In this Book
- Runaway: Gregory Bateson, the Double Bind, and the Rise of Ecological Consciousness
- Book
- 2017
- Published by: The University of North Carolina Press
summary
The anthropologist Gregory Bateson has been called a lost giant of twentieth-century thought. In the years following World War II, Bateson was among the group of mathematicians, engineers, and social scientists who laid the theoretical foundations of the information age. In Palo Alto in 1956, he introduced the double-bind theory of schizophrenia. By the sixties, he was in Hawaii studying dolphin communication. Bateson's discipline hopping made established experts wary, but he found an audience open to his ideas in a generation of rebellious youth. To a gathering of counterculturalists and revolutionaries in 1967 London, Bateson was the first to warn of a "greenhouse effect" that could lead to runaway climate change.
Blending intellectual biography with an ambitious reappraisal of the 1960s, Anthony Chaney uses Bateson's life and work to explore the idea that a postmodern ecological consciousness is the true legacy of the decade. Surrounded by voices calling for liberation of all kinds, Bateson spoke of limitation and dependence. But he also offered an affirming new picture of human beings and their place in the world—as ecologies knit together in a fabric of meaning that, said Bateson, "we might as well call Mind."
Blending intellectual biography with an ambitious reappraisal of the 1960s, Anthony Chaney uses Bateson's life and work to explore the idea that a postmodern ecological consciousness is the true legacy of the decade. Surrounded by voices calling for liberation of all kinds, Bateson spoke of limitation and dependence. But he also offered an affirming new picture of human beings and their place in the world—as ecologies knit together in a fabric of meaning that, said Bateson, "we might as well call Mind."
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- 1. The Way to Waimanalo
- pp. 18-44
- 2. Difficulties at the Metalevel
- pp. 45-63
- 4. Faith and Fight
- pp. 79-103
- 5. Signals from the Goal
- pp. 104-132
- 6. Double-Bind Generation
- pp. 133-152
- 7. Animal Stories
- pp. 153-168
- 8. The Good Son
- pp. 169-184
- 9. Schismogenesis
- pp. 185-211
- 10. The Curious Twist
- pp. 212-234
- 11. Love and Trust
- pp. 235-246
- Epilogue: The Back End of the Probe
- pp. 247-256
- Acknowledgments
- pp. 257-258
- Bibliography
- pp. 281-296
Additional Information
ISBN
9781469631752
Related ISBN(s)
9781469631738, 9781469631745, 9781469668673, 9798890851994
MARC Record
OCLC
1001262441
Pages
320
Launched on MUSE
2017-08-20
Language
English
Open Access
No