A Legacy for Living Systems pp 257-276 | Cite as
Bateson, Peirce, and the Sign of the Sacred
I argue that Gregory Bateson and Charles Sanders Peirce, although holding different beliefs about God and religion, share much in common concerning how the body and mind operate as an integrative, recursive communication system. Regardless of their different points of departure on the topic of communication, their philosophic paths necessarily cross at an “interface” that constitutes an epistemological matrix between them. Herein, I explore this matrix and argue that Bateson’s epistemology of the sacred is best understood within a triadic frame of relations offered by semiotician, Charles Sanders Peirce. Specifically, Bateson’s triadic relations of aesthetics, consciousness (mental process), and the sacred are understood by way of Peirce’s existential semiotic categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. Hence, we come to know sacred existence as a phenomenological sign action of human semiosis. As a result, Bateson’s epistemology of the sacred becomes more accessible as a philosophy of human existence. We see that his epistemology fosters pragmatic insight concerning the relations between aesthetic perceiving and mental process that supports the characteriological growth of human beings in particular and scientific inquiry in general.
Keywords
Gregory Bateson Charles S. Peirce semiotics communication sacredPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
- Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine.Google Scholar
- Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York: E.P. Dutton.Google Scholar
- Bateson, G. & Bateson, M. C. (1987). Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred. New York: Bantam Books.Google Scholar
- Bateson, G. (1991). In R. Donaldson (Ed.), A Sacred Unity: Further Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Gregory Bateson. New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
- Berger, C. R. & Calabrese, R. (1975). Some explorations in initial interaction and beyond: Toward a developmental theory of interpersonal communication. Human Communication Research, 1, 99–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- Catt, I. (2000). The institution of communitarianism and the communicology of Pierre Bourdieu. The American Journal of Semiotics, 15/16 (1–4), 187–206.Google Scholar
- Catt, I. (2002). Communicology and narcissism: Disciplines of the heart. Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 4, 389–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- Colapietro, V. M. (1989). Peirce’s Approach to the Self: A Semiotic Perspective on Human Subjectivity. Albany, NY: SUNY.Google Scholar
- Deledalle, G. (2000). Charles S. Peirce’s Philosophy of Signs: Essays in Comparative Semiotics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
- Eicher-Catt, D. (1996). Searching for the Sacrality of Motherhood. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.Google Scholar
- Eicher-Catt, D. (2001) [printed in 2003]. A Communicology of female/feminine embodiment: The case of non-custodial motherhood. The American Journal of Semiotics, 17 (4), 93–130.Google Scholar
- Eicher-Catt, D. (2003) [printed in 2006]. The logic of the sacred in Bateson and Peirce. The American Journal of Semiotics, 19 (1–4), 95–126.Google Scholar
- Eicher-Catt, D. (2005a). Advancing family communication scholarship: Toward a Communicology of the family. Journal of Family Communication, 5 (2), 103–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- Eicher-Catt, D. (2005b). The authenticity in ambiguity: Appreciating Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s abductive logic as communicative praxis. Atlantic Journal of Communication, _13 (2), 113–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- Gergen, K. (1991). The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life. New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
- Harries-Jones, P. (1995). A Recursive Vision: Ecological Understanding and Gregory Bateson. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
- Hospers, J. (1967). Problems of aesthetics. In P. Edwards (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 1 (pp. 35–56). New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
- Jung, C. (1965). Septem sermones ad mortuos. In A. Jaffe (Ed.), Memories, Dreams and Reflections (pp. 378–390). New York: Random House.Google Scholar
- Lanigan, R. L. (1988). Phenomenology of Communication: Merleau-Ponty’s Thematics in Communicology and Semiology. Pittsburg: Duquesne University Press.Google Scholar
- Lanigan, R. L. (1992). The Human Science of Communicology: A Phenomenology of Discourse in Foucault and Merleau-Ponty. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.Google Scholar
- Lanigan, R. L. (2000). The self in semiotic phenomenology: Consciousness as the conjunction of perception and expression in the science of Communicology, The American Journal of Semiotics, 15&16(1–4), 91–111.Google Scholar
- May, R. (1977). Gregory Bateson and Humanistic Psychology. In J. Brockman (Ed.), About Bateson: Essays on Gregory Bateson (pp. 75–99). New York: E.P. Dutton.Google Scholar
- Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962) Phenomenology of Perception (C. Smith, Trans.). New York: The Humanities Press.Google Scholar
- Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). The Primacy of perception, (J. Eclie, Ed.), Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
- Millar, F. (1990). Reflexivity and Recursiveness. Paper presented at the Western Communication Association Conference, Phoenix, AZ.Google Scholar
- Peirce, C. S. (1955). In J. Buchler (Ed.), Philosophical Writings of Peirce. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
- Rieber, R. W. & Green, M. (1989). The psychopathy of Every day Life: Antisocial Behavior and Social Distress. In R. Rieber (Ed.), The Individual, Communication, and Society (pp. 48–89). Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
- Ruesch, J. & Bateson, G. (1987). Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.Google Scholar
- Thayer, L. (1997). Pieces: Toward a Revision of Communication/Life. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Press.Google Scholar
- Wilden, A. (1987). The Rules Are No Game: The Strategy of Communication. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar