"We have the choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place - or not to bother." —Dr. Jane Goodall

Gregory Bateson was a philosopher, author, photographer, filmmaker, naturalist, poet, but foremost an anthropologist. He and his wife - another well known anthropologist - Margaret Mead, led the way in studying visual communication, cybernetics, and the related logic of biological and artificial systems. His work on the evolutionary process of thinking was ground-breaking and widely recognized in his writings for Steps to an Ecology of Mind.


The book starts with a series of metalogues between a father and daughter. Bateson defines metalogues as "conversations about some problematic subject... such that not only do the participants discuss the problem but the structure of the conversation as a whole also relevant to the same subject." In other words, the conversation evolves and adjusts to its surroundings, also known as its interpretative frame. Take a look:


Daughter:   Daddy, why do Frenchmen wave their arms about?
Father:   What do you mean?
D:   I mean when they talk. Why do they wave their arms and all that?
F:   Well - why do you smile? Or why do you stamp your foot sometimes?
D:   But that's not the same thing, Daddy. I don't wave my arms about like a Frenchman does. I don't believe they can stop doing it, Daddy. Can they?
F:   I don't know - they might find it hard to stop.... Can you stop smiling?
D:   But Daddy, I don't smile all the time. It's hard to stop when I feel like smiling. But I don't feel like it all the time. And then I stop.
F:   That's true - but when a Frenchman doesn't wave his arms in the same way all the time. Sometimes he waves them in one way and sometimes in another - and sometimes, I think, he stops waving them.


This is only a taste of his problem-defining and problem-solving discussions in the book, where a greater connection between man and nature is revealed. Bateson would be celebrating his 98th birthday today (born May 9, 1904): he died July 4, 1980 after battling lung cancer.


Learn more about this extraordinary man and his accomplishments.


Listen in on a conversation between Gregory and Margaret.