologist, social scientist, linguist, psychologist, ecologist, visual anthropologist, semiotician, cyberneticist, philosopher, naturalist, poet, Bateson is clearly one of the most original and intellectually promiscuous thinkers of our time. In doing so, we consider his claim that, “the major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.” Arguably, one could switch the two verbs in Bateson’s provocation and reflect his view of the living world as one that is relational in its constitution and mental in its attributions. This term is dedicated to the work and ideas of Gregory Bateson (1904-1980).
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