While Gregory was very much alive, with his blessing and mentoring, I conceived of, and edited, a book entitled About Bateson, a book which featured seven substantial essays by eminent thinkers in their own right-containing their own interpretations of and reactions to Bateson's work. and sold his book The Evolutionary Idea (ultimately published under the title Mind In Nature). Within a month I had founded Brockman, Inc. We met in April, 1973 at the AUM Conference ("American University of Masters") at Esalen in Big Sur, where we immediately became friends, and where he convinced me to become an agent. His book, Steps To An Ecology of Mind, published in 1972, attracted widespread attention. Bateson originated the double bind theory of schizophrenia, was the first to apply cybernetic theory to the social sciences, and made important biological discoveries about such nonhuman species as the dolphin. Gregory Bateson was one of the most important and least understood thinkers of the twentieth century. He agreed, and the result was About Bateson, a volume of original essays about his work and ideas by interesting thinkers in various fields bracketed by my Introduction and his Afterword, both of which follow below. His efforts at synthesis are tantalizingly and cryptically suggestive.This is a book we should all read and ponder.NovemIn 1974, in honor of my friend Gregory Bateson's 70th birthday, I asked him if he would give his blessing to a book I was planning about his work. " view of the world, of science, of culture, and of man is vast and challenging. examines the nature of the mind, seeing it not as a nebulous something, somehow lodged somewhere in the body of each man, but as a network of interactions relating the individual with his society and his species and with the universe at large."-D.
Bateson has come to this position during a career that carried him not only into anthropology, for which he was first trained, but into psychiatry, genetics, and communication theory. "This collection amounts to a retrospective exhibition of a working life. With a new foreword by his daughter Mary Katherine Bateson, this classic anthology of his major work will continue to delight and inform generations of readers. Gregory Bateson was a philosopher, anthropologist, photographer, naturalist, and poet, as well as the husband and collaborator of Margaret Mead.
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