The Syntax of Life: Gregory Bateson and the 'Platonic View'

The essay follows the fil rouge of ancient Greek thinking in the work of Gregory Bateson, an unusually multi-faceted and energetically nomadic intellect in the landscape of twentiethcentury hyper-specialized disciplines, whose eclectic research focused on the question of life and of human participation in a living world. Through the reverberation of Neoplatonic motifs and echoing pre-Socratic intuitions, Bateson reflects on the "pattern which connects"-the that says one and all things, and the interpenetration of one and all things, thus operating as the connective tissue of all that is, the communicational web of contacts, exchanges, and transmissions, perhaps the nervous system of life. ©2013 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden.