Abstract
In this chapter I introduce Gregory Bateson’s own “voice” by printing for the first time an extended section of a talk he gave just a few months before he died. This talk deals with another example of the way early life experience, this time of wolves and dogs, is used by animals as metaphor in their later lives. It was given at the Esalen Institute where he lived and taught, in May 1980, as part of a workshop on “Ecology of Mind.” It is reprinted by permission of the Bateson Idea Group, which retains the copyright. (The transcription from an audio recording is by me (Phillip Guddemi) from 2019.
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Notes
- 1.
The story of Benson Ginsburg’s wolves is told, not in as great detail, in the paper “Problems in Cetacean and Other Mammalian Communication,” republished in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Bateson 2000: 365–366. Another discussion of Nicholas Humphrey and the “syllogism in grass” can be found in the paper “Man are Grass: Metaphor and the World of Mental Process,” derived from a talk given a month before he died in June 1980, reprinted in A Sacred Unity, Bateson 1991: 235–242.
- 2.
Nicholas Humphrey, “New Ideas, Old Ideas,” review of Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. 6 December 1979, London Review of Books 1:4;
Gregory Bateson, 24 January 1980. Letter responding to Nicholas Humphrey. London Review of Books 2:1;
Nicholas Humphrey. Letter, responding to Gregory Bateson. London Review of Books 2:2, 7 February 1980
- 3.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benson_Ginsburg accessed May 23, 2019
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Guddemi, P. (2020). Among Wolves and Logicians, by Gregory Bateson. In: Gregory Bateson on Relational Communication: From Octopuses to Nations. Biosemiotics, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52101-1_4
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