MULTIPLE VERSIONS OF THE WORLD:

CONFERENCE MARKING 100 YEARS SINCE

GREGORY BATESON’S BIRTH

"What is the pattern which connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose, and all of them to me and me to you?" --Gregory Bateson

a special event convened at

Santa Clara University’s

campus in Silicon Valley

(www.scu.edu)

 

The Center for Performing Arts Recital Hall:

(http://www.scu.edu/music/facility.html)

 

Hosted by SCU’s Center for Science Technology and Society

 (www.sts.scu.edu)

 

Friday, November 12, 2004

Evening reception at the University’s de Saisset Museum:

http://www.scu.edu/desaisset

On-stage discussion by 3 prominent/public personalities

Moderated by: TBD

-with opening musical performance

-premiere of a short film by/about GB

-first-ever showing of GB photos

 

Saturday, November 13, 2004

Day-long conference program

Timed to coincide with the American Anthropological Association’s 103^rd Annual Meeting

 

Sponsored by

*Institute for Intercultural Studies http://www.interculturalstudies.org

*Gateway Pacific Foundation http://www.EarthTrain.org

*“YES! Magazine” http://YESMagazine.org

*Positive Futures Network  http://YESMagazine.org/aboutPFN.html

*Urban Age Institute http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/urban/urbanage.htm

*“Urban Age” Magazine” http://www.worldbank.org/html/fpd/urban/urb_age/fall99/fall99.htm

--and others

 

Organized by

Gordon Feller

870 Estancia

San Rafael, California 94903 – USA

phone +1-4154914233

email: GordonF20@comcast.net

 

Conference Program:

*Greetings and welcome by SCU President; acknowledgement of sponsors; and of SCU Anthropology Department chair; SCU Philosophy Department chair; SCU Psychology Department chair

 

Speaking Commitments in hand from:

*Co-chair: Mary Catherine Bateson, Institute for Intercultural Studies (MA/NY)

*Mayor Jerry Brown, City of Oakland; former Gov. of California (CA)

*James Koch, Director of SCU Center on Science, Technology and Society (CA)

*Nathan Gray, co-founder OXFAM America; founder, EarthTrain (CA)

*Tim Campbell, author Quiet Revolution; Leadership and Innovation; Unknown Cities (WashDC)

*Jay Ogilvy, co-founder, Global Business Network; author, Creating Better Futures (CA)

 

Others (yet to be contacted and/or yet to be confirmed):

*Charles Hampden-Turner (UK)

*John Todd, Ocean Arks (MA and Costa Rica)

*David Lipset

*John Brockman. Edge Foundation (NY)

*Robert W. Rieber

*Peter Harries-Jones

*William Irwin Thomson, Lindisfarne (CO and Berne)

*Douglas G. Flemons

*Stewart Brand, Global Business Network/Monitor Group (CA)

*Elizabeth Brumfiel, president of the American Anthropological Association

*Sergio Manghi, University of Parma (Italy), author of Attraverso Bateson

 

Friday evening reception wines donated by: TBD

Friday evening reception foods donated by: TBD

Saturday Luncheon and Coffee Breaks donated by: TBD

Slideshow of GB photographs; presentation by: TBD

Exhibit of newly mounted display of GB photographs; presentation at SCU Museum (First showing
of Bateson Archive’s photo collections from UC Santa Cruz)

 

For more on Gregory Bateson….

http://www.interculturalstudies.org/IIS/Bateson/biography.html

http://www.interculturalstudies.org/IIS/Bateson/bibliography.html

http://www.oikos.org/baten.htm#BIOGRAPHY

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/103-4103623-4194235

http://www.fetchbook.co.uk/search_Gregory_Bateson/searchBy_Author.html

 

LIST OF POTENTIAL EVENT PARTNERS/SPONSORS

Potential Co-Sponsors from amongst Bateson’s Book Publishers

http://www.bantambooks.com

a number of others

 

Potential Non-Profit Institution Co-Sponsors

http://www.SFZC.org

http://www.Esalen.org

http://www.noetic.org/ions/new.html

Point Foundation

University of California at Santa Cruz (Special Collections, University Library)

Edge Foundation http://www.edge.org

 

Potential Professional Association Co-Sponsors:

http://www.camft.org/StaticContent/1/intro.html

http://www.ahpweb.org

http://www.psych.org

http://www.apa.org

American Philosophical Society http://www.amphilsoc.org

American Anthropological Association

 

Potential Media Partners/Magazines + Newspapers:

http://www.wholeearthmag.com

http://www.wired.com/wired/current.html

http://Parabola.org

http://www.SFGATE.org

 

Potential Media Partners/TV Broadcasters:

http://www.kqed.org

 

Potential Donors of Catering/Food/Beverages:

SF Zen Center’s Greens Restaurant

http://greensrest.citysearch.com

 

REVIEWS/COMMENTS RELATED TO “MIND AND NATURE”

"I have taught various branches of behavioral biology and cultural anthropology to American students ranging from college freshmen to psychiatric residents, in various schools and teaching hospitals, and I have encountered a very strange gap in their thinking that springs from a lack of certain tools of thought. This lack is rather equally distributed at all levels of education, among students of both sexes and among humanists as well as scientists. Specifically, it is a lack of knowledge of the presuppositions not only of science but of everyday life." (Gregory Bateson in Mind and Nature, p. 23)

 

“Providing these tools of thought, and exploring the presuppositions of science and everyday life is what this classic of transdisciplinary thought is about. Bateson's Mind and Nature has influenced scholars in disciplines as diverse as biology, management theory, creativity research, family therapy, communication, systems theory, and epistemology.”

 

"Gregory Bateson's thought has been generative because of its transdisciplinarity. Nourished by sources at some considerable distance from each other, Bateson made the streams flow together, and in this confluence developed some of the key ideas that will allow us to face the future."

Edgar Morin, Emeritus Director, French National Research Center (CNRS), author of Homeland Earth

 

"Mind and Nature is one of those rarest of literary jewels: its message shines with increasing intensity as we continue our descent into the shadows of a disconnected relationship with Nature. Bateson illuminates a path toward recovering the wholeness of life."

Brian Goodwin, Schumacher College, author of How the Leopard Changed Its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity.

 

A thinker so far ahead of his time it takes your breath away. "But meet we shall/ And meet and meet again/ Where dead men meet/On lips of living men." That was one of Gregory's favourite poems. And how true it is of his influence!

Charles Hampden-Turner, author of Charting the Corporate Mind, Cambridge University

 

This classic book summarizes Gregory Bateson's thinking on the subject of the patterns that connect living beings to each other and to their environment. Every warning that it contains is now coming home to roost, from the dangers of "chopping up the ecology" in the effort to dominate nature, to the lack of "systemic wisdom" in the effort to change behavior. It has been a kind of moral compass for me over the years, telling me which way might be true North.

Lynn Hoffman, St. Joseph's College, author, Foundations of Family Therapy

 

Mind and Nature is a bridging volume between our philosophical roots and the bioinformatic sciences including evolutionary psychology. Bateson takes epistemology very seriously. This is an important book, timely now because the author was far ahead of his time.

Harold Morowitz, George Mason University, author of Entropy and the Magic Flute.

 

Mind and Nature is an important book with profound implications for psychology, biology, and the ecology of mind.

Frank Barron, University of California Santa Cruz, author of No Rootless Flower.

 

"The years have ripened his ideas, metaphors, conversations, and stories, revealing a web of living clarity. Now is the time to read and re-read him."

Bradford Keeney, Mental Research Institute, author of Aesthetics of Change

 

"Mind and Nature are two ongoing, creative tautologies which reflect each other and whose internal engines, evolution and learning, are isomorphic components of one vast ecology. As Bateson puts it in the introduction to this book: "Mind became, for me, a reflection of large parts and many parts of the natural world outside the thinker."

Giuseppe O. Longo, University of Trieste, author of Homo Technologicus

 

Gregory Bateson wrote far ahead of his time. Only now do we recognize his astonishing wisdom and profound insights. His "pattern that connects," then a metaphor, has become the reality of our digital era. His "ecology of mind(s)" provides a frame to see our larger environmental responsibilities. Mind and Nature challenges us to critically examine how we participate in rewriting nature.

Klaus Krippendorff, Gregory Bateson Professor for Cybernetics, Language, and Culture, The Annenberg School for Communication University of Pennsylvania, author of Content Analysis

 

"MIND AND NATURE is the best distillation of Gregory Bateson's wide-ranging ideas, whose relevance continues to grow in the 21st century. One of the reasons I keep paying attention to Bateson's thinking is that it keeps newly refolding on itself with the complex sweetness of mental baklava."

Stewart Brand, Global Business Network, author of The Clock of the Long Now

 

"Gregory Bateson was for me one of the truly wise men of the 20th century; at times not immediately transparent, but always inspiring."

Ernst Von Glasersfeld, University of Massachussetts Amherst, author of Radical Constructivism