A Legacy for Living Systems
Gregory Bateson as Precursor to Biosemiotics
Editors: Hoffmeyer, Jesper (Ed.)
Free Preview- A key resource for scholars in the biosciences, philosophy and medicine who seek an elegant new approach to exploring highly complex systems
- Bateson's bioanthropology plays a key role in the new field of biosemiotics
- Offers a long-overdue reframing of central problems in modern science
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- About this book
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Gregory Bateson’s contribution to 20th century thinking has appealed to scholars from a wide range of fields dealing in one way or another with aspects of communication and epistemology. A number of his insights were taken up and developed further in anthropology, psychology, evolutionary biology and communication theory. But the large, trans-disciplinary synthesis that, in his own mind, was his major contribution to science received little attention from the mainstream scientific communities.
This book represents a major attempt to revise this deficiency. Scholars from ecology, biochemistry, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, anthropology and philosophy discuss how Bateson's thinking might lead to a fruitful reframing of central problems in modern science. Most important perhaps, Bateson's bioanthropology is shown to play a key role in developing the set of ideas explored in the new field of biosemiotics. The idea that organismic life is indeed basically semiotic or communicative lies at the heart of the biosemiotic approach to the study of life.
The only book of its kind, this volume provides a key resource for the quickly-growing substratum of scholars in the biosciences, philosophy and medicine who are seeking an elegant new approach to exploring highly complex systems.
"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?"
- Gregory Bateson
from Mind and Nature - Reviews
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From the reviews:
"In this book are collected 14 essays on a range of topics related to, applying, or extending Bateson’s work and legacy. … Open minded biologists and semioticians, as well as students of Peirce, will be interested … in this book. … I recommend it highly." (Phillip Guddemi, Cybnetics and Human Knowing, Vol. 15 (3-4), 2008)
"Biosemiotics studies the ‘sign character’ of processes ‘inside or between living systems,’ from a single cell, to organisms, to ecological systems … . The introduction and the 14 chapters of this book are well written and generally understandable by a nonexpert in biosemiotics or Bateson’s work." (H. I. Kilov, ACM Computing Reviews, April, 2009)
- Table of contents (15 chapters)
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Introduction: Bateson the Precursor
Pages 1-13
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Angels Fear Revisited: Gregory Bateson's Cybernetic Theory of Mind Applied to Religion-Science Debates
Pages 15-25
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From Thing to Relation. On Bateson's Bioanthropology
Pages 27-44
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What Connects the Map to the Territory?
Pages 45-58
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The Pattern Which Connects Pleroma to Creatura: The Autocell Bridge from Physics to Life
Pages 59-76
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Table of contents (15 chapters)
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Bibliographic Information
- Bibliographic Information
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- Book Title
- A Legacy for Living Systems
- Book Subtitle
- Gregory Bateson as Precursor to Biosemiotics
- Editors
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- Jesper Hoffmeyer
- Series Title
- Biosemiotics
- Series Volume
- 2
- Copyright
- 2008
- Publisher
- Springer Netherlands
- Copyright Holder
- Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
- eBook ISBN
- 978-1-4020-6706-8
- DOI
- 10.1007/978-1-4020-6706-8
- Hardcover ISBN
- 978-1-4020-6705-1
- Softcover ISBN
- 978-90-481-7703-5
- Series ISSN
- 1875-4651
- Edition Number
- 1
- Number of Pages
- X, 290
- Topics
