Upside-Down Gods

Gregory Bateson's World of Difference

Peter Harries-Jones

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English

Fordham University Press
02 May 2016

Biography: historical, political & military; Cybernetics & systems theory; Semiotics & semiology; Anthropology

Series: Meaning Systems

This intellectual biography covers the trajectory of Bateson's career, from his anthropological work in Bali alongside his wife, Margaret Mead, to his contributions to family therapy in the United States, and to studies of recursion as a feature of communication patterns in both the human and in the animal world. Layers of feedback with their many differing contexts, highlight the presence of meaning in social relations in contrast to that absence of meaning, purposefully proposed, within information theory. Throughout the human and in the animal world, recursion of feedback accounts for grasp of patterns, their difference, and with ability to communicate, enable transduction of perceptions of difference.

Bateson's insistence on feedback and communication re-frames many aspects of culture, psychology, biology, and evolution. His legacy is recognized as an important precursor to the formation of a new science called Biosemiotics.

Harries-Jones argues that Bateson turns conventional causality upside down through showing how humanity's perceptions, as with perceptions of all sentient beings, are anticipative. All sentient beings abduct from recursive patterns, rather than relying on linear evidence gathered about time/space movements of objects. Thus circular pattering provides clearer perceptions of the difference between sustainable creativity and current biocide, between our appreciation of nature's aesthetics and time/space 'games of power' which underlie so many social and biological theories.

By: Peter Harries-Jones
Imprint: Fordham University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 408g
ISBN: 9780823270354
ISBN 10: 0823270351
Series: Meaning Systems
Pages: 296
Publication Date: 02 May 2016
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Peter Harries-Jones is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at York University. He is the author of A Recursive Vision: Ecological Understanding and Gregory Bateson (Toronto).

Reviews for Upside-Down Gods: Gregory Bateson's World of Difference

"""Upside-Down Gods is a gift of meticulous scholarship and insight for all interested in the extraordinary intellectual path of Gregory Bateson and the wide-ranging, multidisciplinary debates he was central to--debates that are still relevant--about anthropology, psychology, animal cognition, biosemiotics, ecology, epistemology, and systems theory.""-Tyler Volk, New York University, author of Metapatterns Across Space, Time, and Mind"