Inventing Systems: ToMaTo - Ada!

193 Pages·2006·9.89 MB·English

Inventing Systems: ToMaTo
Spring Quarter2006
JeffGlassman/ArunChandra
Contents
GregoryBatesonandMargaretMead: ForGod’sSake,Margaret! 1
GregoryBateson: ThePositionofHumorinHumanCommunication 15
ArturoRosenblueth,NorbertWienerandJulianBigelow: Behavior,PurposeandTeleology 41
HeinzvonFoerster:OnConstructingaReality 45
InvitationtoDance: AConversationwithHeinzvonFoerster 54
ErnstvonGlasersfeld: DistinguishingtheObserver 59
WilliamS.Condon: Communication:RhythmandStructure 65
BertrandRussell: InPraiseofIdleness 77
HerbertBru¨n: Declarations 83
MarianneBru¨n: DesigningSociety 85
MarkEnslin: TeachingComposition:FacingthePoweroftheRespondent 89
1 Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
2 ThePoweroftheRespondent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
3 ImagesofTeacherandofComposer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
4 ComposingthePerformanceofTeaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
5 WhatDoITeachsuchthatITeachComposition? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
6 CompositionsthatTeach:OpenForm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
FredrickEngels: ThePartPlayedbyLaborintheTransitionfromApetoMan 113
FredrickEngels: Socialism: UtopianandScientific 119
1 TheDevelopmentofUtopianSocialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
2 TheScienceofDialectics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
3 HistoricalMaterialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
KarlMarx:TheFetishismofCommoditiesandtheSecretThereof 137
MarkSullivan: ThePerformanceofGesture: MusicalGesture,Then,AndNow 144
Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
1. Prologue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
2. AMedium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
3. Formulation:TheProcedureofDistinguishing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
4. ContextualHistory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
5. Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
6. Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
7. Configurations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
8. OneorAnother . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
9. ProcessesofInvention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
10.Posture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
11.MusicalGesturesandMovements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
12.AVignette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
13.AcousticGesture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
14.LinguisticGesture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
15.MusicalGestureandLinguisticGesture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
SPRING QUARTER 2006 ii InventingSystems: ToMaTo
16.Movement,SpeechandMusicalGesture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
17.MusicalGestureandMusicalGesture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
18.MusicalGesture,Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
SelectedBibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
SPRING QUARTER 2006 iii InventingSystems: ToMaTo
For God’s Sake, Margaret!
Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead
Stewart Brand, CoEvolutionary Quarterly, June 1976
Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson were married mation,and(thisyear)theAmericanAssociationforthe
in1936. Theyhadmetandfalleninlovein1932while Advancement of Science, and a Curator of the Ameri-
bothweredoinganthropologicalfieldworkontheSepik canMuseumofNaturalHistory,whichcontinuesasher
River in New Guinea (Margaret was at the same time headquarters. In public affairs she seems to have taken
withhersecondhusband,ReoFortune). InNewGuinea overtheEleanorRooseveltniche.
Gregory’s unusual sense of theory met Margaret’s im- AfterBaliandtheMacyConferencesGregoryBate-
provedfieldmethodologyandsparkedmuchofthequal- son went on to work with schizophrenics, alcoholics,
ityinGregory’sopusonthelatmultribeNaven. artists,dolphins,students,andasteadilymoregeneralset
Newly-wed in Bali, they spent two collaborative ofunderstandingsofwhattheyhaveincommon. Heco-
years in the most intense and productive fieldwork of authoredabook,Communication: TheSocialMatrixof
their lives, developing, among other things, a still un- Psychiatry(1951–68,Norton),withJurgenRuesch,and
matchedphotographicanalysisoftheculture. edited Perceval’sNarrative—A Patient’sAccount of his
Their daughter Mary Catherine, Margaret’s only Psychosis, 1830–1832 (1961, Stanford). Mary Cather-
child, was born in 1939 in the United States. Gregory ine,hisandMargaret’sdaughter,wroteabookaboutone
andMargaretworkedtogetherontheresultoftheirBali of Gregory’s conferences, Our Own Metaphor (1972,
fieldwork, Balinese Character—A PhotographicAnaly- Knopf).HiscollectedpapersappearinStepstoanEcol-
sis, andthenwereseparatedincreasinglybyWorldWar ogy of Mind (1972, Ballantine), a book that wowed me
IIandtheirowndiverginginterests. outofmyshoes.IfGregoryliveslongenoughhewillget
Afterthewartheybothwereinvolvedinstartingthe hisNobelfortheDoubleBindTheoryofSchizophrenia.
somewhatfamousMacyConferences(1947–53)thatin- Margaretisnow75,Gregory72. Theymeetseldom
ventedcybernetics.Thisinterviewbeginswiththeirjoint though always affectionately. Gregory has a son John,
recollectionofthatcriticalperiod. 23,byhissecondwife,andadaughterNora,9,byLois
Margaret Mead is one of the world’s most remark- Bateson his present wife. This meeting with Margaret
able women. She gota fullmixtureof praise andnoto- tookplace atGregory’shomenear Santa Cruz, Califor-
riety(notoriousinthatdaybecausewomenweren’tsup- nia,inMarchofthisyear[1976].
posed to talk about sex) with her first book, Coming of
Stewart Brand: I need a little background, if it’s all
Age in Samoa (1928). Since then there have been ten
right, on how this whole Macy thing got rolling,
otherbooksandnumeroushonorsandpositions,includ-
why,andwhen,andwhatthesequencewas.
ingPresidentoftheAmericanAnthropologicalAssocia-
Gregory Bateson: There was this Macy meeting in
tion (1960), and of Scientists’ Institute on Public Infor-
what,’42?1
1TheJosiahMacy,Jr.Foundation,1930–1955.NewYork:TheJosiahMacy,Jr.Foundation,1955,p.20
ForGod’sSake,Margaret! 1 MEAD,BATESON AND BRAND
Brand:Whostartedit,andwhatwasitabout? whereistheRosenblueth,WienerandBigelowpa-
Bateson: This was a meeting called “Cerebral Inhibi- per? Thefirstgreatpaperoncybernetics.3
tion,” which in fact was a meeting on hypnosis.2 Bateson: Rosenblueth, Wiener and Bigelow. ‘Behav-
“Cerebral inhibition” was a respectable word for ior, Purpose and Teleology,’ Philosophy of Sci-
hypnosis.Mostofwhatwassaidabout‘feedback’ ence,1943.4
wassaidoverlunch. Mead:That’sit,yousee.
MargaretMead: Well, I know that’s what you always Bateson: It could just have been publishedat the time
tell people, but I didn’t sit at the same place at oftheCerebralInhibitionconference.
lunch, and I heard what was said at that confer- Mead:Itwasjustcomingoutorjusthadcomeout.
ence. But at that conference, which is the one Brand: What was the experiment that that paper
where Milton Erickson hypnotised that Yale psy- recorded?
chologist,itwasattheendofthatconferencethat
Bateson: Itdidn’trecordanexperiment,itreportedon
you really had the design of what needed to be
the formal character of seeking mechanisms, es-
done. And then you were caughtup in war work
sentially.Self-correctivemechanismssuchasmis-
andwentoverseasandtherewasthatlongperiod.
siles. Themissile measuresthe anglebetweenits
Ithinkthatyouactuallyhavetogobacktothat
directionandthe targetit’sseeking, andusesthat
earlier meeting that was held in the basement of
measuretocorrectitself.
theoldPsycho-AnalyticbuildingontheWestSide
Mead: But using some very simple psychological ex-
thedayofPearlHarbor.
perimentsthatRosenbluethhadbeendoingatthe
Bateson: They didn’t go on from year to year, those
UniversityofMexico.
earlyones. LarryFrankwaschairmanIbet.
Brand: Do you recall what they were saying that you
Mead:No,Larryneverwaschairman,youknow.Heal-
overheardthatgotyouexcited?
wayssatonthesidelinesandmadesomebodyelse
Bateson: It was a solution to the problem of purpose.
be chairman. Kubie was a very importantperson
FromAristotleon,thefinalcausehasalwaysbeen
atthatpoint.
themystery.Thiscameoutthen.Wedidn’trealize
Bateson: Yes. Kubie was an important bridge be-
then(atleastIdidn’trealizeit,thoughMcCulloch
causeKubiehadrespectable-izedMilton. There’s
mighthave)thatthewholeoflogicwouldhaveto
a whole series of papers which are jointly Kubie
be reconstructedfor recursiveness. When I came
andErickson. Now, in fact, theywere Erickson’s
infromoverseasin’45Iwentwithinthefirsttwo
papers.
or three days to Frank Fremont-Smith, and said,
Mead: And Kubie didn’t know what was in them.
“Let’shaveaMacyConferenceonthatstuff.”
That’sthetruth.
Mead:YouandWarrenMcCullochhadanexchangeof
Bateson: But Kubie did get right the energy problem.
letterswhenyouwereinCeylon.
He was the first person that really took Freud’s
Bateson: Wedid?
‘energy’andsaid, “Look,look, look,itmakesno
Mead: Yes. Youtoldmeenoughaboutitinsomeway.
sense.”ThereisaverygoodpaperbyKubieonthe
ItalkedtoFremont-Smith. McCullochhadtalked
errorsofFreudianenergytheory.[Goestofindthe
toFremont-Smith.
references]Huh. Kubie,“FallaciousUseofQuan-
Bateson: Fremont-Smithtold me, “Yes, we’ve just ar-
titativeConceptsinDynamicPsychology.”
rangedtohaveone,McCullochisthechairman,go
Mead:Nowwhenwasthat?
talktoMcCulloch.”
Bateson:Thatwas... guess.
Mead:AndMcCullochhadagranddesigninhismind.
Mead:No,Idon’tguessthatone.
He got people into that conference, who he then
Bateson: Published in ’47. PsychoanalyticQuarterly.
keptfromtalking.
ForwhichIsuspectheverynearlygotreadoutof
Bateson: Yes,hehadadesignonhowtheshapeofthe
thechurch.Heneversaiditagain.
conversationwouldrunoverfiveyears—whathad
Mead:ItwasveryhardtoreadKubieoutofthechurch
tobesaidbeforewhatelsehadtobesaid.
because he had once been a neurologist, and that
Mead: He wouldn’t let Ralph Gerard talk. He said,
was the thing that they were all scared of. Now,
2Thetwentyparticipants included representatives ofanthropology, psychobiology, physiology, psychiatry, neurology, psychology, medicine,
anatomyandelectronics. AmongthosepresentwereGregoryBateson,LawrenceK.Frank,FrankFremont-Smith,LawrenceKubie,WarrenMc-
Culloch,MargaretMead,ArthurRosenblueth.
3IamtoldapaperbyW.RossAshbypredatedthisbyayearbutwedidn’tknowit.—Mead
4Rosenblueth,Arturo,NorbertWiener,andJulianBigelow.‘Behavior,PurposeandTeleology,’PhilosophyofScience.Vol.10,1942,18.
ForGod’sSake,Margaret! 2 MEAD,BATESON AND BRAND
“Youcantalknextyear.” Hewasveryautocratic. othergrouponaleveltheywerenotusedto.
Bateson: Yes, but an awfully good chairman in many Mead: Yes, and shifting back and forth between
ways.It’sveryraretohaveachairmanwhoknows these levels and keeping everything straight was
whatit’saboutatall. very interesting. So we used the model, ‘feed-
Brand:Whatwashisgranddesign? back,’ and Kurt Lewin—who didn’t understand
Bateson:Whoknows? any known language, but always had to reduce
themtoconcepts—hewentawaywiththeideaof
Mead:Well,Ithinkmoreorlesswhathappenedwas.
feedbackassomethingthatwhenyoudidanything
Bateson: Howdidthefirstmeetingdifferfromthesec-
with a group you went back and told them later
ondmeeting?
whathadhappened. Andhediedbeforeanything
Mead: There wasn’t even any usable terminology. At
much else happened. So the word‘feedback’got
firstwe called the thing‘feedback,’andthe mod-
introduced incorrectly into the international UN-
elsthatwewerepresentedwithatthatpointwere
ESCOtypeconferenceswhereit’sbeeneversince.
the guidedmissile, targetseeking. Now there had
Bateson: Inthesmallgroupcult,feedbacknowmeans
been another even that’s worth considering here.
eithertellingpeoplewhattheydid,oranswering.
ThatisthatWienerhadwrittenanarticleintheAt-
lantic, or Harper’s, refusing to give the war data Mead: Yes. “I don’t get any feedback from you,” or
“I can’t go on with this without some feedback.”
onguidedmissiles. Rememberthat?
It wouldn’t have survived if Kurt had lived. He
Bateson:Oh,yes.
wouldundoubtedlyhavegotitright.
Mead: He’d worked on them all throughthe war, and
Brand:Iwouldlikealittlemoredetailbackattheinitial
ofcoursetheyhadthematerialiftheyhadhunted
timewhenyouknewyouhadhitsomething.
forit,buttheymadethemistakeofaskinghimfor
Bateson: We knew we had, well, for me, I had anal-
some, and at that point he said that he would not
giveittothem,thewarwasover,andthiswasdata ysedthelatmulofSepikRiverinNaven5andIhad
analysedoutthefacttherewereinteractionswhich
thatcouldonlybeusedforwar-likepurposes. He
muststockpile.
wouldnotgiveittothem.
Brand:Thiswasyourschismogenesis?
Bateson:That’sright,itwastheAtlantic.
Bateson: This was schismogenesis, yes. We named it
Mead: They were talking almost entirely of negative
in’36.
feedback. By this time, Wiener and Bigelow and
JohnnyvonNeumannofcourse,weremembersof Mead: It hadn’tbeen namedyet. You’restarting back
the group, and Rosenblueth, Kurt Lewin, Molly beforeyounameditschismogenesis.
Harrower, Evelyn Hutchinson, Leonard Savage, Bateson:Well,Navenwaspublished.I’mtalkingabout
Henry Brosin and that Hungarian who always thestateIwasinwhenthisstuffappeared.
knew who was sleeping with who and it was the Mead:In’43.
onlythinghe was interested in, I’veforgottenhis Bateson: Yes. The next thing that followed that was
name.Well,thelistssurviveallright. ‘GeneralisedForeignPolicies.’ L.F. Richardson.6
Therewerethreegroupsofpeople. Therewere IwentbacktoEnglandin’39. Hitlerhadinvaded
themathematiciansandphysicists—peopletrained Poland. Bartlettsaid, “Youmightbeinterestedin
inthephysicalsciences,whowerevery,verypre- that,”throwingitacrosstheroomincontempt.
ciseinwhattheywantedtothinkabout.Therewas Mead: I’mgladIhaveanothercountagainstBartlett,I
a small groupof us, anthropologistsandpsychia- didn’tknowhehadcontemptforRichardson.
trists,whoweretrainedtoknowenoughaboutpsy- Bateson: For Richardson and for me, you see. It was
chologyin groupsso we knewwhatwas happen- contemptiblethatIwouldbeinterestedinthecon-
ing, and could use it, and disallow it. And then temptible. SoIranoffwiththatandkeptit(prob-
thereweretwoorthreegossipsinthemiddle,who ably it’s Bartlett’s copy of his files that we now
wereverysimplepeoplewhohadalotofloosein- have),andbroughtitbacktothiscountry.
tuitionandnodisciplinetowhattheyweredoing.
Brand:Whatwasinthatpaper?
In a sense it was the most interesting conference
Bateson: Thisis the mathematicsof armamentsraces.
I’ve ever been in, because nobody knew how to
Howdoyoubuildthemathematicsofasystemin
managethisthingsyet.
which what I do depends upon what you do, and
Brand: Soyouhadonegroupofpeoplethatwastoan-
whatyoudodependsuponwhatIdo, andwe get
5Bateson,Gregory.Naven.Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,1936.2ndedition,Stanford:StanfordUniversityPress,1958.
6L.R.Richardson.“GeneralizedForeignPolicies,”BritishJournalofPsychology,MonographySupplementXXIII,1939.
ForGod’sSake,Margaret! 3 MEAD,BATESON AND BRAND
intoathing.Richardsonsetalimitbyinvoking‘fa- Mead: Now, there were some other things like this
tigue.’Hestartedwithasimplepairofdifferential that were being talked about, and one was what
equationsinthepremisethatmyrateofarmament was called a vicious circle. Milton Erickson had
could be a linear function of your strength; and written a paper on a girl who quarrelled and had
viceversa. Thatledimmediatelytoanexponential headaches and got alienated from people, which
runaway. Headdeda‘fatigue’factorrepresenting ledtofurtherquarrels,andsoon.
thedrainonyourandmyresources. Thequestion Bateson: Yes,allthepositivefeedbackstuffwasready.
thenwaswhetherthesystemcouldsettle. Arewe And that presented the problem: whydon’tthese
goingtosettleamutual... there’sawordininter- systems blow their tops? And the moment they
national relations for slapping the other people’s came out with negative feedback, then one was
aggressionbackbythreat... abletosaywhytheydon’tblowtheirtops.
Mead:Youmeandeterrence? Brand:Thiswasawordandanideayouheardaboutin
Bateson: Yes, mutual deterrence. That word hadn’t ’43?
beeninventedthen. Thenintheappendix,hehad Bateson: That’swhennegativefeedbackcamein.
some revised equations in terms of what is your Mead:Wehadthingsaboutreversalsofsign...
strength and what is my strength, but what is the
Bateson: Thatwasanotherstory,that’sbeforeRichard-
difference between our strengths. He worked it
son, even, and way before feedback. Already
out in terms of the relation of two nations where in Naven there is a statement that complemen-
eachisstimulatedbytheamounttheothersideis
tary schismogenesis neutralises symmetrical, and
ahead. This was obviously symmetrical—latmul
vice-versa. Ifyougetintotoo-longa contrastbe-
SepikRiverschismogenesis—right?
tween the bosses andthe workers(whichis com-
I then wrote to him at that stage, and said,
plementaryschismogenesis),youputthemallout
“What about the other case, when you are stim-
on the cricket field and make them play cricket,
ulatedto aggressionby the weakness ofthe other
which puts them in a symmetricalsituation. And
side?”Whichisthecomplementaryschismogene-
itdoesn’tmatterwhowinsthegameofcricket,you
sis,right? Heworkedoutthealgebraforthat,and know.
said, “It’s very unpromising. I don’t recommend
Brand:Aslongasthey’reinthatmode...
nationstogetintothatall. Theordersofinstabil-
Bateson: Or if they’re too far in symmetrical rivalry,
itytheygetintoarethenveryserious.”
suchasaquarrellinghusbandandwife,whenone
Brand: Because that one would accelerate the differ-
ofthemsprainsinhisankle,incomesthemcom-
enceratherthanreducethedifference?
plementarywith dependency. Theysuddenlyfeel
Bateson:Acceleratethedifference,yes.
muchbetter.
Brand: A large amountof this strikes me as being the
Brand:Itdoesn’tmatterwhosprains?
war. Would cybernetics have begun without the
Bateson: It doesn’t matter who sprains his ankle, of
war? Richardson’sarmamentsrace,andWiener’s
coursenot.
missiles...
Brand:Soyouhadsomenotionthatallofthesevarious
Bateson: Wiener without a biologist wouldn’t have
pathologieswerestructurallythesame?
doneit.
Bateson: No,structurallyrelated,thattherewasasub-
Mead: Wiener was working on Rosenblueth’s stuff.
jectmatterofinquirydefinedbyallthese. Yousee
Now Richardson is a very peculiar character. He
thefantasticthingisthatin1856,beforethepub-
was a Quaker schoolteacher of mathematics. He
lication of the Origin of Species, Wallace in Ter-
did all the basic work on weather prediction. It
nate,Indonesia,hadapsychedelicspellfollowing
was used in World War II and he was never told
his malaria in which he invented the principle of
howitworked,becauseofsecurity. Hediedwith-
naturalselection. HewrotetoDarwinandhesaid,
outknowingaboutit.
“Look, natural selection is just like a steam en-
Bateson: Richardson was responding to World War I.
ginewithagovernor.”Thefirstcyberneticmodel.
AsaQuakerherefusedtobeararmsinWorldWar But then he only thought he had an illustration,
I, and he became an ambulance man. He sat in
hedidn’tthinkhe’dreallysaid probablythe most
thetrencheswaitingforthenextcallfortheambu-
powerful thing that’d been said in the 19th Cen-
lance workingoutthe mathematicsof armaments
tury.
races. Becausehewassurethatifonlythiscould
Mead:Onlynobodyknewit.
be got straight, the whole mess wouldn’t have to
Bateson: Nobody knew it. And there it is, still in
happen,whichindeedmightbetrue.
ForGod’sSake,Margaret! 4 MEAD,BATESON AND BRAND
the text. Nobody picked it up. Well, there was Mead:Gregorythoughtso,andLarryFrankthoughtso,
themachinery,the governoritself. Therewas the EvelynHutchinson;wehadRossAshbyover,how
mathematics of the machine with the governor, aboutSavage?
which was done by Clerk Maxwell in 1868, be- Bateson: I don’tthink so, no. You see, one of the es-
cause nobody knew how to write a blueprint for sentials,Stewart,forunderstandingit,wastohave
these bloody things—they would go into oscilla- been broughtup in the age when it wasn’t there,
tion.Thenthere’sClaudeBernardabout1890with whenpurposewasatotalmystery. Navenisadis-
themilieuinterne—theinternalmatrixofthebody, ciplinedbook,writtenwithoutteleology. Therule
control of temperature, control of sugar, and all wasthatyoumustnotinvoketeleology.Now,peo-
that.7 plelikeSavage,whowasamathematician,forone
Brand:Whichlaterbecamehomeostasis? thinghe neverfacedbiologicaldata, yousee. He
Bateson: WhichlaterbecamehomeostasisinCannon.8 didn’t know what a mystery it is that you have a
Butnobodyputthestufftogethertosay theseare nosebetweentwoeyes,andyoudon’thavenoses
theformalrelationswhichgofornaturalselection, ontheoutsidehere,youknow.Allthatsortofmys-
whichgoforinternalphysiology,whichgoforpur- terywasn’taquestionforhim. Now,ifyousayto
pose, which go for a cat trying to catch a mouse, somebody like that, “Why is the trunk of an ele-
which go for me picking up the salt cellar. This phantanose?”theycan’ttellyouwithoutanawful
was really done by Wiener, and Rosenblueth and sweatthatit’sbecauseit’sbetweentwoeyes. The
McCullochand Bigelow. And who really putthe formal-puzzlehasneverbeenpresentedtothem.
truththrough,Idon’tknow,doyou? Mead: I remember Robert Merton saying once that
Mead:No.WienerandMcCullochwerefirstpartnersin there wasn’t a person in the country who was
thisthinking,andthenbecamerivalswhenMcCul- thinking hard about problems who didn’t have a
loch went to MIT. As long as McCulloch stayed foldersomewheremarkedsomethinglike“circular
at Illinois and Wiener at MIT they were working systems.” Horney’sbook, The Neurotic Personal-
righttogether. WithbothofthemattheMITthey ityofOurTimes9 discussestheviciouscircle,and
becametotallyalienated,andthenWalterPittsgot interventionsin the circle, and the effectof inter-
involved. He was the youngest member of the vention. Milton’spaperonthatgirlwithmigraine
group. headaches and quarrelling with her friends, there
Bateson: Oh god, he was so clever. You’d set him a waslotsofstuffaround...
problem,youknow,andhewouldreachuptohis Bateson: Onpositivefeedback.
hairandtakeacoupleofstrands,andhewouldsay, Mead:Butalsoaboutpossibleintervention.
“Well, now,ifyousaythat,yousee,um,nothen, Bateson: But the essence of the other thing is thatit’s
yousee,”andhe’dworkitalloutwithhishair. notanintervention.
Mead: Hewasaveryoddboy. Now,oneoftheimpor- Mead: Yes, butaninterventionisaprecursorofthink-
tantpointsatthisstagewasonethatGregorykept ingof...
making, that a possible cross-disciplinary mathe- Bateson: Yes,yes. Allcyberneticentitiesaredisplaced
maticallanguagewasavailable.Wenevergotvery smallboys.
far with that because all you could ever get out
Mead:Displacedsmallwhat?
of people like Wiener was, “You need a longer
Bateson: Boys. They’rejacks. You knowwhat a jack
run.”Weusedtodrivethemabsolutelyoutoftheir
is? Ajackisaninstrumenttodisplaceasmallboy.
mindsbecausetheywerenotwillingtolookatpat-
Abootjackisathingforpullingoffboots’cause
tern,really. Whattheywantedwasaterriblylong
youhaven’tasmallboytopullitoffforyou.
runofdata.
Mead: I’llrememberthatnexttime. ThisisanEnglish
Bateson:Ofquantitativedata,essentially.
jokethatnoonewillunderstand.
Mead: Quantitativedata,andwenevergotthemreally
Bateson: I can’t help it. On the first steam engines,
to look at the problem of pattern. Von Neumann
you’ve got a pair of cylinders and you’ve got
cametheclosesttoit.
valves, and you pull this valve to run the steam
Bateson:Yes,hewasingamestheory,yousee.
into this one, close it, let it drive the piston, pull
Brand: Howmanyofyouwerethinkingyouhadsome it—this is done by hand. Then they invented the
kindofageneralsolution?
7ClaudeBernard.LeconssurlesPhenomenesdelaVieCommunesauxAnimauxetauxVegetaux.2vols.Paris:J.B.Bailliere,1878–1879.
8W.B.Cannon.ThewisdomoftheBody.NewYork:Norton,1932.
9KarenHorney:TheNeuroticPersonalityofOurTime.NewYork:Norton,1937.
ForGod’sSake,Margaret! 5 MEAD,BATESON AND BRAND
ideaofhavingtheflywheelcontrolthevalves.This didto aquietbaby. Butthe extenttowhichthere
displacedasmallboy. wasa systemin whichthe motherwasdependent
Brand:Thegovernordisplacedanotherone? on what the child had learned as the stimulus for
Bateson:Andthegovernordisplacedanothersmallboy, the next position wasn’t well articulated until we
who was to keep the engine going at a constant gotthecyberneticsconferencesgoing.
rate,that’sright. Nowthen,the JohnStroudstuff Bateson: The link-up between the behavioralsciences
isthestudyofthepsychologyofthehumanbeing spread very slowly and hasn’t really spread yet.
betweentwomachines. Thecyberneticiansinthenarrowsenseoftheword
In any device such as an ack-ack gun you’ve wentoffintoinput-output.
got a whole series of small boys in the situation Brand:Theywentoffintocomputerscience.
ofbeingbetweenamachineandanothermachine. Bateson: Computerscienceisinput-output.You’vegot
WhatJohnStroudworkedonwasthepsychology a box,andyou’vegotthislineenclosingthe box,
of that situation. He found what I still think are andthescienceisthescienceoftheseboxes.Now,
some very interesting things, namely that the or- the essence of Wiener’s cybernetics was that the
ders of equations (you know, equations in X, or science is the science of the whole circuit. You
in X2, or X3 ,or whatever) are discontinuous in see,thediagram...
thehumanmind,aswellasbeingdiscontinuousin
mathematical paper work. Where is John Stroud
now,doyoueverseehim?
Mead: He is retired, teaching at Simon Fraser some-
what,andhe’sbeenbroughtbackbyGerryO’Neill
intodiscussionsofspacecolonies.
Brand:Goodlord.
Mead: Hewasverymuchinterestedinspacecolonies.
He told me all about them twenty-fiveyears ago,
and I was interested in all the problemsthen, the
Mead: You’dbetterverbalizethisdiagramifit’sgoing
selectionofpeople,andwhatnot.
tobeonthetape.
Bateson:Stewart,youshouldgetholdofJohnStroud.
Bateson: Well, you can carry a piece of paper all the
Mead: Now Gerry has John Stroud’s manuscript and
wayhomewithyou. Theelectricboyshaveacir-
he’snotgoingtoreadituntilhe’sfinishedhisown.
cuit like that, and an event here is reported by a
Isaid,“Ithinkthat’sunscientificandchildish.”
sense organ of some kind, and affects something
Bateson: He wants credit for inventing anything that
thatputsin here. Thenyounowcutoffthereand
JohnStroudhadinvented.
there,thenyousaythere’saninputandanoutput.
Mead: Well,hedidinventitseparately,that’strue,and
Then you work on the box. What Wiener says is
he wants to prove it, because after all, what does
thatyouworkonthewholepictureanditsproper-
aphysicalsciencehaveintheworldexceptprior-
ties. Now,theremaybeboxesinsidehere,likethis
ity? I don’tblame them you know, because they
of all sorts, but essentially your ecosystem, your
haven’t got anything else. All they’re interested
organism-plus-environment,istobeconsideredas
in is priority. Theyspend weeksand monthsdis-
asinglecircuit.
cussingpriority. It’ssoboring. Somebodymailed
Brand:Thebiggercirclethere...
a letter three days beforesomebodyelse did, and
Bateson: And you’re not really concerned with an
theymadeawholemeetingaboutit.
input-output, but with the events within the big-
Brand: Margaret,whatwasyourperceptionatthetime
ger circuit, and youare part ofthe biggercircuit.
ofthe earlyMacy meetingsas to whatwas going
It’stheselinesaroundthebox(whicharejustcon-
on?
ceptual lines after all) which mark the difference
Mead: The thing that cybernetics made the most dif-
betweentheengineersand...
ference to me, aside from all the things that you
Mead: ... andbetweenthesystemspeopleandgeneral
know, in the social organisationfield, was the in-
systemstheory,too.
teractionbetweenthemotherandchild.Therehad
Bateson: Yes.
beentoomuchemphasisthatthereweretempera-
Brand: AkindofaMartinBuber-ishbreakdown,“I—
mentaldifferencesamongchildren,sothatyoure-
it”,wheretheyaretryingtokeepthemselvesoutof
spondeddifferentlytoahyperactivebabythanyou
that which they’restudying. The engineeris out-
ForGod’sSake,Margaret! 6 MEAD,BATESON AND BRAND
sidethebox... andWienerisinsidethebox. tothesouthofeast, andnowit’sgoingtoyawing
Bateson: AndWieneris insidethe box; I’minside the allacrosstheAtlantic,right?
box... Brand:Thisishunting,technically.
Mead: I’minsidethebox. Yousee,Wienernamedthe Bateson:Thisistechnicallyhunting,andifyouwantto
thing,andofcoursetheword“cybernetics”comes cut thatdown, whatyou’vegot to do is to have a
fromtheGreekwordforhelmsman. machineontopofthatmachine,anothermachine
Bateson: ItactuallyexistedasawordbeforeWiener— which measuresthe rate at whichthe ship is cor-
it’sanineteenthcenturyword. rectingitserror.Thefasteritiscorrectingitserror,
Mead: Yes, but he wrote the book Cybernetics10 and thesloweryouhaveitcorrectitserror.Itwillthen,
sort of patented the idea to that extent. And you see, actually hold itself before it gets to due
then he went to Russia, and was very well re- east. If you’ve ever handled the tiller of a small
ceived. The Russians were crazy aboutthis right boat,youknowtheproblem.
away—it fit right to their lives. But one of the Brand: It’sadoublelayerinotherwords. Thefirstma-
bigdifficultiesin Russian psychologyis thatthey chineistreatingtheboatassomethingwhichneeds
have great difficulty learning that anything’sirre- tobegivennegativefeedback,andthenthesecond
versible. So cybernetics spread all over the So- machineistreatingthefirstmachineassomething
viet Union very rapidly, and in Czechoslovakia, whichneedstobegivennegativefeedback.
whereaswhatspreadhere was systemstheoryin- Bateson:That’sright.You’vegotahierarchyoflogical
steadofcybernetics. typesthere,andtheirvariouscomplexities.
Brand: Howdidthathappen? Itseemslikesomething Brand: Isfeed forwarda kind ofa discountingof part
wentkindofawry. ofthecorrectivesignal?
Mead:Americanslikemechanicalmachines. Bateson: It’s a discounting of the corrective signal in
Bateson:Theyliketools. termsoftheerrorwhichthecorrectivesignalwill
Brand:Materialtoolsmorethanconceptualtools. generateifallowedtocontinue.
Bateson: No, because conceptual tools aren’t concep- Mead: Now, Stewart, whatwe thoughtwe were going
tualtoolsinAmerica,they’renotpartofyou. to talk about, but you didn’t let us say what we
Brand: How about McCulloch? He loved machinery. wanted to talk about, you started something else
Didhealsoseehimselfasinsidethebox? underthepretensethatyouwantedtostartthetape
recorder (I want to point out I followed all those
Mead: Well, one ofthe thingshe spenta greatdealof
manoeuvers)what we had said we were going to
timeonwasperceptionmachines,separatesensory
talkaboutwastheneedofhaving‘somedataflow-
apparatusforthedeafortheblind.
ingthroughthesystem.’
[After reminiscence about other meetings follow-
ing the Macy period the subject ‘feed forward’ Brand:Somedataflowingthroughthesystem?
comesup.] Bateson: Yes. I set my classes an assignment. If they
Bateson: As far as I was ever able to make out ‘feed can,theywillhandleitpurelyabstractly.Andthey
forward’wasimplicitandmoreorlessexplicitin then get off into an awful mess of ill-drawn ab-
the originalWienerpaper. The feedforwardpro- stractionswhichactuponotherill-drawnabstrac-
cessiswhatyougetbyusingnottheprimaryvari- tions. Butifyoucanmakethemfoolaroundwith
able,butthederivativeofthevariable. You’vegot dataofanysort,whilethey’replayingwiththeab-
amachineforsteeringaship,anautomaticsteerer, stractions, then you get something. I keep a fish
andyousetherlooseintheAtlantic,andyouwant tankgoingthere,becauseafishtankisanicething,
herto go to Londonor some suchplace: she’s to really, to have in the back of your mind while
saileast. Youhaveacompasscard,andyoumea- you’re thinking about ever it might be. Norbert
sure the error between the compass card and the Wiener, when he had a problem, used to sit with
directiontheship’spointing,andyouusethatan- thewindblowingonacurtain.
gletocontrolthesteeringmachine,whichpullsa Mead:IthoughtthatwasvonNeumann.
rudderthiswayandthat,right? Dependingonthe Bateson: ItcouldhavebeenvonNeumann. Pittsdidit
error.So,whentheerrorisnorthward,themachine bydisturbinghishair.
tellstheruddertoswingitacrosssouthward,right? Now, this goes along with: ‘always the mul-
Whenitisgoingdueeast,theshiphaswayon,ro- tiple approach.’ Any Hebrew poetry is like this.
tational momentum, and is going to go way over ‘Thecandlesarewhite,astranslucentfishes,’you
10NorbertWiener,Cybernetics.Cambridge,Massachusetts:TechnologyPress,1948.
ForGod’sSake,Margaret! 7 MEAD,BATESON AND BRAND