This homage to scientist, psychologist, and cyberneticist Gregory Bateson was produced and directed by his daughter, Nora. Gregory Bateson, who was the son of William Bateson (coiner of the term “genetics”) and the husband of Margaret Mead, influenced the fields of information science, cybernetics, urban planning, anthropology, psychiatry, biology, and ecology – before, in fact, some of these sciences even existed. Students of biology, science, science history, or organizational theory will delight in discovering this influential thinker, and An Ecology of Mind is a great introduction.
If a scientist were to name some quintessentially 20th-century words characterizing modes of thinking, they would include interdisciplinary, connectedness, context, relatedness, cybernetics, networks, and changeability. These terms, peppered throughout An Ecology of Mind, underlie meta-thinker Bateson’s contributions.
Bateson was interested in exploring how living things are connected, how we all live together – animals, plants, you...