Understanding Ecological Aesthetics: The Challenge Of Bateson

Aesthetics appears only fitfully in the literature on modern environmentalism; in Bateson's case it was an integral part of his epistemology of recursive systems. Bateson moves into ecology partly through concerns about the nuclear arms race and its potential for destruction. In this he .ts with other concerned scientists during the 1960s. The difference was his continuing attention to aesthetics and its integration with scienti.c evidence, as a 'second vision,' to counter the 'single vision' (cf. William Blake) of modern science, with its mechanistic approaches to living systems. The article considers the influence of Blake on Bateson but draws upon two post-modern writers, J.S. Coetzee and Suzi Gablik, in order to expand upon Bateson's aesthetic ideas. Finally, Bateson has been almost entirely neglected in the history of ecological ideas, yet. Recent research in the Arctic laments lack of knowledge about ecological feedbacks, Bateson's central focus, and possibilities of global climate change being abrupt, about which he warned.