[Xmca-l] Re: Bateson on thinking relatively

[Wolff-Michael Roth]

Mike,
but surely you would agree that virtually all of the analyses that we
currently see in the literature do this going round and round in a circle.
The follow Bateson means to abandon the thought of individuals, of
individual conceptions, of "identity" (see e.g. *Mind and Nature* on
characteristics, such as "dependency," "aggressiveness," and "pride" as
being not internal or characteristic of a person and that "such words have
their roots in what happens between persons, not in something-or-other
inside a person" (p.133). All the talk about internalization makes little
sense if you adopt Bateson's perspective.

Those interested, we have a paper in *CoDesign*, where we provide a case
study of "Becoming-breezer," a coming-into-correspondence of designer,
materials and designed objects (Roth et al., 2017).
I am working on similar issues in "Growing-making mathematics...," where
"growing-making tangram shapes" also means "becoming-hexagon" (Roth, 2016).

For those interested, they should read the easy-to-read books by Tim
Ingold. But I think Tim remains a bit abstract, does not provide detailed
case studies in actual human relations---which our papers do.

Michael


Ingold, T. (2011). Being-alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and
description. London, UK: Routledge.
Ingold, T. (2013). Making: Anthropology, archeology, art and architecture.
London, UK: Routledge.
Ingold, T. (2015). The life of lines. London, UK: Routledge.
Roth, W.-M. (2016). Growing-making mathematics: a dynamic perspective on
people, materials, and movement in classrooms. Educational Studies in
Mathematics, 93, 87–103.
Roth, W.-M., Socha, D., & Tenenberg, J. (2017). Becoming-design in
corresponding: re/theorizing the co- in codesigning. CoDesign, 13, 1–17.





On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 6:38 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.
>