The Meaning of Pattern

Abstract

In the late 1970s, when the eminent anthropologist and biologist Gregory Bateson sought to codify his influential views on the ecology of mind, he chose the idea of pattern as his central heuristic device. The choice was not surprising, for Bateson, in a remarkably productive career as both scientist and educator, had by that time been using this concept to explore, identify and represent the essential features of biology and anthropology for more than a quarter of a century. In his summative Mind and Nature, published in 1979, Bateson related one early experience in his career that illustrates particularly well the power that the notion of pattern can have in helping to organise one’s thinking in fundamental ways.