Human Ecology, VoL 3, No. 1, 19 75

Slobodk in on Bateson" A C o m m e n t

Philip Stewart 1

Received April 24, 19 74; revised June 1 7, 19 74

Lawrence B. Slobodkin's (1974) review of Steps to an Ecology o f Mind by Gregory Bateson bewilders me. He seems to be puzzled by so many questions that the book answers clearly.

For a start, Slobodkin is not aware that the essays have a theme: "It is not a unified book." Its contents do not "conform to any academic discipline, nor to any obvious interdisciplinary field." Yet Bateson in his introduction explains, "I found that in my work with primitive peoples, schizophrenia, biological symmetry, and in my discontent with the conventional theories of evolution and learning, I had identified a widely scattered set of bench marks or points of reference from which a new scientific territory could be defined." One may or may not agree, but at least the claim must be considered.

Slobodkin does indeed sense "that somewhere in the middle of [Bate- son's] mind there is in fact a very formal, very abstract theory" but alas "for some personal or pedagogical reason. . . Bateson himself shrinks away from explicitly stating that theory." Yet half of the introductory essay describes precisely how the author answered students who held that "There's something behind what Bateson says, but he never says what it is." There is nothing obscure about this "something." Bateson considers that the behavioral sciences are at present "a mass of quasi-theoretical speculation unconnected with any core of fundamental knowledge." His object is simply to establish the missing connection. "Within the body of fundamentals, that half which deals with form has been dramatically enriched in the last thirty years by the discoveries of cybernetics and systems theory. This book is concerned with building a bridge between the facts of life and behavior and what we know today of the nature of pattern and order." This is the "very formal, very abstract theory" that

1 Institute for Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom.

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Slobodkin senses in the middle of Bateson's mind, but there is no secret about it: systems theory is public property now.

Having decided that Bateson holds back the essential part of his thinking, Slobodkin hardily comes up with a theory to explain the supposed silence: "Bateson profoundly realizes that . . . the nonlogical, the nonverbalizable, is a major component of the human mind. It is slightly distressing that he seems surprised and perhaps excessively preoccupied with this realization, and I suspect that the surprise may be responsible for his difficulty in trying to articulate his experiences and his insights in this area." This is high-flown verbalization, and I confess that I am not sure what it means. Nor do I recognize the "surprise" and "excessive preoccupation" that are referred to. But it is sad that a reviewer declaring himself greatly influenced by Bateson should be reduced to offering us this sort of speculation.

It is not necessary here to go into the many points of detail over which Slobodkin is as much at odds with explicit statements from the book as he is over its general sense. On the other hand, one must mention one question which he fails to consider and which is surely central for readers of this journal: what is Bateson's contribution to human ecology? The answer is perhaps that he makes it possible for the first time to conceive of a unified and rigorous science which will embrace both man's material relation to his physical environment and his mental relation to his informational environment. The two aspects have up till now coexisted uneasily, betrothed but seemingly unmarriageable. With this new insight, the old partition between nature and culture fades to nothing, and one wonders how borderline phenomena were ever assigned to one or the other. Bateson did not achieve this revolution single-handed, but his essays show that he was the first to take some of the essential steps. They deserve to be read and reread by every human ecologist. It is my guess that we shall be adapting our minds to these new ideas for a long time to come.

REFERENCE

Slobodkin, L. B. (1974). Mind, bind, and ecology: A review of Gregory Bateson's collected essays. Human Ecology 2: 67-74.