In 31 posthumously collected lectures and writings, anthropologist, systems thinker and cyberneticist Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) addresses questions of ecology, mind, consciousness, linguistics, evolution, and communication. His masterly synthesis stresses the need to re-establish a ‘ sacred unity’ between the human mind and the biosphere.

Gregory Bateson (1904 – 1980) was an interdisciplinary anthropologist, social scientist, systems thinker, linguist, anthropologist, and cyberneticist. His other writings include Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972) and Mind and Nature (1979). Bateson's interest in systems theory forms a thread running through his work. He was one of the original members of the core group of the Macy conferences in Cybernetics.

Introduction to the 2023 edition Introduction to the 1991 edition Editor’ s Note on the Selection and Arrangement of Material PART I Form and Pattern in Anthropology Cultural Determinants of Personality Human Dignity and the Varieties of Civilization Sex and Culture Naven: Epilogue 1958 Distortions Under Culture Contact Some Components of Socialization for Trance From Anthropology to Epistemology PART II Form and Pathology in Relationship The New Conceptual Frames for Behavioral Research Cultural Problems Posed by a Study of Schizophrenic Process A Social Scientist Views the Emotions The Double-Bind Theory— Misunderstood? The Growth of Paradigms for Psychiatry PART III Epistemology and Ecology Mind/Environment The Thing of It Is A Formal Approach to Explicit, Implicit, and Embodied Ideas, and to Their Forms of Interaction The Birth of a Matrix, or Double Bind and Epistemology This Normative Natural History Called Epistemology Our Own Metaphor: Nine Years After The Science of Knowing Men Are Grass: Metaphor and the World of Mental Process PART IV Health, Ethics, Aesthetics, and the Sacred Language and Psychotherapy— Frieda Fromm-Reichmann’ s Last Project The Moral and Aesthetic Structure of Human Adaptation A Systems Approach 243 The Creature and Its Creations Ecology of Mind: The Sacred Intelligence, Experience, and Evolution Orders of Change The Case Against the Case for Mind/Body Dualism Symptoms, Syndromes, and Systems Seek the Sacred: Dartington Seminar “ Last Lecture” Bibliography of the Published Work of Gregory Bateson Acknowledgments ~ 1991 Acknowledgments ~ 2023 Index