Gregory Bateson was a philosopher, anthropologist, photographer, naturalist, and poet, as well as the husband and collaborator of Margaret Mead. With a new foreword by his daughter Mary Katherine Bateson, this classic anthology of his major work will continue to delight and inform generations of readers.

"This collection amounts to a retrospective exhibition of a working life. . . . Bateson has come to this position during a career that carried him not only into anthropology, for which he was first trained, but into psychiatry, genetics, and communication theory. . . . He . . . examines the nature of the mind, seeing it not as a nebulous something, somehow lodged somewhere in the body of each man, but as a network of interactions relating the individual with his society and his species and with the universe at large."—D. W. Harding, New York Review of Books

"[Bateson's] view of the world, of science, of culture, and of man is vast and challenging. His efforts at synthesis are tantalizingly and cryptically suggestive. . . .This is a book we should all read and ponder."—Roger Keesing, American Anthropologist

A re-issue of Gregory Bateson's classic work. It summarizes Bateson's thinking on the subject of the patterns that connect living beings to each other and to their environment.

"Naven" is the name of a peculiar ritual practiced by Iatmul, a head-hunting tribe of New Guinea.Th e ceremony is performed to congratulate members of the tribe upon the completion of notable accomplishments, among which homicide ranks highest. Ordinarily this tribe insists upon an extreme contrast between the sexes, but in the "naven" ceremony, tranvestitism and ritual homosexuality are represented. The "naven" serves in this book as a motive around which the author has constructed one of the most influential works of field anthropology ever written.

貝特森的研究為一種「致力於結合各種信息的科學」，其要點是「連結的模式」。他的貢獻從進化論到認識論、臨床心理學、精神病學、文化人類學，一直到溝通與學習的領域。貝特森說明因為欠缺思考的工具，而導致某些思考習慣的養成。他所做的不僅是去面對科技整合的挑戰，穿梭在看來毫不相關的學科之間，像個古怪又吸引人的知性盜獵者。他關心的是我們思考事物的方式。這是超越任何一個學科的任務：它超越了生物學和人類學，超越了多重學科間的問題，超越了兩種文化的差異，超越了科學與人文。貝特森追尋的，就是那一個能夠知會我們整體文化思考模式的組織原則。本書的首要任務，就是為整個心智世界打造一個圖像。觀念、信息、符合邏輯的或實用的一致性所需的步驟，它們及其他相類事物，是如何結合起來的？邏輯、形成觀念鏈的標準程序，與一個由物體和生命、部分和整體所組成的外在世界，有何種關聯？貝特森所做的研究，不僅是跨越學科之間的界線，更重塑我們的心智景觀--使我們了解觀念的生態和心智的生態--好讓我們以嶄新的眼光來看這個世界。貝特森邀請我們放下對清晰明確的理念、清晰明確人士的笛卡兒式追求，而去尋求更具生態意識的、更多面向的、更富創造性的理解。對於這個探索，貝特森要我們以一種更好的、更細緻的理解來通達它，並認識到從證實轉為探索、從簡單的答案轉為複雜的問題，在心態轉換間所受的限制及可能性。他創新的提問方式，引領我們到心智的自然、自然的心智，以及連結的模式。

By virtue of its unique method of presentation, this beautiful and distinguished book, commemorating the 125th anniversary of the found ing of the New York Academy of Sciences, is both a source-book and a succinct interpretation of the culture of Bali. It presents over 700 candid photographs selected from 25,000 Leica negatives, in a highly organized and integrated illustration of certain major features of Balinese life.
These are accompanied by explanatory comments, occasionally by excerpts from notes made parallel to the taking of the pictures, and by interpretative summaries pointing out the relationships between pictures grouped together. The record of “visual and kinaesthetic learning” illustrates the unique contribution of the photographic document at its best. Here the empathy-stimulating quality of the pictures, their vivid detail and generous sequences, carry the reader into a concrete experience of training-inthe-culture which verbal material could not give. The 200 pages of plates and commentary are preceded by an essay on Balinese character by Mead, in descriptive and interpretative form. This end-result of observation, organization, and analysis is thus brought into relation to the photographs.