Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred - Hardcover

Bateson, Gregory

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0025076701 ISBN 13: 9780025076709

Publisher: Macmillan Pub Co, 1987

Synopsis

Angels Fear is the final sustained thinking of the great Gregory Bateson, written in collaboration with his anthropologist daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson. Here we have set out before us Bateson's natural history of the relationship between ideas. This book incorporates writing by both father and daughter, including essays written by Gregory in the last years before his death. There are also conversations-Metalogues-written since then by Mary Catherine to convey the way the two might have worked together to forge the essays into a single work. Angels Fear is a unique demonstration of thinking in progress, playful and wide-ranging, an attempt by the Batesons to find a view of the mind and the universe that is neigher mechanistic nor supernatural

About this title

Reviews

Bateson was working on this book when he died in 1980 but was nowhere near completing it; his daughter added chapters and other material that she is careful to identify as her own. Those looking for a neat, logical chain of argument will not find it here. Bateson combines ideas from a wide range of sourcescybernetics, communication theory, Jungian psychology, biology, philosophy, evolution theory, ethics, etc.in an attempt to bridge the gap between mind and matter, to present a unified view of nature and man. The discussion is suggestive but lacking in focus. Bateson's fans will love this; others may feel confirmed in their belief that his most important contribution lies elsewherein his theory of the "double bind." Leon H. Brody, U.S. Office of Personnel Management Lib., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Macmillan Pub Co
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0025076701
• ISBN 13: 9780025076709
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224