Angels Fear Revisited:
Gregory Bateson’s Cybernetic Theory of Mind
Applied to Religion-Science Debates
Gregory Bateson’s Cybernetic Theory of Mind
Applied to Religion-Science Debates
Mary Catherine Bateson
The Fundamentalist Error Today
It is probably no coincidence that at the same time that these old epistemological debates resurface, we are seeing a renewal of apparently religiously inspired warfare all over the planet, and we are seeing a resurgence of the kind of understanding of faith that was expressed by my fundamentalist student who believed in the literal truth-value of religious texts. We are seeing not only Islamic fundamentalism, not only Christian fundamentalism, but also Jewish fundamentalism, Hindu fundamentalism, and patches of Buddhist fundamentalism (although Buddhism has some built in protections). Fundamentalism is not limited to “religions” however – it arises in Marxism and psychoanalysis, and, most seriously in America today, in free market economic fundamentalism and the strict construction of the Constitution, constitutional fundamentalism.
So a pattern of thinking – this style of taking things literally rather than regarding any text as having multiple levels of meaning with the interpretation changing over time, always depending on the context – is becoming a widespread epidemic. Both Christians and Muslims are increasing in numbers, and in many places, especially Africa, the forms of Christianity and Islam that are spreading are the most literal and the most supernaturally oriented, without the polite reinterpretation of texts as myth or metaphor that is fairly common among believers in the West.
Much of this has developed since Gregory’s death, but I remember arguing with him in the 1970s that fundamentalism is by definition a modern pathology. Certainly the ancients took the creation story as true. But, without the modern concept of scientific knowledge as a particular kind of knowledge that is established and modified in specific ways, truth had a different, more ambiguous meaning. Fundamentalism attempts to give to non-scientific ways of knowing the status that is given to science, but it omits the openness of science to new evidence that is essential to that status.
Although what is happening in the United States these days looks fairly strange from the vantage point of Europe, what is equally worrying is that so many educated people throughout the industrialized world have simply become deaf to religious language, and have no access to thinking about the meaning of religion in people’s lives and motivations. Fundamentalists think their beliefs are “true” in a simplistic way, while others think they are “false” in a simplistic way. Scientifically educated people have not only ceased to believe particular doctrines but they have lost the capacity to empathize with those who do, transforming methodologies and useful heuristics, like reductionism, into ontologies. We need to be equally on guard against multiple kinds of illiteracy, for aesthetic and spiritual illiteracy may be as dangerous as scientific illiteracy.
Some of the pathologies of contemporary life may be due to the loss of kinds of knowledge that are now unacceptable because of the way they are coded and mixed with muddle-headedness. The rise of fundamentalism in a secularizing world is reminiscent of the Gospel story,
There is still however a need for an integrative level of scientific description such as Gregory found in cybernetics. Perhaps our view is necessarily dependent on multiple alternative descriptions – we may even need a little help from some of the nine and sixty tribal ways to understand the world. It has been a mission of anthropology to collect and make available these multiple visions. What we ask of science is first of all, that it always include a degree of tentativeness and openness – and second, not that it be true but that it fit the evidence, which is very different. One could ask the same kind of questions of mythologies of many sorts. Do they fit? Do they offer an interpretative frame for the adaptation of a cluster of human beings in a particular environment?
Much of Gregory’s portion of Angels Fear was written at the Esalen Institute, in California, where Gregory went to live after his cancer, in the year before his death. In one essay written there, titled “Neither Supernatural nor Mechanical”, Gregory says he is horrified both by conventional scientific and technological views of the world and by the supernaturalism of Esalen. “The problem is not, however, entirely symmetrical,” he wrote, “I have, after all, chosen to live at Esalen, in the midst of the counterculture, with its incantations, its astrological searching for truth, its divination … My friends here love me and I love them … The beliefs of the counterculture and of the human potential movement may be superstitious and irrational, but their reason for being … was a good reason. It was to [generate that buffer of diversity that will] protect the human being against obsolescence”. The bracketing of a portion of the previous sentence indicates an insertion that I made in editing, for one of the strangely attractive features of Esalen is the comfort with which a huge miscellany of beliefs manage to co-exist. No zero sum truth there. Gregory feels sure that his counterculture friends are talking nonsense, but perhaps the nonsense is connected to something worth knowing, which might promote a degree of sensitivity or empathy with other organisms and a degree of perception and response to the pattern which connects.
So a pattern of thinking – this style of taking things literally rather than regarding any text as having multiple levels of meaning with the interpretation changing over time, always depending on the context – is becoming a widespread epidemic. Both Christians and Muslims are increasing in numbers, and in many places, especially Africa, the forms of Christianity and Islam that are spreading are the most literal and the most supernaturally oriented, without the polite reinterpretation of texts as myth or metaphor that is fairly common among believers in the West.
Much of this has developed since Gregory’s death, but I remember arguing with him in the 1970s that fundamentalism is by definition a modern pathology. Certainly the ancients took the creation story as true. But, without the modern concept of scientific knowledge as a particular kind of knowledge that is established and modified in specific ways, truth had a different, more ambiguous meaning. Fundamentalism attempts to give to non-scientific ways of knowing the status that is given to science, but it omits the openness of science to new evidence that is essential to that status.
Although what is happening in the United States these days looks fairly strange from the vantage point of Europe, what is equally worrying is that so many educated people throughout the industrialized world have simply become deaf to religious language, and have no access to thinking about the meaning of religion in people’s lives and motivations. Fundamentalists think their beliefs are “true” in a simplistic way, while others think they are “false” in a simplistic way. Scientifically educated people have not only ceased to believe particular doctrines but they have lost the capacity to empathize with those who do, transforming methodologies and useful heuristics, like reductionism, into ontologies. We need to be equally on guard against multiple kinds of illiteracy, for aesthetic and spiritual illiteracy may be as dangerous as scientific illiteracy.
Some of the pathologies of contemporary life may be due to the loss of kinds of knowledge that are now unacceptable because of the way they are coded and mixed with muddle-headedness. The rise of fundamentalism in a secularizing world is reminiscent of the Gospel story,
44 Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished.where a man is cleansed of an unclean spirit who then comes back with seven others more evil than himself and, finding the man’s soul swept and garnished, moves back in with his companions. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. I think that the only defense against what I take to be a dangerous and erroneous set of attitudes towards religion is a much more flexible understanding of the possible meanings of faith, as contrasted with belief, in people’s lives, and in the lives of scientists. There is an apparent symmetry of mutual blindness.
45 Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.
(Matthew xii:44–45)
44 Allora dice: Ritornerò nella mia casa donde sono uscito; e giuntovi, la trova vuota, spazzata e adorna.
45 Allora va e prende seco altri sette spiriti peggiori di lui, i quali, entrati, prendon quivi dimora; e l’ultima condizione di cotest’uomo divien peggiore della prima. Così avverrà anche a questa malvagia generazione.
(Matteo, 12:44-45)
There is still however a need for an integrative level of scientific description such as Gregory found in cybernetics. Perhaps our view is necessarily dependent on multiple alternative descriptions – we may even need a little help from some of the nine and sixty tribal ways to understand the world. It has been a mission of anthropology to collect and make available these multiple visions. What we ask of science is first of all, that it always include a degree of tentativeness and openness – and second, not that it be true but that it fit the evidence, which is very different. One could ask the same kind of questions of mythologies of many sorts. Do they fit? Do they offer an interpretative frame for the adaptation of a cluster of human beings in a particular environment?
Much of Gregory’s portion of Angels Fear was written at the Esalen Institute, in California, where Gregory went to live after his cancer, in the year before his death. In one essay written there, titled “Neither Supernatural nor Mechanical”, Gregory says he is horrified both by conventional scientific and technological views of the world and by the supernaturalism of Esalen. “The problem is not, however, entirely symmetrical,” he wrote, “I have, after all, chosen to live at Esalen, in the midst of the counterculture, with its incantations, its astrological searching for truth, its divination … My friends here love me and I love them … The beliefs of the counterculture and of the human potential movement may be superstitious and irrational, but their reason for being … was a good reason. It was to [generate that buffer of diversity that will] protect the human being against obsolescence”. The bracketing of a portion of the previous sentence indicates an insertion that I made in editing, for one of the strangely attractive features of Esalen is the comfort with which a huge miscellany of beliefs manage to co-exist. No zero sum truth there. Gregory feels sure that his counterculture friends are talking nonsense, but perhaps the nonsense is connected to something worth knowing, which might promote a degree of sensitivity or empathy with other organisms and a degree of perception and response to the pattern which connects.
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