Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904 – 4 July 1980) was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician, and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. His writings include Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972) and Mind and Nature (1979).
In Palo Alto, California, Bateson and his colleaguesJay Haley was in these days a librarian, John Weakland a chemical engineer, Donald Jackson a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, William Fry a sociologist. developed the double-bind theory of schizophrenia.
Bateson's interest in systems theory forms a thread running through his work. He was one of the original members of the core group of the Macy conferences in Cybernetics (1941–1960), and the later set on Group Processes (1954–1960), where he represented the social and behavioral sciences. He was interested in the relationship of these fields to epistemology. His association with the editor and author Stewart Brand helped widen his influence.
Early life and education Bateson was born in Grantchester in Cambridgeshire, England, on 9 May 1904. He was the third and youngest son of (Caroline) Beatrice Durham and the distinguished geneticist William Bateson. He was named Gregory after Gregor Mendel, the Austrian monk who founded the modern science of genetics.
The younger Bateson attended Charterhouse School from 1917 to 1921, obtained a Bachelor of Arts in biology at St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1925, and continued at Cambridge from 1927 to 1929.
According to Lipset (1982), Bateson's life was greatly affected by the death of his two brothers. John Bateson (1898–1918), the eldest of the three, was killed in World War I. Martin Bateson (1900–1922), the second brother, was then expected to follow in his father's footsteps as a scientist, but came into conflict with his father over his ambition to become a poet and playwright. The resulting stress, combined with a disappointment in love, resulted in Martin's public suicide by gunshot under the statue of Anteros in Piccadilly Circus on 22 April 1922, which was John's birthday. After this event, which transformed a private family tragedy into a public scandal, the parents' ambitious expectations fell on Gregory.
Career In 1928, Bateson lectured in linguistics at the University of Sydney. From 1931 to 1937, he was a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. He spent the years before World War II in the South Pacific in New Guinea and Bali doing anthropology.
In the 1940s, he helped extend systems theory and cybernetics to the social and behavioral sciences. Although initially reluctant to join the intelligence services, Bateson served in the OSS during World War II along with dozens of other anthropologists.Price, David H. (Dr.). "Gregory Bateson and the OSS: World War II and Bateson's Assessment of Applied Anthropology." currentconcerns.ch He was stationed in the same offices as Julia Child (then Julia McWilliams), Paul Cushing Child, and others. He spent much of the war designing 'black propaganda' radio broadcasts. He was deployed on covert operations in Burma and Thailand, and worked in China, India, and Ceylon as well. Bateson used his theory of schismogenesis to help foster discord among enemy fighters. He was upset by his wartime experience and disagreed with his wife over whether science should be applied to social planning or used only to foster understanding rather than action.
In Palo Alto, California, Bateson developed the double-bind theory, together with his non-colleagues Donald Jackson, Jay Haley and John H. Weakland, also known as the Bateson Project (1953–1963).
In 1956, he became a naturalised citizen of the United States.
Bateson was one of the original members of the core group of the Macy conferences in cybernetics (1941–1960), and the later set on Group Processes (1954–1960), where he represented the social and behavioral sciences.
In the 1970s, he taught at the Humanistic Psychology Institute in San Francisco, which was renamed the Saybrook University, and in 1972 joined the faculty of Kresge College at the University of California, Santa Cruz.Per the jacket copy of the first edition of Mind and Nature (1979)
In 1976, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. California Governor Jerry Brown appointed him to the Regents of the University of California, a position he held until his death, although he resigned from the Special Research Projects committee in 1979 in opposition to the university's work on nuclear weapons.
Bateson spent the last decade of his life developing a "meta-science" of epistemology to bring together the various early forms of systems theory developed in different fields of science.
Personal life From 1936 until 1950, he was married to American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead.NNDB, Gregory Bateson, Soylent Communications, 2007. He applied his knowledge to the war effort before moving to the United States.Encyclopædia Britannica (2007). "Gregory Bateson". Retrieved from Britannica Concise, 5 August 2007 Bateson and Mead had a daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson (1939–2021), who also became an anthropologist. Bateson separated from Mead in 1947, and they were divorced in 1950.To Cherish the Life of the World: Selected Letters of Margaret Mead. Margaret M. Caffey and Patricia A. Francis, eds. With foreword by Mary Catherine Bateson. New York. Basic Books. 2006. In 1951, he married Elizabeth "Betty" Sumner, the daughter of the Episcopalian Bishop of Oregon, Walter Taylor Sumner. They had a son, John Sumner Bateson (1951–2015), as well as twins who died shortly after birth in 1953. Bateson and Sumner were divorced in 1957, after which Bateson was married a third time, to therapist and social worker Lois Cammack (born 1928), in 1961. They had one daughter, Nora Bateson (born 1968).
Bateson was a lifelong atheist, as his family had been for several generations. He was a member of William Irwin Thompson's esoteric Lindisfarne Association.
Bateson died on July 4, 1980, at age 76, in the guest house of the San Francisco Zen Center.'Gregory Bateson: Old Men Ought to be Explorers' , Stephen Nachmanovitch, CoEvolution Quarterly, Fall 1982 The 2014 novel Euphoria by Lily King is a fictionalized account of Bateson's relationships with Mead and Reo Fortune in pre-WWII New Guinea.
Philosophy Where others might see a set of inexplicable details, Bateson perceived simple relationships. In "From Versailles to Cybernetics," Bateson argues that the history of the twentieth century can be perceived as the history of a malfunctioning relationship. In his view, the Treaty of Versailles exemplifies a whole pattern of human relationships based on betrayal and hate. He therefore claims that the Treaty of Versailles and the development of cybernetics—which for him represented the possibility of improved relationships—are the only two anthropologically important events of the twentieth century.
Work
New Guinea Bateson's beginning years as an anthropologist were spent floundering, lost without a specific objective in mind. He began in 1927 with a trip to New Guinea, spurred by his mentor A. C. Haddon. His goal, as suggested by Haddon, was to explore the effects of contact between the Sepik natives and whites. Unfortunately for Bateson, his time spent with the Baining of New Guinea was halted and difficult. The Baining were not particularly accommodating of his research, and he missed out on many communal activities. They were also not inclined to share their religious practices with him. He left the Baining frustrated. Next, he set out to study the Sulka, belonging to another native population of New Guinea. Although the Sulka were very different from the Baining and their culture was more easily observed, he felt their culture was dying, which left him dispirited and discouraged.
He experienced more success with the Iatmul people, an indigenous people living along New Guinea's Sepik River. The observations he made among the Iatmul people allowed him to develop his concept of schismogenesis. In his 1936 book Naven he defined the term, based on his Iatmul fieldwork, as "a process of differentiation in the norms of individual behaviour resulting from cumulative interaction between individuals" (p. 175). The book was named after the 'naven' rite, an honorific ceremony among the Iatmul, still continued today, that celebrates first-time cultural achievements. The ceremony entails behaviours that are otherwise forbidden in everyday social life. For example, men and women reverse and exaggerate gender roles; men dress in women's skirts, and women dress in men's attire and ornaments. Additionally, some women smear mud in the faces of other relatives, beat them with sticks, and hurl bawdy insults. Mothers may drop to the ground so their celebrated 'child' walks over them. And during a male rite, a mother's brother may slide his buttocks down the leg of his honoured sister's son, a complex gesture of masculine birthing, pride, and insult, rarely performed before women, that brings the honoured sister's son to tears.Silverman, Eric Kline (2001) Masculinity, Motherhood and Mockery: Psychoanalyzing Culture and the Iatmul Naven Rite in New Guinea. University of Michigan Press Bateson suggested the influence of a circular system of causation, and proposed that women watched:
for the spectacular performances of the men, and there can be no reasonable doubt that the presence of an audience is a very important factor in shaping the men's behavior. In fact, it is probable that the men are more exhibitionistic because the women admire their performances. Conversely, there can be no doubt that the spectacular behavior is a stimulus which summons the audience together, promoting in the women the appropriate … behavior.
In short, the behaviour of person X affects person Y, and the reaction of person Y to person X's behaviour will then affect person X's behaviour, which in turn will affect person Y, and so on. Bateson called this the "vicious circle." He then discerned two models of schismogenesis: symmetrical and complementary. Symmetrical relationships are those in which the two parties are equals, competitors, such as in sports. Complementary relationships feature an unequal balance, such as dominance-submission (parent-child), or exhibitionism-spectatorship (performer-audience). Bateson's experiences with the Iatmul led him to publish a book in 1936 titled Naven: A Survey of the Problems Suggested by a Composite Picture of the Culture of a New Guinea Tribe Drawn from Three Points of View (Cambridge University Press). The book proved to be a watershed in anthropology and modern social science.Marcus, George (1985) A Timely Rereading of Naven: Gregory Bateson as Oracular Essayist. Raritan 12:66–82.
Until Bateson published Naven, most anthropologists assumed a realist approach to studying culture, in which one simply described social reality. Bateson's book argued that this approach was naive, since an anthropologist's account of a culture was always and fundamentally shaped by whatever theory the anthropologist employed to define and analyse the data. To think otherwise, stated Bateson, was to be guilty of what Alfred North Whitehead called the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness." There was no singular or self-evident way to understand the Iatmul naven rite. Instead, Bateson analysed the rite from three unique points of view: sociological, ethological, and eidological. The book, then, was not a presentation of anthropological analysis but an epistemological account that explored the nature of anthropological analysis itself.