{"id":544,"date":"2012-06-08T07:11:13","date_gmt":"2012-06-08T07:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asc-cybernetics.org\/2012\/?page_id=544"},"modified":"2012-06-09T04:15:58","modified_gmt":"2012-06-09T04:15:58","slug":"the-paradigm-of-ecology","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/asc-cybernetics.org\/2012\/?page_id=544","title":{"rendered":"The Paradigm of Ecology in <em>Dune<\/em> and <em>Steps to an Ecology of Mind<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Participant: Bruce Clarke<br \/>\nAffiliation: Literature and Science. Texas Tech University<br \/>\nFormat: Presentation and Conversation<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/asc-cybernetics.org\/2012\/?page_id=95\">Themes<\/a>: recursion, paradigm<\/p>\n<p>This talk will reflect on the remarkable circumstance that a key statement in Gregory Bateson\u2019s <em>Steps to an Ecology of Mind<\/em> repeats nearly verbatim a passage from Frank Herbert\u2019s celebrated science fiction novel <em>Dune<\/em>. Setting up this comparison so that the passage from Dune can echo meaningfully against Bateson\u2019s text, I will offer some historical and conceptual interpretations for this striking resonance. Both Herbert and Bateson inherit the stateside inflection on the shift in the discipline of ecology in the 20th century from a descriptive form of natural history to a theoretical systems science. Arriving in the vanguard of 1960s counterculture, in the name of the science of ecology, Herbert\u2019s fiction presents mind expansion and alternative communities in a context of global environmental concerns. Bateson carries out a comparable shift, from ecology as a natural-scientific metadiscipline on a par with cybernetics and specifically focused on the interrelations of life and environment, to ecology as a traveling concept, a mobile philosophical figure for any situation of systemic complexity and interdependence. In their own ways, both mark a particular cultural crest, when the discourse of ecology\u2014ecosystem ecology in particular\u2014is joined with its sibling discourse of cybernetics by thinkers crossing over from mainstream scientific ontology to the new epistemologies of the systems counterculture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Participant: Bruce Clarke Affiliation: Literature and Science. Texas Tech University Format: Presentation and Conversation Themes: recursion, paradigm This talk will reflect on the remarkable circumstance that a key statement in Gregory Bateson\u2019s Steps to an Ecology of Mind repeats nearly &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/asc-cybernetics.org\/2012\/?page_id=544\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":26,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-544","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asc-cybernetics.org\/2012\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asc-cybernetics.org\/2012\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asc-cybernetics.org\/2012\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asc-cybernetics.org\/2012\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asc-cybernetics.org\/2012\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=544"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/asc-cybernetics.org\/2012\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":826,"href":"https:\/\/asc-cybernetics.org\/2012\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/544\/revisions\/826"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asc-cybernetics.org\/2012\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asc-cybernetics.org\/2012\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}