Toward Batesonian sociocybernetics: from Naven to the mind beyond the skin

Abstract

Purpose

To construct, from Bateson's social ideas ranging from Naven to the 1979 Mind and Nature, a Batesonian sociocybernetics.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper considers Bateson's ideas about the delineation of systems by the observer, as they were taught to his classes in the 1970s and as they were expressed in the so‐called first, 1936 Epilogue to Naven, and shows how these ideas led Bateson to a skeptical, anti‐reificationist social cybernetics.

Findings

Bateson de‐emphasized system boundaries, instead seeing systems as creations of the observer and as arbitrary cuttings of a continuous web of cybernetic processes.

Research limitations/implications

Bateson's argument in Naven, a work originally published in 1936 and partially based in a sociological tradition which also forms some of the roots of Luhmann's thought, is surprisingly relevant to contemporary issues in second‐order cybernetics and sociocybernetics.

Practical implications

Bateson's skepticism about reification, and emphasis on the observer's role in the construction of system boundaries, can point a way for sociocybernetics to address those cybernetic systems which do not fit Luhmann's or Maturana's strict criteria for autopoiesis.

Originality/value

This paper attempts to show the sophistication and relevance of Bateson's social thinking to the field of sociocybernetics.

Citation

Guddemi, P. (2007), "Toward Batesonian sociocybernetics: from Naven to the mind beyond the skin", Kybernetes, Vol. 36 No. 7/8, pp. 905-914. https://doi.org/10.1108/03684920710777414