Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology

Bateson contrasts traditional causal explanations with cybernetic reasoning. While causal explanations attribute events to direct forces, cybernetics focuses on restraints—conditions that limit possibilities and thus define outcomes. Bateson explores how constraints create order, using examples like natural selection, where viable traits persist because others are restrained.

Cybernetic explanation, Bateson argues, emphasizes negative reasoning, identifying why alternative possibilities did not occur. Bateson also emphasizes patterns, redundancy, and information flow as central to this explanatory model. Redundancy, or predictability, reduces uncertainty within systems and shapes communication, perception, and evolution. For instance, the structure of a tree or a jigsaw puzzle exemplifies how restraints guide interpretation and create coherence.

Feedback loops and circuits are crucial in cybernetics, shaping non-random responses to random events. Bateson notes that meaning emerges from relationships and contexts rather than isolated objects. He underscores the hierarchical nature of communication, where each level derives meaning from a broader context, like words within sentences or sentences within conversations.

Bateson takes a critical stance against the localization of information, arguing that patterns and meaning exist across systems rather than in discrete entities. He concludes by emphasizing that all transformations within communication systems arise from patterns, not physical forces, and that the absence of order is the sole source of novelty.