EFTA02712843.pdf

From: John Brockman <-> Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2014 10:06 PM To: Epstein Jeffrey Subject: about the AUM CONFERENCE https://edge.org/conversation/gregory-bateson-the-centennial (JOHN BROCKMAN:) It is March 1973 in Big Sur. California. A diverse =roup of thinkers are assembled to spend ten days together exploring the =ork of British mathematician G. Spencer Brown. Alan Watts and John =illy, the coorganizers, are billing the event as "The AUM Conference." =horthand for The American University of Masters. They have gathered together intellectuals, philosophers, psychologists, =nd scientists. Each has been asked to lecture on his own work in terms =f its relationship to Brown's new ideas in mathematics. C. Spencer =rown lectures for two days on his Laws of Form. Alan Watts talks of =astern religious thought. John Lilly discusses maps of reality. Karl =ribram explores new possibilities for thinking about neuroscience. Ram =ass presents a spiritual path. Stewart Brand lectures on whole systems. =sychologists Will Schutz, Claudio Naranjo, and Charles Tart are in =ttendance. Heinz von Foerster holds forth on cybernetic modeling. My =wn topic is "Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein, and Frankenstein." Perhaps, of all the "Masters" present, Gregory Bateson, at sixty-eight, =s at once the best known and the least known. Among his assembled =eers, his reputation is formidable. At the AUM Conference, stories of =is profound effect on postmodern thinking abound. Yet few outside the =elatively small circle of avant-garde thinkers know about him or his =ork. There is valid reason. Bateson is not very accessible. His major book, =teps to an Ecology of Mind, is just being published. It is a collection =f essays he has written over a thirty-five-year period. Bateson begins lecturing in the conference room. Clearly he is held in =we by his colleagues. Nothing in his imposing presence detracts from =is reputation. He is a large man with a deep rich voice imbued with an =nmistakable English accent. There is an air of authenticity about him. Nora Bateson, Gregory Bateson, John Brockman at Aum Conference, 1973 His talk is filled with brilliant insights and vast erudition as he sakes us on a tour of subjects that include zoology, psychiatry, =nthropology, aesthetics, linguistics, evolution, cybernetics, and =pistemology'. "The point," he says, "is that the ways of =ineteenth-century thinking are becoming rapidly bankrupt, and new ways =re growing out of cybernetics, systems theory, ecology, meditation, =sychoanalysis, and psychedelic experience." As he talks I look through a paper he has left for us as we entered the =oom. "Form, Substance, and Difference" is the nineteenth Korzybski =ecture, delivered by Bateson in 1970. In it he points out that he's =ouched on numerous fields but is an expert in none. He's not a =hilosopher, nor is anthropology exactly his business. This doesn't help =e much. All I know about him is that he has an anthropological =ackground, was once married to Margaret Mead, and was a prime mover =ehind the important Macy Conferences in Cybernetics in the 194Os. Account by Cliff Barney: http://www.lawsofform.org/aum/prolog.html EFTA_R1_02132683 EFTA02712843 First few pages: =ttp://www.artnode.se/artorbit/issue4/i_brockman/i_brockman.html=?xml version=.0" encoding=TF- 8"?> <IDOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/Propertylist-1.0.dtd"> <plist version=.0"> <dict> <key>date-last-viewed</key> <integer>0</integer> <key>date-received</key> <integer>1419717986</integer> <key>flags</key> <integer>8590195713</integer> <key>gmail-label-ids</key> <array> <integer>7</integer> </array> <key>remote-id</key> <string>467217</string> </dict> </plist> 2 EFTA_R1_02132684 EFTA02712844