Bateson, Luhmann and Ecological Communication

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Gregory Bateson, Niklas Luhmann, and Ecological CommunicationPiyush Mathura

a Department of Communications & Multimedia Design, American University of Nigeria,

To cite this Article Mathur, Piyush(2008) 'Gregory Bateson, Niklas Luhmann, and Ecological Communication', TheCommunication Review, 11: 2, 151 — 175To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/10714420802068391URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10714420802068391

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The Communication Review, 11: 151–175, 2008Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN 1071-4421 print / 1547-7487 onlineDOI: 10.1080/10714420802068391

GCRV1071-44211547-7487The Communication Review, Vol. 11, No. 2, Apr 2008: pp. 0–0The Communication Review

GREGORY BATESON, NIKLAS LUHMANN, AND ECOLOGICAL COMMUNICATION

G. Bateson, N. Luhmann, and Ecological CommunicationP. Mathur Piyush Mathur

Department of Communications & Multimedia Design, American University of Nigeria

Cognizant of the evolving academic discipline of ecological communica-tion (EC), I offer this essay as a follow-up to my previous publication—acritical exegesis of Niklas Luhmann’s Ecological Communication(1989)—in this journal. Hoping to throw more light on Luhmann’sformulations, I introduce and interpret those writings of Gregory Batesonthat apparently influenced the former—and/or attempted to link ecologywith communication. While I do not necessarily advocate either of thesetwo thinkers’ overall philosophical frameworks, I believe that theydeserve attention—at the least insofar as they provide a measure ofcontrast to the contemporary academic discourse of EC (which remainsshallow, intellectually parochial, and nonrigorous). That aside, manyspecific ideas developed by these two thinkers will interest a wide rangeof constituencies—especially those devoted to the study of information,communication, and ecology.

Noting the chaotic mushrooming of efforts broadly studied and advertisedunder the banner of ecological or environmental communication (EC)—and the absence of well-articulated theoretical structures to supportthem—I have devoted the past few years to exploring the history of intel-lectual thought for any theoretical reflections that may be pertinent to thetopic. A result of my research has been a detailed critical exegesis ofNiklas Luhmann’s Ecological Communication (1989), a treatise that has

I would like to thank Dr. Michael Smith, at Virginia Tech, for his consistent critical inputinto the writing of this manuscript. Sincere thanks are also due to Bruce Williams for his strate-gic advice regarding the structure of this manuscript, and to Tatiana Omeltchenko for her sup-port through the long process of peer review.

Address correspondence to Piyush Mathur, Department of Communications and MultimediaDesign, School of Information Technology & Communications, American University of Nigeria,Yola, Adamawa State, PMB 2250, Nigeria. E-mail: [email protected]

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152 P. Mathur

generally been ignored by the academic discourse of EC.1 (That exegesisis accompanied by my commentary on the treatise’s and system theory’slimited relevance to the field.2)

In the interim, however, I have also concluded that there is sufficientmerit in reporting the findings of my extended background research onLuhmann’s thought concerning EC. As a step in that direction, I shallintroduce and interpret in this article the relevant writings of GregoryBateson (1904–1980)—a thinker who somewhat preceded, but mostlyoverlapped and influenced Luhmann (1927–1998), who was at the heartof the analytical ethos from which Luhmann has drawn many of his ownformulations, and who also wrote about both ecology and communication.Underlying my effort is the belief that Bateson’s ruminations—not quiteunlike those of Luhmann—shall help us understand, as if by way of acontrast, the existing priorities and intellectual culture of EC.

On the last count, it is useful to mention that activities and literaturerelated to EC retain the following key underlying objectives: dissemination(including journalism and labeling); advocacy (including activism andlobbying); management (including conflict resolution, crisis manage-ment, and public relations); and (socio-political, cultural, and rhetorical)analysis. While these objectives (and associated enterprises, styles, orgenres) do overlap, none of them—excepting analysis, to some degree—appears to have been pursued with theoretical savvy. Indeed, even theanalytical component is theoretically astute only in comparison with thoseother components internal to “the field of interest” called EC: Put withinthe broader context of other sociological and humanistic discourses, ECunfortunately remains an intellectually nonrigorous field (Mathur, 2005,p. 335). In this sense, Ingolfur Blühdorn’s accusation that “contemporaryecological thought displays significant philosophical weaknesses”—and“is strikingly uncritical concerning the validity of its analytical andprescriptive judgements”—holds eerily true, at least, for the specificsubfield of EC (2000, p. 4, emphasis in original).

A case in point is the inaugural issue of Environmental Communica-tion—the leading North American journal within the field—presumably anoutgrowth of the now-defunct Environmental Communication Yearbook.That issue—not unlike many others that came by way of the Yearbook—retains several coterie-style contributions whose key underlying objectiveseems to be to consolidate the administrative foundations and professionalfraternity of EC within the academia. Hardly more rigorous or comprehen-sively analyzed than mundane journalism, most of these contributions givethe sense that their authors are playing roles in a choreography whoseconclusions are as predictable as their prologues are hackneyed.

So, Robert Cox, for instance, could subtitle and string his lead entryinto the above issue with an inane yes/no question—“Does environmental


G. Bateson, N. Luhmann, and Ecological Communication 153

communication have an ethical duty?”—that begs the answer; he couldalso start out the entry with this aggrandizing statement: “There occurmoments in the emergence of a field of inquiry when it seems beneficialto reflect on its mission or its self-understanding of the values or goalsthat it claims to pursue” (2007, p. 5). He could also make the academi-cally fashionable dramatic declaration, based upon his self-acknowledgedimitation of Michael Soulé’s idea concerning conservation biology in the1980s, that EC is a crisis discipline—and receive, in the same issue, justthe confirmation and the affirmation from fellows he very likely knowsalready!3 Furthermore, in an essay that is at best meandering, belated, andrepetitive—even though clearly well-intentioned—what we get is a list ofclichés masquerading as “tenets of a field of environmental communica-tion” (Cox, 2007, p. 12).4 Worse, the essay, which ends up being anappeal to the readers to start “acting like members of a crisis discipline,”does not live up to even basic logical scrutiny (Cox, 2007, p. 10).5 Indeed,from this issue of Environmental Communication, EC comes out more asa discipline in-crisis than as a crisis discipline (-to-be)!

What the above discussion indicates is that the spirit of collegial famil-iarity has left little incentive for EC contributors to develop robust critiquesof their own ideas, or to be ambitious or meticulous in thinking about eco-logical communication. In conjunction with the drive to institutionalize thediscourse as an academic discipline (within the United States), the EC fra-ternity has also created an ethos that does not quite favor cosmopolitanvoices and globally informed (or oriented) intellectual traditions at leastwithin its publications. Moreover, there remains a somewhat blind focuswithin the discourse on an empirically inclined, limiting approach.

In such a scenario, raising genuine questions for the sake of invokinggenuine responses is replaced—as if as a matter of rhetorical, inspirationalritualism performed by a clique—with raising those questions whoseanswers are already known. In this sense, the discourse has clearly deterio-rated in substance and quality since the publication of The Symbolic Earth(1996), an edited collection of essays that did raise some pioneering ques-tions and also addressed them with appreciable rigor and depth. In its currentstate, the academic discourse of EC could therefore look to those perspec-tives that are not part of its official promotional scheme—even if only toreject them after all—in order to situate itself, to look back at itself. By thesame token, independent observers of intellectual traditions and activitiesought to be able to look for—and bring to everybody’s attention—alterna-tive vantage points from where emergent discourses such as EC could belooked at (and hopefully prevented from turning into stodgy orthodoxies). Itis in this spirit—of looking for alternative frameworks for the sake of ensur-ing theoretical, analytical, and intellectual savvies for what ecological com-municators do—that I hereby turn to the work of Gregory Bateson.


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GREGORY BATESON’S CYBERNETIC FRAMEWORK: COMMUNICATION, ECOLOGY, AND ECOLOGICAL COMMUNICATION

Let me start out by admitting that discussing Bateson is a frustratingtask for several reasons. For one, he is not particularly popular amongyounger or upcoming scholars: Reading him in the present times islike detouring to a past that is pretty much forgotten in mainstreamacademic theory—even as it clearly informs the substratum of theinformation age.6 For the more seasoned authors or intellectuals, onthe other hand, he is a figure way past his heyday, whilst they neverwere quite sure whether he ever deserved a “heyday”! In both theinstances, the burden of (re)introducing him falls upon me, even as Iam aware of both my limitations as an introducer and some of themore articulate introductions to him.7 Finally, Bateson’s work is verymultidisciplinary, recursive, nonsystematic, and oftentimes vacuouslyprolix—thereby asking for a systematizing and sympathetic introduc-tion. Given the totality of the circumstances, I must defer the reader tothe existing introductions for a more general, detailed, and compre-hensive insight into his life and works—reserving for myself the morespecific task of looking at his ruminations for how they might relate toEC and Luhmann’s theory of EC. (As for a detailed critical expositionof Luhmann’s Ecological Communication itself, I must refer thereader to my 2005 publication on that topic.)

The plain fact is that EC does not come through easily as a theme inBateson (which is what makes his work an interesting alternative tothe incipient orthodoxy within the academic discourse of EC, espe-cially in North America). What follows, therefore, is a matter ofdeciding to examine and piece together his thoughts on a range ofissues that are relevant to EC and are somehow interrelated. Includedamong those thoughts are his reformulations of such critical termsfrom his times as communication, information, cybernetics, evolution,and ecology. I shall discuss them under the following four subhead-ings—each representative of a distinctive strand within his thought:(A) Psychiatry, (B) Ecology, (C) Cybernetics, and (D) Evolution.While these subheadings may not suggest that social communicationwas a direct interest of Bateson, the discussions below shall showotherwise. Communication got Bateson’s attention in the earlier yearsof his career—in connection with his research in psychiatry—whereasecology increasingly occupied him in the latter years. It would not beincorrect to say that ecology eventually became the dominantframework within his thought, even as it was rendered in terms of hisredefined communication.



Psychiatry: Entropy, Codification, Metacommunication

Bateson developed his thoughts on psychiatry in a close association withRuesch; the representative elements of their hypothesis and methodologyare found in Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry, a treatiseoriginally published in 1951 (Ruesch & Bateson, 1968). What the twoauthors offer could be aptly called a communicative system theory ofpsychiatry (even though Ruesch refers to it once as a “unified theory ofcommunication”) (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 4). At the heart of their efforts isa thorough reworking of psychiatry into a social science about generalcommunicative interrelationships among individuals—from its previousavatars as (1) a medical, somatic treatment of major individual psychoses(through insulin or shock therapy, for example), and (2) psychoanalytictreatment of individuals traumatized by unfortunate personal or familyaffairs (such as through counseling sessions). As such, Ruesch andBateson take the following steps: (1) identify psychiatry and psychiatricillnesses as systemic problems of communication; (2) deem the reflexiveaspect of communication as the pivotal theoretical problematic (whereas,in the words of Ruesch, “the scientific investigation of communication ismade difficult by the fact that we have to communicate in order to investi-gate communication”) (Ruesch & Bateson, pp. 6–7); (3) highlight andaddress the problem of putting boundaries on, or levels to, communication(as in delineating the communicative context of the patient amid stimulifrom the outside world, within the clinic, and within himself or herself);8

and (4) underline communication as the neutral process that links thebiological and psychological aspects of being.

Here, it is useful to reminisce that Ruesch and Bateson were inspiredby the intellectual synergies of the late 1940s (and their outgrowths),particularly those related to the advances in research on information;alongside, these two authors were influenced by the socio-psychologicalenvirons of the industrialized world in the aftermath of World War II.Those environs had the following two major dimensions to them: One,there was the massification of psychological and psychiatric illnessescaused by the large-scale destruction, suffering, involuntary migrations,and unsettlements resulting from the World Wars. Two, there was theconcomitant rise of systemic thinking, projected in the surge of capitalisticindustrialism, on the one hand, and in welfare programs in liberal democ-racies and centralized planning in the communist bloc, on the other.Ruesh and Bateson viewed the above developments as the sign of thepassing of “the age of individual,” concluding that “the old ways of copingwith human problems had become ineffective” (p. vii). Specifically, theylamented the unavailability of any “unified or general theory . . . thatcould adequately represent the person, the group and society all within


156 P. Mathur

one system” (Ruesch & Bateson, p. vii). It is such a theory that theysought to provide in the given treatise.

On the broadest level, Ruesch and Bateson refuse to reduce communicationto the verbal or written exchange among humans. Instead, deeming “[thepsychiatrist] and the communication engineer, of all scientists . . . to bemost aware of the laws of communication,” Ruesch looks toward cyber-netics and communication engineering for their key conceptual defini-tions (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 13). The reliance on the above fields haspartly to do with the assumption that they bridge the gap between humanand nonhuman domains by focusing “not upon the person or the group,but upon the message and the circuit as units of study” (Ruesch &Bateson, p. vi). In sync with the above, Ruesch defines communication asa “social matrix” in which human beings are exposed to

repetitive and consistent bombardment with stimuli [originating,] onthe one hand, in the social behavior of other people and, on the otherhand, in the objects, plants, and animals with which people surroundthemselves. (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 8)

Likewise, he defines information as the “arrangement of nervousimpulses and connections [consisting] of relationships which are system-atically derived from those among the original events outside the organ-ism” (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 7). The organism being considered, however,is under highly particular, and heretofore unknown, pressures—in that the“modern man has to contend with human interaction, man-machine inter-action, and machine-machine interaction” (Ruesch & Bateson, p. viii).

Ruesch and Bateson apply the concept of entropy—also understood asrandom errors (noise) occurring through the transmission of signals andas a measure of the efficiency of transmission systems—and the SecondLaw of Thermodynamics to frame the holistic problem of individual andsystemic psychiatric irregularities. Viewing these irregularities as manifes-tations of informational disequilibrium within a communicative system,Ruesch argues that

physiologist, psychologist, and psychiatrist alike are concerned withproblems of order and disorder, entropy and the maintenance of theorganism; the difference between these scientists is that the physiologistis concerned with the exchange of calories and chemical elements, andthe psychiatrist and psychologist with the exchange of information [ . . . ].(Ruesch & Bateson, pp. 90–91)

In focusing upon the dynamics of communication among interactingindividuals, Ruesch prominently includes the body as the “communication



apparatus of man,” but warns against thinking in “anatomical terms whenconsidering the internal network of communication” (Ruesch & Bateson,p. 16 & p. 29, respectively). Instead, he advises comparing “the individualwith a social organization”—such as a nation-state, whereas “messagesfrom the borders and from all parts of the nation are transmitted to thecapital and to all other places by means of intricate network” (Ruesch &Bateson, p. 29). The presumed motive behind such a comparison is toensure that the analytical focus stays on the transmission or interactionrather than on the message or the carrier; the effect of the comparison,however, is that it obliges us to view communication in inescapablysystemic terms. This is also considered scientifically sound—somethingthat Luhmann would vigorously argue in his writings—because the “com-munication apparatus of man [is] a functional entity without anatomicallocalization” (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 16). Hence, the following statement:

For practical purposes . . . events occurring in other persons areaccessible to an observer in terms of inference alone; all he observes isthe stimuli which reach the other person and the latter’s reactions; therest is subject to conjecture. Furthermore, the observer, being a socialstimulus for others, possesses knowledge about the origin and thenature of some of the stimuli which he feeds to other individuals. Insuch a system, which includes the observer as an integral part, theactions of the first person are stimuli for the second person and theresponse of the second person are stimuli for the first person. (Ruesch &Bateson, p. 26)

Expectedly, Ruesch and Bateson underline relativism as the traitinherent to all communication. In order to explain the mechanism of thisrelativism, they introduce the concepts of interpretation, perception ofperception, choice, codification, circularity, self-preservation, and meta-communication. Interpretation ensures that “any change in the state of anorganism can be viewed from varied standpoints and can be registeredconsciously or unconsciously” (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 31). And, to theextent that all individuals are inescapably part of the game of interpretation,“the term ‘role’ refers to nothing but the code which is used to interpret theflow of messages” (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 27). Accordingly, all communi-cators are at once observers or interpreters of each other, and the resultantposture of observing-while-being-observed is a prerequisite for any socialcommunicative system:

The perception of . . . perception . . . is the sign that a silent agreementhas been reached by the participants, to the effect that mutual influ-ence is to be expected. The mutual recognition of having entered into


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each other’s field of perception equals the establishment of a system ofcommunication. The criteria of mutual awareness of perception are in allcases instances of communications about communication. (Ruesch &Bateson, pp. 23–24)

The “communication about communication” mandates the exercise ofchoice by the individual in the form of his or her “preference”—and isinstrumental in simplifying existential/informational complexity throughcategorization. Consider the following:

“Preference” always refers to an organism’s reaction to two or morepossibilities which have been perceived. These possibilities refer onthe one hand to a series of perceived stimuli and on the other hand toa series of anticipated reactions of the organism. In order to facilitatea decision in the face of these multiple choices, the organismsubdivides the perceived stimuli and the anticipated reactions intogroups. Through a series of complicated processes, the individualfinally comes out with a statement of preference. Such a statement ofpreference we shall term value. (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 45)

“Choice,” “value,” and “preference” occur in the treatise mostly asRuesch’s summary statements; they attain their refined, systematized, anddeveloped meanings in Bateson’s formulation of codification. In otherwords, codification provides the sophisticated explanation for howRuesch’s choice, preference, and value act out at the level of individualcognition and expression.9

Borrowing the idea from communication engineering’s binary system,Bateson defines codification as “the substitution of one type of event foranother, such that the event substituted shall in some sense stand for theother” (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 169). As such, codification has the followingnormative and functional features: (1) It “must be such that relationshipsare preserved”—indicating the presence of negative entropy (Ruesch &Bateson, p. 170); (2) codified information is “multiplicative,” i.e., “theelementary unit of information must contain at least [the] double aspect ofasserting one truth and denying some often undefined opposite” (Ruesch &Bateson, p. 175); (3) (codified) messages look both backwards and for-wards in terms of time, i.e., “[o]n the one hand, the message is a statementor a report about events at a previous moment, and on the other hand it isa command—a cause or stimulus for events at a later moment” (Ruesch &Bateson, p. 179); and (4) codification necessarily includes the “informa-tion” about, and the “value system,” of the speaker (Ruesch & Bateson,p. 178). A codification failure—for being a matter of incongruence eitherbetween the internal code and its external referent within the individual



mind or among individuals in reference to a given set of realities—is to beunderstood as a communicative rupture or a psychiatric disorder.10 Thetheoretical corollary of such a failure lies, of course, in the idea of treat-ment—whereas Ruesch defines “mental health” as the “ability to mutu-ally correct the meaning of messages and to mutually influence eachother’s behavior to each other’s satisfaction” (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 87).

Ruesch and Bateson go on to reason why and when codificationsucceeds and fails—both at the general level of social communication andat the specialized level of psychiatric treatment. In the latter case, Rueschframes the dynamics between the patient and the psychotherapist as theprimary problematic deserving a well worked-out explanation.11 How-ever, insofar as dissenting individuals within society—including patientsand psychiatrists in their mutual interactions—often succeed in reaching apoint of congruence or a state of communicative equilibrium, Ruesch andBateson deem the system of social communication self-corrective as awhole. Partly inspired by Walter B. Cannon’s theory of “homeostasis,”Ruesch locates the evidence for systemic self-correction, -sustenance, and –organization at least at the following four levels: (1) the evolvement andavailability of psychiatric clinics or mental hospitals (and associated ser-vices); (2) successful treatments; (3) the general willingness of communi-cators to influence, and be influenced by, each other to appreciabledegrees; and (4) the general ability of individuals to live meaningfullywithin the system despite their personal differences or disagreementsfrom it (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 58). Bateson views this self-correctivemechanism in terms of “irritability” and “adaptive action” (Ruesch &Bateson, p. 212).

Together with Ruesch’s definitions of communication, value, andpreference, sketch of the disciplinary needs of psychiatry, and generalreflections on psychiatry and culture, Bateson’s elaboration of codificationis meant to fulfill “the basic requirements for the construction of a psychiatricsystem” (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 79). This is insofar as a psychiatricsystem—in the words of Ruesch—must: (1) “be circular”; (2) “have thecharacteristics of self-correction”; (3) be able to “satisfactorily solve theproblem of part and whole function”; and (4) “clearly define the positionof the observer and therefore state the influence of the observer upon thatwhich is observed and vice versa” (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 79). Notably, by“psychiatric system” Ruesch and Bateson meant not only the communica-tive system of society, nor just the medical setting of a typical psychiatrictreatment, but also the theoretical system employed to explain the abovetwo in continuous terms of communication. As such, the structure ofRuesch and Bateson’s construction is significant because it betrays aremarkable, even though qualified, affinity both to Luhmann’s portrayal ofsociety (or social systems) and to the structure of his theoretical arguments.


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Perhaps the most important facet to keep in mind about the psychiatricsystem here involves the norms of circularity and self-preservation (thelatter being closely related to self-correction or self-organization): Theyboth point up the requirement for psychiatry and psychiatric discourse tobe able to explain consistently, rationally, and fully (at least) the mostimportant concepts and events typically involved in the praxis—in theterms that they themselves proffer. That is because circularity is to beexpected not just from the operational reality of an actual psychiatric orcommunicative system in society, but also from the mechanism employedto explain it. In other words, circularity is also to be expected from thetheory of psychiatry (or communication), whereas a theory of psychia-try—just like a psychiatric or social system—would attempt to “preserve”itself by virtue of being self-reflexive.

That a communicative system can preserve itself by relying entirelyupon itself—i.e., upon communication—is consistent with Ruesch’s ideathat “the perception of perception” or “communications about communi-cation” constitutes a prerequisite for any operative psychiatric/communi-cative system (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 23 & p. 24, respectively). However,this prerequisite of a self-perpetuating self-reliance (or self-reflexivity) isat once the central theoretical problematic (of circularity) within theclinic: This is because this prerequisite apparently leaves no outside—orperfectly objective—position from which to ascertain the success of acommunication or treatment. Ruesch details the problematic as under:

As a result of participation in the system—and non-participation isimpossible—the patient’s behavior is going to be influenced by thepsychiatrist, and vice versa. Not only may the patient get better orworse while we explore him for the first time, but our own distur-bances of communication may obscure our assessment of the patient.We are never quite secure in what we are doing, and only a check byanother person, either an outsider or the patient himself, will enable usto gauge the effect of our own actions. The ability to mutually correctthe meaning of messages and to mutually influence each other’s behav-ior to each other’s satisfaction is the result of successful communication.This is the only criterion we possess, and if we possess, and if we achievesuch a state, it indicates mental health. (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 87)

As a way out of this circularity, Bateson pleads for attending tometacommunication, i.e., “all exchanged cues and propositions about (a)codification and (b) relationship between the communicators” (Ruesch &Bateson, p. 209). Even though this plea comes on the top of their refusalto localize the communication apparatus within the individual anatomy andrejection of the importance of consciousness to the study of codification



and communication, it is not meant to deny the importance of the individ-ual to the communicative system.12 The primary unit of Ruesch andBateson’s analysis (and hence of their view of the communicative systemcalled society) remains the human individual insofar as the ideal of acompletely objective, all-observant “superhuman observer” is ruled out asa fallacious fantasy (pp. 273–274). In other words, metacommunicationshows the way out of the circularity through a reaffirmation of observationalrelativism at the expense of the hope for the ideal superhuman observer.Wherefore, according to Ruesch and Bateson, the following holds:

At the intrapersonal level, the focus of the observer is limited by theself, and the various functions of communication are found within theself. At the interpersonal level the perceptual field is occupied by twopeople, at the group level by many people, and at the cultural level bymany groups. (p. 274)

In the end, and following Kurt Gödel, Bateson admits contradiction asan inevitable condition of dealing “simultaneously with both objectivecommunication and metacommunication”—as in psychotherapy—whereas “all attempts to build a coherent body of statements at severallevels of abstraction must always end in paradox and contradiction”(Ruesch & Bateson, pp. 223–224 and p. 227, respectively). On the sociallevel, he stresses the significance of subjective relativism—rather thansome transcendental objectivity—to the entire phenomenon, pointing outthat “the qualities and characteristics of metacommunication between per-sons will depend upon the qualities and degree of their mutual awarenessof each other’s perception” (Ruesch & Bateson, pp. 209–210). This isdespite the fact that “the importance of the single individual diminishes,and at the higher levels one person becomes only a small element in thesystem of communication” (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 274).

Ruesch and Bateson’s reworked model of psychiatry, intended toexplain larger systemic problems in the communicative terms, basicallyadded a communicative dimension to the other systemic models thatpervaded the intellectual milieu of the period between the 1940s and the1970s. Viewed especially in the retrospective light of Luhmann’s theoryof EC, the most relevant theoretical contributions of their psychiatricmodel can now be recapitulated. They must include the following:

• the rendition of communication and society as a psychiatric systemand vice versa;

• the problematization of communicative limits or levels (and theresultant delocalization of communication—and its understandingas a system without any definitive boundaries);


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• the view of communication as a self-sustaining, self-corrective,and self-organizing evolutionary system;

• the stance that absolute objectivity is impossible within the com-municative realm at each and every level—whereas “perceptionof perception” or “communication about communication” is atthe heart of any communicative success;

• the idea that communicative dynamics are part of the same sys-temic continuum across biological, psychological, social, andphysical interfaces, and can be studied—for a start—based upon“a non-human model”;13

• the continued focus on the individual despite the acknowledg-ment of both relativism and systemic dynamics;

• the hypothesis that codification is the way through which humansconnect among themselves within given environments, with theworst disconnects constituting serious psychiatric or communi-cative problems.

Of all of the above, the last bit is perhaps the most significant becauseit underlines the communicative relativism among humans as well as withrespect to the environment—and the effort involved in connecting. Inrelation to the above, Bateson argues that

[n]egative entropy, value, and information, are in fact alike in so far asthe system to which these notions refer is the man plus environment,and in so far as, both in seeking information and in seeking values, theman is trying to establish an otherwise improbable congruencebetween ideas and events. (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 179)

Ecology

In the foregoing section, I discussed how Bateson (and Ruesch) viewed psy-chiatry as a mightily useful subset—and the handiest exemplar—ofcommunication, which in turn was the general epistemological framework ofhis choice.14 However, Bateson’s subsequent writings suggest that ecologyended up replacing communication as his chosen general epistemologicalframework. Keeping in mind his philosophical nomadism and mutability,I personally consider this development a matter of chronology rather thana decisive evidence that ecology finally superceded all else in his thoughton the whole. Hence, I shall view ecology as only one of Bateson’s majorconcerns;15 of interest would be its shape and character within his writings.

The significance of discussing ecology in the context of Bateson liesprimarily in the fact that it did not mean to him just what it commonlydoes—let us say, (the study of) the relationships and interactions among



living organisms against the backdrop of a natural or developed environment.Instead, endowed with a conspicuously broadened and particularizedmeaning at once, ecology occurs strictly alongside three other majorconcepts in his writings: communication, information, and evolution. Thisplacement is critical for us in retrospect because it appears to haveallowed Bateson to generate a particular modality of relationship betweenecology and communication that by default bears upon the futuretheorization of EC.

Ecology concerned Bateson primarily as part of his overall epistemologicalquest—regarding, let’s say, how phenomena “work” or “make sense”—and not the other way around.16 As a natural existential phenomenon, itprovided him with the exemplar of an inescapably open-ended intercon-nectedness ironically asking for particular, concrete, and real explanations.However, as a field of scientific inquiry, ecology fascinated him—someonewho loved to think big—because, while concerning itself with specifics, italso matches several features of his all-encompassing and seemingly adhoc epistemological ambitions that conventionally belong in the realm ofabstractions or metaphysics. In other words, both as an existentialphenomenon and as a science, ecology inherently validated Bateson’stireless efforts at explaining nothing-in-particular or everything-in-general! Accordingly, his latter-day ruminations crystallized in the formof what he called the ecology of mind, which he defined all too loosely asunder:

In the past few days, people have asked me, “What do you mean, ecol-ogy of mind?” Approximately what I mean is the various kinds of stuffthat goes on in one’s head and in one’s behavior and in dealing withother people, and walking up and down mountains, and getting sick,and getting well. All that stuff interlocks, and, in fact, constitutes anetwork which, in the local language, is called mandala. I am morecomfortable with the word “ecology,” but they’re very closely relatedideas. (1991, p. 264)

Though it may seem from the above that the older Bateson turned outto be a New Age guru expounding the virtues of obscure oriental spiritualcults, the fact of the matter is that the man remained heavily invested infiguring out a “neutral” way to speak about how this system called “theworld” works! The thrust in the above passage, therefore, is on“network”—though it is true that Bateson also wrote, cursorily, aboutOccidental and Oriental systems of thinking and doing (critiquing modernscience and technology of the West for their belief in control of nature). Inany case, he did not consider (his) spiritualism to be opposed to verifiableor rationalistic truth; quite the contrary, he believed that the real reality,


164 P. Mathur

examined in an unbiased manner, was sure to betray spiritualistic linkagesacross the universe.

Unsurprisingly, Bateson attempted to realize the “neutral” ways ofinvestigating into reality by thinking doggedly in terms of minimalistcontinua rather than conventional material blocks—or definitional divi-sions, separations, or binaries among, within, or between radically“different” activities, things, or phenomena. Hence: ecology—presumably(a science of) empirical and concrete realities—of mind, (continuingthrough) the hub of (human) abstractions and ideas. A robust acceptanceof the material and the nonliving in the same space as the nonmaterial andthe living is the sine qua non for Bateson’s idea of ecology; contrarily, inhis framework ecology is part of the proof that logically reality cannot andshould not be compartmentalized.

Cybernetics: Existence as Communication

Bateson adopted cybernetics as the framework and methodology topursue his epistemological quest and, eventually, to demonstrate andestablish the fact of elemental continuum or interconnectedness. Thischoice presumes that cybernetics is the best-positioned and best-articulated system to expose epistemological mechanisms at their deep-est and widest. However, as with ecology, so with cybernetics: Batesonupheld a deliberately selective idea of it, based upon his personal medi-tation on the topic.17 Specifically, while accepting the focus withincybernetics on relationships (among myriad phenomena), he rejects theparallel focus in it on the control of those relationships (to particularends or objectives)18—because he finds the latter incongruous with theecological sensibility:

I prefer to use the term ‘cybernetic’ to describe complete circuitingsystems. For me, the system is man-and-environment; to introduce thenotion of “control” would draw a boundary between these two, to givea picture of man versus environment. (Bateson, 1991, p. 202)

While the cybernetic interconnectedness is isomorphic to the ecological,it is also a highly promising provider of universalistic interfaces—let ussay—between organisms and the environment, organisms and machines,and organisms and organisms. The universalistic aspect derives from thefact that information—rather, “transfer of information”—is the unit ofcybernetic analysis, whereas “[t]he subject matter of cybernetics is notevents and objects but the information ‘carried’ by events and objects”(Bateson, 1991, p. 407). Hence, differentiating a “cybernetic explanation”from a “causal explanation,” Bateson alludes to a third reason behind his



own choice of the former—and hence, of the cybernetic framework itself:It makes one attend to alternatives. Consider the following:

Causal explanation is usually positive. We say that billiard ball Bmoved in such and such a direction because billiard ball A hit it atsuch and such an angle. In contrast to this, cybernetic explanation isalways negative. We consider what alternative possibilities could con-ceivably have occurred and then ask why many of the alternativeswere not followed, so that the particular event was one of those fewwhich could, in fact, occur. (Bateson, 1972, p. 405)

Thus, cybernetic explanation allowed Bateson to think of happen-stances or events in terms of negatives that presumably prevented alternativeevents from taking place: More technically, it made him focus onrestraints that make a positive a probability. This comes out clearly in thefollowing passage:

In cybernetic language, the course of events is said to be subject torestraints, and it is assumed that, apart from such restraints, the pathwaysof change would be governed only by equality of probability. In fact,the “restraints” upon which cybernetic explanation depends can in allcases be regarded as factors which determine inequality of probability.(Bateson, 1972, pp. 405–406)

Bateson’s overall valuation of cybernetics translates into the idea thatall available existence is, or can be seen as, positive or meaningful com-munication put into effect by a set of decipherable restraints or negatives.By viewing meaningful existence itself as the patterned leftover from allodds, so to speak, Bateson renders reality into a communicationaldynamic between (negative) restraints and their (positive) eventual prob-ability; conversely, he regards “patterning or predictability as the veryraison d’être of communication” (Bateson, 1972, p. 412). In accordance,he asserts the following: “All that is not information, not redundancy, notform and not restraints—is noise, the only possible source of newpatterns” (Bateson, 1972, p. 416).

In dispersed passages, Bateson attempts to explain what a typicalcybernetic approach to (analyzing) phenomena would or should look like;let me quote one such telling account below:

If we find a monkey striking a typewriter apparently at random but infact writing meaningful prose, we shall look for restraints, either insidethe monkey or inside the typewriter. Perhaps the monkey could notstrike inappropriate letters; perhaps the type bars could not move if


166 P. Mathur

improperly struck; perhaps incorrect letters could not survive on thepaper. Somewhere there must have been a circuit which could identifyerror and eliminate it. (1972, pp. 405–406)

For the staunch relativist that Bateson was, he considered both restraintsand the resultant patterns integral to the overall communicational dynamicscalled existence or reality or truth. The fourth reason, then, why Batesonpreferred the cybernetic approach was that it could capably explain thelogical only in relation to the nonlogical, thereby making it unavoidableto include both as equally central and germane to the process of explana-tion and to communication as a whole.

Bateson introduced the concept of redundancy in elaborating hiscybernetic approach—and as part of his conviction that any production oreven existence of meaningful(ness) requires the inclusion of absolutecontext. Used generally, and in simpler terms, redundancy refers to thecollective—but partial—overlap of all observers and everything observedthrough, and onto, the production of meaning. In some specific situations,such as those exemplified by the passages below, redundancy exposes themechanism behind the substitution of message for reality:

If . . . we say that a message has “meaning” or is “about” some ref-erent, what we mean is that there is a larger universe of relevanceconsisting of message-plus-referent, and that redundancy or patternor predictability is introduced into this universe by the message.(Bateson, 1972, p. 413)

If I say to you “It is raining,” this message introduces redundancy intothe universe, message-plus-raindrops, so that from the message aloneyou could have guessed—with better than random success—something of what you would see if you looked out of the window.(Bateson, 1972, p. 414)

Evolution as Meaningful Communication: “Restraints” and “Redundancies”

Redundancy assumes significance in the context of evolution: Rather, itallows Bateson to link communication and ecology against the backdrop ofevolution, but well within the framework of cybernetics. Just as in ecologyBateson found the exemplar of a natural, open-ended, and defiant intercon-nectedness amenable to scientific explanations, in evolution he believed tohave encountered a natural system demonstrative of cybernetically explain-able (and/or generated) restraints and redundancies. Following this logic,a species, a genus, or a patterned group of organisms can be seen—by yet



another group of fellow organisms called humans—as a package of infor-mation about the environment presumably developed in response to thesame over a period of time:

[T]here is the matter of phylogenetic learning and phylogeny in gen-eral. There is redundancy in the system, organism-plus-environment,such that from the morphology and behavior of the organism a humanobserver can guess with better than random success at the nature ofthe environment. This “information” about the environment hasbecome lodged in the organism through a long phylogenetic process,and its coding is of a very special kind. (Bateson, 1972, p. 422)

While positing evolution in communicative or cybernetic terms at the levelof the group, Bateson also reached out to trace its microcosmic counterpart inthe gene, the carrier of information at the level of the individual organism:

If, in the communicational and organizational processes of biologicalevolution, there be something like levels—items, patterns, and possiblypatterns of patterns—then it is logically possible for the evolutionarysystem to make something like positive choices. Such levels andpatterning might conceivably be in or among genes or elsewhere.(Bateson, 1972, p. 411)

In short, the gene—as the carrier of information—offers itself as thecommon cybernetic unit for the analysis of evolution as communicationand, therefore, as the unit of an “ecological” communication in the end.Although Bateson accorded significance to the gene for its informational orcybernetic value, he was no biological determinist. Quite to the contrary,it was his sworn opposition to Darwinian determinism—coupled with hiscommitment to reflexivity—that led to his viewing of evolution as a com-munication among various species and with the environment. For, it isonly in a resolutely indeterminate and reflexive framework that all entitiescould have been looked at as partially (re)creating themselves in responseto, or in communication with, all other entities.

CONCLUSION

Luhmann’s formulations concerning ecological communication appear tobe significantly influenced by the thoughts of Bateson (especially thosethat come in conjunction with the work of Ruesch). I make that claimdespite the fact that direct references to Bateson and Ruesch inLuhmann’s publications are very few: I believe that we have to go beyondthose references in order to appreciate the strength of the connection


168 P. Mathur

between Bateson and Ruesch’s collective work and Luhmann’s theory ofEC. It is not so much the answers provided by Bateson and Ruesch as thequestions raised by them that have guided Luhmann’s theory; as such,Luhmann’s “ecology of ignorance” is at least in part a funnelled culmina-tion of Bateson’s “ecology of mind” (Luhmann, 1998, pp. 76–112;Bateson, 1972, 1991).

Space limitations prohibit me from providing an elaborate support ofmy claim above; let me, therefore, make only some broad points to thatend. For a start, Bateson put together concepts such as information,communication, cybernetics, evolution, and ecology in a unique analyticalconstellation—a constellation that was simply not articulated before, buthas since been used by Luhmann (albeit with a lot more precision,refinement, and detail). What Bateson added to Ruesch—and whichwould also be useful to Luhmann’s systems theory of EC—is thedimension of ecology.

In the main, Bateson and Ruesch’s centralization of communication topsychiatry—under the thrust of cybernetics, information theory, andsystems theory—retained significant clues for Luhmann’s resolutedistinctions between psychological and social systems, on the one hand,and system and environment, on the other. This is because, as discussedpreviously, Bateson and Ruesch viewed psychiatry and psychiatricillnesses as systemic problems of communication—whereby a key focusof investigation and analysis turned out to be identification of the bound-aries or levels of communication. Within that context, Ruesch’s rejectionof the importance of consciousness to communication and refusal tolocalize communication within the individual anatomy appear to culmi-nate in Luhmann’s rendition of communication as a strictly social systemoperation and dismissal of the human individual (contra Ruesch andBateson) from communication (Mathur, p. 334). As such, Luhmann wasable to frame the environmental question (environment) strictly as amatter of intersystemic social communication (system).

Many associated concepts from Bateson and Ruesch’s collectivework—such as the perception of perception, codification, circularity, self-preservation, categorization, choice, and metacommunication—also haveclear and strong parallels, resolutions, or application (respectively) in thefollowing concepts in Luhmann’s framework: the observation of observa-tion and self-reflexivity; binary coding and programming; self-reference;asymmetry and complexity; selection, ordering, and differentiation; and,second-order cybernetics. To give one example of a resolution, Luhmannoffers the concept of difference (presumably) as a way out of Bateson’sconceptual deadlock of paradox or contradiction (in self-reflexivecommunication). Likewise, “[i]nstead of [Bateson’s idea of] transference[of information from the natural to the social world], Luhmann proposes



the idea of selection of information by system through the employment ofthe system/environment differential (typically to overlap with theinternal/external schema)” (Mathur, 2005, p. 341).

On the whole, though, the meaning of ecological communicationchanges radically as we move from Bateson to Luhmann—as the latterrejects the naturalist, open-ended universalism of the former. In manyways, Luhmann’s theory of EC is an elaborate explanation for preciselyhow the “otherwise improbable congruence between ideas and events”relating to the environment—that Bateson refers to—is in fact achievedon the systemic level (Ruesch & Bateson, 1968, p. 179). Unlike Bateson(and Ruesch), Luhmann excludes the individual from the equationaltogether—focusing, instead, on how social subsystems interact amongthemselves (in their bid to fabricate the aforementioned congruence). Infact, Luhmann radicalizes the systemic aspect by sharply demarcating thepsychological from the social, resting ecological communication at thelatter.

As such, Luhmann’s theory of EC turns out to be a narrative about aself-enclosing, self-perpetuating society—that leaves no real (environ-mental or individual) outs for the human observer, the only legitimateobserver by default! Worse, as Blüdorn argues, “Luhmann’s model isblind to ecological issues in the ecologist sense, or that by reshuffling thebasic parameters of analysis, Luhmann reveals the contingency of theecologist perspective” (p. 130). This characterization of Luhmann’smodel of EC, however, also qualifies it—and the intellectual traditionbehind it—for the privilege of being considered an alternative to theacademic discourse of EC (especially in the United States). One mightreject Luhmann’s model—as I already have—both for its content and as apractical methodology (Mathur, 2005); however, considering it and thetradition behind it can encourage us to go beyond the hasty “empiricalapproaches”—with “a rather limited explanatory capacity”—currentlypopular within EC’s academic discourse (Blüdorn, 2000, p. 3; emphasisin original).

NOTES

1. As I mention in my article (2005), Ecological Communication has had a “pecu-liarly bibliographic presence” in EC’s academic literature (p. 329); English-lan-guage publications engaging with the treatise in some detail are exceptional—andinclude the following: Peterson & Peterson (1996), Peterson (1997), Coppola(1997), Francis (2006), and, Haberl, H., V. Winiwarter, K. Andersson, R. U.Ayres, C. Boone, A. Castillo, G. Cunfer, M. Fischer-Kowalski, W. R. Freudenburg,E. Furman, R. Kaufman, F. Krausmann, E. Langthater, H. Lotze-Campen,M. Mirtl, C. L. Redman, A. Reenberg, A. Wardell, B. Warr, and H. Zechmeister.


170 P. Mathur

(2006). Outside EC, the treatise has been discussed in some detail by Blühdorn(within the European context of socio-political theory). Indeed, the environmen-talist neglect of Luhmann’s overall theoretical ideas led Blühdorn to state thefollowing:

[Luhmann’s model of contemporary society] is fundamentally incompatiblewith ecologist thinking, which is probably why ecological theorists andenvironmental sociologists, in particular, have so far refused to engage in aserious exploration of this work. (p. xv)

That said, Luhmann’s ideas—as expressed in his publications other than Ecologi-cal Communication—have since been discussed, applied, or mentioned in a fewpublications belonging to the following environmentally oriented fields: ecologi-cal history (Simmons, 2000); ecological modeling (Grant, Peterson, & Peterson,2002); wildlife management (Cvetkovich & Winter, 2003); sustainability (Jamal,T., M. Borges, M. Peterson, T. Peterson, and R. S. Figueiredo, 2004; Becker,2005); cultural-literary critique concerning the environment (Economides, 2005);bioprospecting (Pottage, 2006); and long-term socio-ecological research (Haberlet al., 2006).

2. See Mathur (2005).3. See Peterson, Peterson, and Peterson (2007), especially their following state-

ments: “We concur with Cox’s claim that environmental communication (EC),like conservation biology, is a crisis discipline,” and “We wholeheartedly supportCox, and take his essay as provocation to radically challenge magical notions ofscientific objectivity . . . ” (p. 74, p. 75, respectively).

4. In pointing out that “a principal ethical duty of environmental communication[is] the obligation to enhance the ability of society to respond appropriately toenvironmental signals relevant to the well-being of both human communities andnatural biological systems,” the essay’s abstract inadvertently highlights thebanality and vacuity of Cox’s articulation (Cox, p. 5). This statement is far toovague to be of any use—except that it does accurately capture that of which it ispartially an abstract.

5. Cox’s statements lacking logical coherence are far too many to be listed here; solet me quote just one statement below as a representative sample:

I want . . . to pose a . . . question for those scholars, teachers, and practitio-ners loosely allied in an emerging field of environmental communication:Should such a field have an ethical duty? That is, should environmentalcommunication be considered a ‘crisis discipline’? (2007, p. 6)

Even within the context of what precedes the above statement, it is not clear howa question concerning a field’s “ethical duty” necessarily translates into whetherthat field is a crisis discipline.

6. Accordingly, Harries-Jones candidly admits that “[m]odern environmentalistshave generally ignored Bateson” (1995, p. 4).

7. Please see the following: Brockman (1977), Harries-Jones (1995), Donaldson(1991), and Bateson and Bateson (1987).

8. Ruesch declares it the need—and the objective—for his contemporary psychiatryto design epistemological “systems which would embrace both events confined to



the individual and events encompassing several people and larger groups”(Ruesch & Bateson, 1968, p. 62). He attaches a universalistic significance to theproposed framework—because the connections between the internal and externalworld form the crux of the generic psychiatric conundrum. Evidently, the focuswithin the treatise on valuation or choice assists in the atriculation of such aframework as it points to the connection that the individual—observer—seeks toestablish between his internal mental world and the larger external system ofcommunication. This is because “[t]hrough statements of preference, the innerworkings of the mind of a person are revealed” (Ruesch & Bateson, 1968, p. 45).

9. Claiming that the “brain is predominantly digital in its functioning,” and that“codification must . . . be systematic,” Ruesch and Bateson go on to detail thefunctional system of codification. This is significant to their framework because

[t]o describe codification [at the intrapersonal level] is to specify the rela-tion between the neural, chemical, and other signals and the internal orexternal events to which they refer . . . At the interpersonal level, [on theother hand,] the description of codification will define the symbolizationprocesses of language together with the more tenuous symbolisms presentin nonverbal communication. (1968, p. 283)

For all that, Bateson considers codification the central conceptual bridgebetween the so-called “mentalist” and “organicist” approaches within psychia-try—the former focusing on the individual (mind), the latter on the larger con-text (Ruesch & Bateson, 1968, p. 169).

10. Whereas

[t]he condition which the psychiatrist labels “psychosis” is essentially the resultof the patient’s misinterpretation of messages received; and the conditionwhich we commonly label “neurosis” is the result of unfortunate attempts of apatient to manipulate social situations with the purpose of creating a stage toconvey messages to others more effectively. (Ruesch & Bateson, 1968, p. 88)

11. Ruesch argues the following:

The central problem of psychotherapy may . . . be restated as follows: Howdoes it happen that in the interchange of messages between two personswith differing systems of codification and evaluation, a change occursin the system of codification and evaluation of either or both persons?(Ruesch & Bateson, 1968, p. 82)

12. As Bateson concludes, “[T]he introduction of consciousness as a concept willnot profoundly modify the type of question which is here studied” (Ruesch &Bateson, 1968, p. 183).

13. See Bateson (especially in Ruesch & Bateson, 1968, p. 186).14. Ruesch and Bateson did not intend their findings to serve as a mere reworking

of psychiatry, but also as a general epistemological framework for the socialsciences at large. In this regard, consider what Ruesch notes:

The present book has been dedicated to the task of stating and illustratingat length the premises which underlie the various approaches to social


172 P. Mathur

science. We have chosen psychiatry as the focus of our attention becausethe psychiatrist in his daily practice is concerned with disturbances ofcommunication; he and the communication engineer, of all scientists,seem to be most aware of the laws of communication. The essence of ourmessage to the reader is that communication is the matrix in which allhuman activities are embedded. In practice, communication links objectto person and person; and scientifically speaking, this interrelatedness isunderstood best in terms of systems of communication. (Ruesch & Bateson,1968, p. 13)

15. I want to stress this point keeping in mind the otherwise outstanding account ofBateson’s overall philosophy that Harries-Jones (1995) provides. His account—erroneously in my view—centralizes ecology, making it appear to be Bateson’srepresentative concern.

16. A clear hint of Bateson’s resolute truth-centered objective is found, ironically, inone of those elusive literary genres called poetry. Bateson wrote the following(referring to the manuscript of what his daughter further developed posthu-mously and published as Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred(1987):

“The Manuscript”

So there it is in words

Precise

You will find nothing there

For that is the discipline I ask

Not more, not less

Not the world as it is

Nor ought to be—

Only the precision

The skeleton of truth

I do not dabble in emotion

Hint at implications

Evoke the ghosts of old forgotten creeds

All that is for the preacher

The hypnotist, therapist and missionary

They will come after me

And use the little that I said

To bait more traps



For those who cannot bear

The lonely

Skeleton

of Truth.

17. For a more general introduction to the cybernetic movement, see Parsegian(1973). See the following also: Wiener (1961), Pask (1961), Moray (1963), Singh(1966), Crosson and Sayre (1967), Dechert (1967), Müller (1968), Brix (1970),and Longo (1973).

18. Parsegian notes these two components very specifically as follows:

[E]ach of the [cybernetic] situations involves variables. Each involvesinteractions of machines or organisms with the environment, the interac-tions often taking circuitous routes. Each involves an element of pur-pose, or objective, and utilizes control principles addressed to thosepurposes. . . . In fact the utilization and control of energy constitutes amain interest of cybernetics whether the energy is mechanical orhuman. (1973, p. 2)

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Bateson, Luhmann and Ecological Communication

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