On imagination: reconciling knowledge and life, or what does "Gregory Bateson" stand for?
This article presents a reading of Gregory Bateson's oeuvre, focusing on his interest in the representational gap between map and territory, and its importance in the development of his redefinition of the concept of "mind," his new discipline called "ecology of ideas," and a methodology congruent to it based on the logics of metaphor. Inquiries on three initial stories from different domains allow the use of homologies between form and content in the article. This reading of Bateson's oeuvre stresses his questioning (like Derrida's) of the metaphysics of presence on which Western philosophy has been mostly based, and of the central role of imagination as a balancing factor for a family therapy that he both contributed to and saw with reservations.
Pakman
Marcelo
M
D003657:Decision Making; D005196:Family Therapy / Q000266:history*; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D019359:Knowledge; D019365:Metaphor; D010684:Philosophy