Book on Gregory Bateson, Science and Peirce

Some of you may not have heard of this new book on Gregory Bateson as a precursor to biosemiotics:

A Legacy for Living Systems

Gregory Bateson as Precursor to Biosemiotics

Hoffmeyer, Jesper (Ed.)

Series: Biosemiotics , Vol. 2

2008, X, 290 p., Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-4020-6705-1

Keywords:

• Biosemiotics
• Evolution
• Gregory Bateson
• Meaning
• Mind

About this book:
Gregory Bateson’s contribution to 20th century thinking has appealed to scholars from a wide range of fields dealing in one way or another with aspects of communication and epistemology. A number of his insights were taken up and developed further in anthropology, psychology, evolutionary biology and communication theory. But the large, trans-disciplinary synthesis that, in his own mind, was his major contribution to science received little attention from the mainstream scientific communities.

This book represents a major attempt to revise this deficiency. Scholars from ecology, biochemistry, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, anthropology and philosophy discuss how Bateson's thinking might lead to a fruitful reframing of central problems in modern science. Most important perhaps, Bateson's bioanthropology is shown to play a key role in developing the set of ideas explored in the new field of biosemiotics. The idea that organismic life is indeed basically semiotic or communicative lies at the heart of the biosemiotic approach to the study of life.

The only book of its kind, this volume provides a key resource for the quickly-growing substratum of scholars in the biosciences, philosophy and medicine who are seeking an elegant new approach to exploring highly complex systems.

Contents:
Introduction: Bateson the precursor; J. Hoffmeyer
1. Angels fear revisited; M.C. Bateson
2. From thing to relation. On Bateson's bioanthropology; J. Hoffmeyer
3. What connects the map to the territory; T. Cashman
4. The pattern which connects pleroma to creature; T. Deacon, J. Sherman
5. Bateson’s method: double description; J. Hui, T. Cashman, and T. Deacon
6. Gregory Bateson's relevance to current molecular biology; L. Bruni
7. Process ecology: Creatura in an open universe; R.E. Ulanowicz
8. Connections in action – bridging implicit and explicit domains; T. Shilhab, C. Gerlach
9. Bateson: biology with meaning; B. Goodwin
10. Gregory Bateson's 'uncovery' of ecological aesthetics; P. Harries-Jones
11. Collapsing the wave function of meaning: the epistemological matrix of talk-in interaction; D. Favareau
12. Re-enchanting evolution: transcending fundamentalisms through a mythopoetic epistemology; G. Mengel
13. Bateson and Peirce on the pattern that connects and the sacred; S. Brier
14. Bateson, Peirce and the sign of the sacred; D. Eicher-Catt