[Xmca-l] Re: Bateson on thinking relatively

[Glassman, Michael]

Hi Greg, Jon

I don't know, it seems to me wondering where the axe came from kind of misses the point of what Bateson is trying to say. I also wonder if it might be better to understand what is going on between the use of the axe as a tool and the chopping down of the tree.

You know for a long time I misinterpreted the title of the book Steps to an Ecology of Mind. I thought, because I was trained as a psychologist which sort of put blinders on me, that he was describing how we could understand the way the human mind worked. Over the course of year, more so in the last few years, I began to realize he was describing something completely different. Mind of course is not human mind but some larger system (almost spiritual) that we live within and sets us up on a trajectory of behavior. Steps are the sometimes continuous feedback loops that change us so we become more adapted to the needs of the ecology created by the Mind, in turn also changing the ecology of the Mind. In his other book Mind and Nature he has a great metaphor - the bumps we experience in our lives that force us to re-adjust. So in a sense I think Bateson is making a developmental argument.

So where did the axe come from? Do we really need to know that (I think cybernetics in general echoes Pragmatism in that it focuses on the activities we are engaged in at the moment). What  the person wielding the act will do is of course based in part on who he is but also on the feedback he is getting from the purposeful activity of cutting down the tree.  I once tried to cut down a tree. I didn't get very far. In other words the feedback was "the tree is winning!" I threw down my axe and said probably out loud, "This is stupid" and went back to camp and ate a peanut butter sandwich. But what if you wanted to help me, or I wanted to help myself, cut down the true. What is I wanted to jigger with the feedback loop. Then I have to remember that I am in the feedback loop as well as the action of the axe and the action of the tree. Meaning I can't say to myself, oh there must be a better way to cut down this tree. Let me go look at the research on tree cutting. Manipulating my capabilities is not that easy, because while I am trying to manipulate the feedback loop I am in the feedback loop, I am an integral part of me.

If we take that say and apply it to teaching. I am trying to teach somebody how to do an equation.  This is rough but the person I am teaching is the axe and the equation is the tree.   I think perhaps there is a system for this. Even a great system, one that takes all the things that Jon and Gregg talk about into account. But what I can't leave out of this is that I am also part of the system. A system that is being overseen by the larger Mind. I don't have as much ability to manipulate outcomes of the system as I think I do because I am in the system.

As the second part of the quote Mike cites this is incredibly hard to do, a hard "step" to take even if you understand and recognize the bump that you are facing in trying to educate this student. The student is on a boat riding the rapids created by the ecology of the Mind. You aren't on the banks of the river figuring out how to steer it and shouting out directions to the student. You are in the boat with the student, and until you realize that you will never successfully navigate.

Perhaps I am still misunderstanding, just in a different way. But this is my thinking based on my latest readings of Bateson and the people he was hanging out with.

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Greg Thompson
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2018 12:43 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Bateson on thinking relatively

I'm with Jon: Why was this guy chopping at this tree in the first place?
(and where did he get the axe? and the tree, did he plant it?).
These are all things that can greatly affect the nature of what goes on inside the man-axe-tree circuit (e.g., the nature and deliberateness of the swinging will depend on the physical properties of the axe but also on the properties of the man's motivations for hacking down the tree...).

For me, this suggests a turn to some Bronfenbrenner-like theory in which the circuit that Bateson/Martin depicted is nested within some larger set of circuit(s).
Or something.

-greg

On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 7:13 PM, Jonathan Tudge <jrtudge@uncg.edu> wrote:

> This is, of course, a great quote, and not for nothing is the word 
> "ecology" found in the title of Bateson's book.
>
> True, when trying to explain the phenomenon of the axe cutting the 
> tree, ALL of the things he mentioned are important, and all are interconnected.
> But that's not very helpful from a developmental point of view.  If I 
> want to do a better job cutting trees there are some things that 
> there's not much point me trying to work on (in particular, I don't 
> know what I'd need to do to work on my central nervous system).  But I 
> could get a sharper axe (or by a better one), because the sharpness is 
> one thing that influences the cutting.  Influences, but clearly 
> doesn't cause.  I might also work on my muscles, as they also 
> influence the cutting.  Perhaps getting better glasses would help.  
> Practicing my skills would be another useful factor (influence?).  In 
> other words, if we want to make some changes it would be worth 
> considering all these as mutually relevant influences, and maybe I 
> work on them separately (going to the gym to increase muscle strength, 
> to the opticians for glasses), even while at the same time realizing that they're all constitutive of the whole process.
>
> There again, I'd also better think about the broader influences--am I 
> cutting wood to put into my fireplace to burn for its aesthetic 
> nature, as my heating system at home is fine?  Or is this a skill 
> that's really important in my cultural group because without it I'm 
> not going to be able to construct my home, or be able to survive the 
> winter, in which case I'm likely to be learning how to wield the axe 
> in the company of others who are more competent.
>
> So, in response to Mike's earlier point in response to me...I don't 
> think that "influence" means "cause."  And I think that when 
> considering emergent properties we have to realize both that those 
> properties can never be reduced to the things that brought them into 
> being, but it's worth considering how A might be influencing B even 
> while recognizing that some of that influence has already been in turn 
> influenced by B (and C, D, E, etc.).
>
> And getting back to Bronfenbrenner, although he's typically viewed as 
> someone who viewed context (different, though interwoven, layers of 
> context, Andy) as causal, his theory is as ecological (or 
> bioecological) as Bateson's.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jon
>
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> Jonathan Tudge
>
> Professor
> Office: 155 Stone
>
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>
> A new book just published: Tudge, J. & Freitas, L. (Eds.) Developing 
> gratitude in children and adolescents
> <https://www.uncg.edu/hdf/faculty/tudge/books/dev-
> gratitude-in-children-and-adolescents-flyer.pdf>,
> Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press
>
> My web site:http://www.uncg.edu/hdf/faculty/tudge
>
> Mailing address:
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> Department of Human Development and Family Studies PO Box 26170 The 
> University of North Carolina at Greensboro Greensboro, NC 27402-6170 
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>
>
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>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 9:38 AM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
>
> > Darned if I did not find that Bateson passage online! Amazing.
> > Here it is from *Steps to an Ecology of Mind.*
> >
> > mike
> > --------------\
> >
> > Consider a tree and a man and an axe. We observe that the axe flies
> through
> > the air and makes certain gashes in a pre-existing cut in the side 
> > of the tree. If we now want to explain this set of phenomena, we 
> > shall be concerned with differences in the cut face of the tree, 
> > differences in
> the
> > retina of the man, differences in the central nervous system, 
> > differences in his different neural messages, differences in the 
> > behaviour of his muscles, difference in how the axe flies, to the 
> > differences which the
> axe
> > then makes on the face of the tree. Our explanation will go round 
> > and
> round
> > that circuit. If you want to explain or understand anything in human 
> > behaviour, you are always dealing with total circuits, completed
> circuits.
> > (Bateson, 1972, p. 433)
> >
> >
> >
> > Later in the same paper he writes about how difficult it is to adopt 
> > this
> > epistemology:
> >
> >
> >
> > I can stand here and I can give you a reasoned exposition of this 
> > matter; but if I am cutting down a tree, I still think ‘Gregory 
> > Bateson’ is
> cutting
> > down a tree. I am cutting down the tree. ‘Myself’ is to me still an 
> > excessively concrete object, different from the rest of what I have 
> > been calling ‘mind’.
> >
> >
> >
> > The step to realizing – to making habitual – the other way of 
> > thinking –
> so
> > that one naturally thinks that way when one reaches out for a glass 
> > of water or cuts down a tree – that step is not an easy one.
> >
> >
> > .... Once we have made this shift, our perspective fundamentally changes.
> > We firstly start focusing on relationships, flows and patterns; and 
> > secondly realize that we are part of any field we are studying.
> >
>



--
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
WEBSITE: greg.a.thompson.byu.edu
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson