GREGORY BATESON格雷戈里·贝特森 (1904-1980)心理学空间

Bateson came to see the sociopsychological forms with which he was concerned as related to larger processes of evolution and adaptation. He discerned systematic relations of a number of kinds between processes of evolution viewed as phylogenetic "learning," and the learning which takes place at the individual and cultural level.Important aspects of his thinking about the relationship of the mobile and dynamic processes of adaptation in individual organisms (such as tanning in response to sunlight or individual learning) to less mobile aspects of adaptation (such as skin color prior to tanning) are presented in a dense, closely argued, and important paper,The Role of Somatic Change in Evolution(1963, reprinted in Bateson 1972). The paper, which is difficult to summarize briefly, deals with the "economics of flexibility," what Bateson took to be logically necessary relations between mobile adaptive mechanisms and more stable structures, in relation to aspects of time sequences, to the magnitude and nature of disturbances within the adapting system, and to aspects of hierarchy or "logical typing." The details of his argument, which have had an important influence on some biologists (e.g., Slobodkin and Rapoport 1974) have significant implications for the understanding of the "economics of flexibility" in other types of systems, including sociocultural and psychological ones.

In another essay,Style, Grace and Information in Primitive Art(1972:128-152) Bateson discusses an "economics of consciousness" that is formally similar to his arguments about the "economics of flexibility." Because the dataprocessing capacity of consciousness is limited, it must be conserved. For this, it is necessary to "sink" into the unconsciousness of habit, knowledge, and skills which will then continue to seem true, apt, or necessary regardless of environmental change, maintaining in an accessible "place" only that which must be continuously modified. But this "sinking" of knowledge is done at a price. That which is "sunk" becomes inaccessible and difficult or impossible to change.

Gregory Bateson, August 1978
Photo: © Fred Roll

The approach to adaptation taken by Bateson not only makes "functional" changes continuous with evolutionary transformations, but also implies their logical relationship. He attempted to examine "consciousness" within this overall schema. In hierarchically organized adaptive systems, evolutionary transformations in subsystems are elements in the self-regulatory processes of the more inclusive systems of which they are parts. Evolutionary changes in such subsystems may be accounted for by what they maintain unchanged in the larger system. To put this in terms of the "mind-like" characteristics of such systems, the changes are at the service of a stability which can be defined by reference "to the ongoing truth of some descriptive proposition" (1979:62). The changes in a tightrope walker's position conserve the truth of the orienting proposition that he is on the tightrope. In this regard there is, of course, a profound difference between cultural and biological evolution. In biological evolution, "the Weismannian barrier between soma and germ plasm is presumed to be totally opaque. . . In cultural evolution and individual learning, the coupling through consciousness is present, [but] incomplete and probably distortive" (1972:444). The latter can, therefore, conserve the truth value of "wrong propositions." Bateson took this problem to be intrinsic to consciousness itself, in particular to a certain aspect of consciousness, namely, purpose. "The cybernetic nature of self and world tends to be imperceptible to consciousnessinsofar as the contents of the 'screen' of consciousness are determined by considerations of purpose" (ibid., italics in original).

Thesekindsofargumentsarebasedinlargepartonanalogies.Inhissearchforsignificantsimilaritiesandcontrastsinsystemsinvolvingco