Gregory Bateson was not only an outstanding scientist but also a highly original philosopher.
In short, to solve the major problems of our time, we need exactly the type of thinking Bateson pioneered. If we served organically grown food in our schools, to use another example, we would not have the current epidemic of obesity among our children, we would not poison our farm workers, and the increased carbon content of the organic soil would draw down significant amounts of CO2 and thus contribute to reversing the current climate change. But instead, they prefer to fight a war that kills tens of thousands of innocent people, while the greenhouse gases produced by our cars increase the force of hurricanes that make millions homeless and cause billions of dollars of damages. For example, if we improved the fuel efficiency of our cars by just 3 mpg, which could be very easily done, we would not have to import any oil from the Persian Gulf. To use a popular phrase, Bateson taught us how to connect the dots, and this is critical today not only in science but also in politics and civic life, as most of our political and corporate leaders show a striking inability to connect the dots. As we replace the Newtonian metaphor of the world as a machine by the metaphor of the network, and as complexity becomes a principal focus in science, the kind of systemic thinking that Bateson advocated is becoming crucial.
But perhaps even more important is the fact that he championed a new way of thinking, which is extremely relevant to our time - thinking in terms of relationships, connections, patterns, and context. He made significant contributions to several sciences - anthropology, cybernetics, psychiatry, and, most important of all, to the new interdisciplinary field of cognitive science, which he pioneered.
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