Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind: Collected essays in anthropology, psychiatry, evolution, and epistemology. Jason Aronson.
The title precisely defines the contents. These essays, written over thirty-five years, combine to propose a new way of thinking about ideas and about those aggregrates of ideas that Bateson terms minds. The book builds a bridge between the facts of life and behavior and what we know about the nature of pattern and order.
Bateson is concerned with four sorts of subject matter: anthropology, psychiatry, biological evolution and genetics, and the new epistemology from systems theory and ecology. This book addresses Bateson's thesis that in scientific research one starts from two beginnings, each with its own authority: the observations cannot be denied, and the fundamentals must be fitted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)