Expanding Mind

We need a new mode of analyzing natural systems: matter and energy are only part of the picture. Information "flows" are critical as well. How can you analyze a natural system in time without attending to the flow of representation and interpretation that makes change possible? DNA communicates pattern; animal behaviors communicate threat, sexual readiness, friendliness, awareness of predators, and so on. How can we imagine that we understand a natural system without attending to the complex of codes and responses that are part and parcel of it?

At a higher level of abstraction, we have in the human world the use of imagined behaviors and gestures. It is “as if” something were said or done when we read it in a book or an article. Extended stories and arguments become part of the world of possibilities for interpretation and reaction.

Mindlike activity, according to Gregory Bateson (Mind and Nature), starts with something as simple as a thermostat-driven heating system. The thermostat triggers the furnace, which heats the house until the thermostat triggers the stop mechanism when the temperature reaches a certain level. But this system really does not involve information only. A physical “key” is usually used as the trigger, which means that the system can be described in terms of exchanges of matter and energy only. Or does it? How about chemical “signals” in the brain? They act physically or energetically, but do they not also act symbolically (standing for something—a state, a condition external to themselves)?

Genome and epigenome—code and activation of code. Represented worlds and actualized worlds. Habit and disruption of habit. At all levels, entropy and order work together to create possibility. Randomness doesn’t really exist. Or does it?