Gregory Bateson:
Core Aim of His Work
"Bateson in his own words was seeking the pattern which connects and indeed his definition of aesthetic was responsiveness to the pattern which connects. In the introduction to "Mind and Nature" he poses a series of questions:-
"What pattern connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose and all the four of them to me? And me to you? And all the six of us to the amoeba in one direction and the backward schizophrenic in another?" (M&N p.8)
In an attempt to answer these questions his approach was to establish an epistemology(4), one that relies on a unique conception of `difference,' `context' and `pattern.'
Pattern
Bateson gives an example of pattern with reference to a crab. Various observations are made, the crab has symmetry, it is composed, although it has one claw bigger than the other both claws are made of the same parts. Indeed, there are similar relations between parts. He continues, reporting on a discussion with a class of art students presented with a crab:-
"Later, it appeared that not only are the two claws built on the same "ground plan," (i.e., upon corresponding sets of relations between corresponding parts) but that these relations between corresponding parts extend down the series of the walking legs. We could recognize in every leg pieces that corresponded to the pieces in the claw." (M&N p.9)
A similar ground plan is visible in a lobster and the pattern of a ground plan, a similar structuring device is apparent in man and man's ground plan is similar to a horse. A series of levels of connecting patterns can be suggested, crab claw to crab leg, crab to lobster, crab/lobster to man/horse. As Bateson affirms:-
"... it turns out that gross anatomy exhibits three levels or logical types of descriptive propositions: 1. The parts of any member of Creatura are to be compared with other parts of the same individual to give first-order connections. 2. Crabs are to be compared with lobsters or men with horses to find similar relations between parts (i.e., to give second-order connections). 3. The comparison between crabs and lobsters is to be compared with the comparison between man and horse to provide third-order connections. We have constructed a ladder of how to think about - about what? Oh, yes, the pattern which connects. My central thesis can now be approached in words: The pattern which connects is a metapattern. It is a pattern of patterns. It is that metapattern which defines the vast generalisation that, indeed, it is patterns which connect." (M&N p.11)
As Bateson is only too aware this expression of what pattern means, both holds significance and at the same time seems empty. There appears to be a concrete definition, but it comes from a fragile weaving of ideas which could very easily collapse and leave nothing.
"Mind is empty; it is no-thing. It exists only in its ideas, and these again are no-things. Only the ideas are immanent, embodied in their examples. And the examples are, again no-things. The claw, as an example, is not the Ding an sich; it is precisely not the thing in itself. Rather, it is what mind makes of it, namely, an example of something or other." (M&N p.11)
Each of us is integral to the pattern we are observing, because we are distinguishing the pattern. The issue of how we are enabled to undertake this distinguishing therefore becomes relevant.
Context
For pattern to be distinguished, indeed for pattern to establish itself, a time stable environment is necessary. Such a nurturing arena, Bateson defines as context and he views stories as both the generators of contexts and the result of them. Stories are knots, again Bateson plays with the notion that they can unravel into no-thing, stories are a product of their own process(5).
"What is a story that it may connect the As and Bs, its parts? And is it true that the general fact that parts are connected in this way is at the very root of what it is to be alive? I offer you the notion of context, of pattern through time." (M&N p.14)
To understand how context allows for the occurrence of a meaningful pattern, Bateson raises the question - "What is an elephant's trunk?"
"As you know, the answer is that the elephant's trunk is his "nose." (Even Kipling knew!) And I put the word "nose" in quotation marks because the trunk is being defined by an internal process of communication in growth. The trunk is a "nose" by a process of communication: it is the context of the trunk that identifies it as a nose. That which stands between two eyes and north of a mouth is a "nose," and that is that. It is context that fixes the meaning, and it must surely be the receiving context that provides meaning for the genetic instructions. When I call that a "nose" and this is a "hand" I am quoting - or misquoting - the developmental instructions in the growing organism, and quoting what the tissues which received the message thought the message intended.
There are people who would prefer to define noses by their "function" - that of smelling. But if you spell out those definitions, you arrive at the same place using temporal instead of a spatial context. You attach meaning to the organ by seeing it as playing a given part in sequences of interaction between creature and environment. I call that a temporal context. The temporal classification cross-cuts the spatial classification of contexts. But in embryology, the first definition must always be in terms of formal relations. The fetal trunk cannot, in general smell anything. Embryology is formal." (M&N p.15-16)
Bateson then goes on to make clear that things are never what they supposedly are in themselves, this gives the seemingly absurd statement - a thing is not a thing. However, Bateson is attempting to show that whatever a thing appears to be is due to it being in relationships with other things - a mutual drawing forth of each other, located within a particular context.
"Most of us can remember being told that a noun is "the name of a person, place, or thing." And we can remember the utter boredom of parsing or analyzing sentences. Today all that should be changed. Children could be told that a noun is a word having a certain relationship to a predicate. A verb has a certain relation to a noun, its subject. And so on. Relationship could be used as basis for definition, and any child could then see there is something wrong with the sentence " `Go' is a verb."
I remember the boredom of analyzing sentences and the boredom later, at Cambridge, of learning comparative anatomy. Both subjects, as taught, were torturously unreal. We could have been told something about the pattern which connects: that all communication necessitates context, that without context, there is no meaning, and that contexts confer meaning because there is classification of contexts. The teacher could have argued that growth and differentiation must be controlled by communication. The shapes of animals and plants are transforms of messages. Language is itself a form of communication. The structure of the input must somehow be reflected as structure in the output. Anatomy must contain an analogue of grammar because all anatomy is a transform of message material, which must be contextually shaped. And finally contextual shaping is only another term for grammar.
So we come back to the patterns of connection and the more abstract, more general (and most empty) proposition that, indeed, there is a pattern of patterns of connection." (M&N p.17)
In a sense by defining pattern and then context, Bateson is working backwards, because both of these components rely on a fundamental third. It is part of his technique to demonstrate how tautological(6) his argument is by describing components that infer an as yet undiscussed basic requirement. The final component in Bateson's theory of how we each bring forth meaning (patterns seen in a holding context) from our surroundings - surroundings we continuously distinguish as not us - is precisely this action, our ability to perceive difference."
http://www.envf.port.ac.uk/newmedia/lecturenotes/EMMA/at1n.htm
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