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Gregory Bateson, Niklas

Luhmann, and Ecological
Communication
a
Piyush Mathur
a
Department of Communications & Multimedia
Design , American University of Nigeria ,
Published online: 23 May 2008.

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 The Communication Review, 11: 151–175, 2008
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DOI: 10.1080/10714420802068391

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GREGORY BATESON, NIKLAS LUHMANN,

AND ECOLOGICAL COMMUNICATION
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Piyush Mathur
G. Mathur
P. Bateson, N. Luhmann, and Ecological Communication

Department of Communications & Multimedia Design,

American University of Nigeria

Cognizant of the evolving academic discipline of ecological communica-

tion (EC), I offer this essay as a follow-up to my previous publication—a
critical exegesis of Niklas Luhmann’s Ecological Communication
(1989)—in this journal. Hoping to throw more light on Luhmann’s
formulations, I introduce and interpret those writings of Gregory Bateson
that apparently influenced the former—and/or attempted to link ecology
with communication. While I do not necessarily advocate either of these
two thinkers’ overall philosophical frameworks, I believe that they
deserve attention—at the least insofar as they provide a measure of
contrast to the contemporary academic discourse of EC (which remains
shallow, intellectually parochial, and nonrigorous). That aside, many
specific ideas developed by these two thinkers will interest a wide range
of constituencies—especially those devoted to the study of information,
communication, and ecology.

Noting the chaotic mushrooming of efforts broadly studied and advertised

under the banner of ecological or environmental communication (EC)—
and the absence of well-articulated theoretical structures to support
them—I have devoted the past few years to exploring the history of intel-
lectual thought for any theoretical reflections that may be pertinent to the
topic. A result of my research has been a detailed critical exegesis of
Niklas Luhmann’s Ecological Communication (1989), a treatise that has

I would like to thank Dr. Michael Smith, at Virginia Tech, for his consistent critical input
into the writing of this manuscript. Sincere thanks are also due to Bruce Williams for his strate-
gic advice regarding the structure of this manuscript, and to Tatiana Omeltchenko for her sup-
port through the long process of peer review.
Address correspondence to Piyush Mathur, Department of Communications and Multimedia
Design, School of Information Technology & Communications, American University of Nigeria,
Yola, Adamawa State, PMB 2250, Nigeria. E-mail: pspecial@gmail.com
 152 P. Mathur

generally been ignored by the academic discourse of EC.1 (That exegesis

is accompanied by my commentary on the treatise’s and system theory’s
limited relevance to the field.2)
In the interim, however, I have also concluded that there is sufficient
merit in reporting the findings of my extended background research on
Luhmann’s thought concerning EC. As a step in that direction, I shall
introduce and interpret in this article the relevant writings of Gregory
Bateson (1904–1980)—a thinker who somewhat preceded, but mostly
overlapped and influenced Luhmann (1927–1998), who was at the heart
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of the analytical ethos from which Luhmann has drawn many of his own
formulations, and who also wrote about both ecology and communication.
Underlying my effort is the belief that Bateson’s ruminations—not quite
unlike those of Luhmann—shall help us understand, as if by way of a
contrast, the existing priorities and intellectual culture of EC.
On the last count, it is useful to mention that activities and literature
related to EC retain the following key underlying objectives: dissemination
(including journalism and labeling); advocacy (including activism and
lobbying); management (including conflict resolution, crisis manage-
ment, and public relations); and (socio-political, cultural, and rhetorical)
analysis. While these objectives (and associated enterprises, styles, or
genres) do overlap, none of them—excepting analysis, to some degree—
appears to have been pursued with theoretical savvy. Indeed, even the
analytical component is theoretically astute only in comparison with those
other components internal to “the field of interest” called EC: Put within
the broader context of other sociological and humanistic discourses, EC
unfortunately remains an intellectually nonrigorous field (Mathur, 2005,
p. 335). In this sense, Ingolfur Blühdorn’s accusation that “contemporary
ecological thought displays significant philosophical weaknesses”—and
“is strikingly uncritical concerning the validity of its analytical and
prescriptive judgements”—holds eerily true, at least, for the specific
subfield of EC (2000, p. 4, emphasis in original).
A case in point is the inaugural issue of Environmental Communica-
tion—the leading North American journal within the field—presumably an
outgrowth of the now-defunct Environmental Communication Yearbook.
That issue—not unlike many others that came by way of the Yearbook—
retains several coterie-style contributions whose key underlying objective
seems to be to consolidate the administrative foundations and professional
fraternity of EC within the academia. Hardly more rigorous or comprehen-
sively analyzed than mundane journalism, most of these contributions give
the sense that their authors are playing roles in a choreography whose
conclusions are as predictable as their prologues are hackneyed.
So, Robert Cox, for instance, could subtitle and string his lead entry
into the above issue with an inane yes/no question—“Does environmental
 G. Bateson, N. Luhmann, and Ecological Communication 153

communication have an ethical duty?”—that begs the answer; he could

also start out the entry with this aggrandizing statement: “There occur
moments in the emergence of a field of inquiry when it seems beneficial
to reflect on its mission or its self-understanding of the values or goals
that it claims to pursue” (2007, p. 5). He could also make the academi-
cally fashionable dramatic declaration, based upon his self-acknowledged
imitation of Michael Soulé’s idea concerning conservation biology in the
1980s, that EC is a crisis discipline—and receive, in the same issue, just
the confirmation and the affirmation from fellows he very likely knows
already!3 Furthermore, in an essay that is at best meandering, belated, and
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repetitive—even though clearly well-intentioned—what we get is a list of

clichés masquerading as “tenets of a field of environmental communica-
tion” (Cox, 2007, p. 12).4 Worse, the essay, which ends up being an
appeal to the readers to start “acting like members of a crisis discipline,”
does not live up to even basic logical scrutiny (Cox, 2007, p. 10).5 Indeed,
from this issue of Environmental Communication, EC comes out more as
a discipline in-crisis than as a crisis discipline (-to-be)!
What the above discussion indicates is that the spirit of collegial famil-
iarity has left little incentive for EC contributors to develop robust critiques
of their own ideas, or to be ambitious or meticulous in thinking about eco-
logical communication. In conjunction with the drive to institutionalize the
discourse as an academic discipline (within the United States), the EC fra-
ternity has also created an ethos that does not quite favor cosmopolitan
voices and globally informed (or oriented) intellectual traditions at least
within its publications. Moreover, there remains a somewhat blind focus
within the discourse on an empirically inclined, limiting approach.
In such a scenario, raising genuine questions for the sake of invoking
genuine responses is replaced—as if as a matter of rhetorical, inspirational
ritualism performed by a clique—with raising those questions whose
answers are already known. In this sense, the discourse has clearly deterio-
rated in substance and quality since the publication of The Symbolic Earth
(1996), an edited collection of essays that did raise some pioneering ques-
tions and also addressed them with appreciable rigor and depth. In its current
state, the academic discourse of EC could therefore look to those perspec-
tives that are not part of its official promotional scheme—even if only to
reject them after all—in order to situate itself, to look back at itself. By the
same token, independent observers of intellectual traditions and activities
ought to be able to look for—and bring to everybody’s attention—alterna-
tive vantage points from where emergent discourses such as EC could be
looked at (and hopefully prevented from turning into stodgy orthodoxies). It
is in this spirit—of looking for alternative frameworks for the sake of ensur-
ing theoretical, analytical, and intellectual savvies for what ecological com-
municators do—that I hereby turn to the work of Gregory Bateson.
 154 P. Mathur

GREGORY BATESON’S CYBERNETIC FRAMEWORK:

COMMUNICATION, ECOLOGY, AND
ECOLOGICAL COMMUNICATION

Let me start out by admitting that discussing Bateson is a frustrating

task for several reasons. For one, he is not particularly popular among
younger or upcoming scholars: Reading him in the present times is
like detouring to a past that is pretty much forgotten in mainstream
academic theory—even as it clearly informs the substratum of the
information age.6 For the more seasoned authors or intellectuals, on
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the other hand, he is a figure way past his heyday, whilst they never
were quite sure whether he ever deserved a “heyday”! In both the
instances, the burden of (re)introducing him falls upon me, even as I
am aware of both my limitations as an introducer and some of the
more articulate introductions to him.7 Finally, Bateson’s work is very
multidisciplinary, recursive, nonsystematic, and oftentimes vacuously
prolix—thereby asking for a systematizing and sympathetic introduc-
tion. Given the totality of the circumstances, I must defer the reader to
the existing introductions for a more general, detailed, and compre-
hensive insight into his life and works—reserving for myself the more
specific task of looking at his ruminations for how they might relate to
EC and Luhmann’s theory of EC. (As for a detailed critical exposition
of Luhmann’s Ecological Communication itself, I must refer the
reader to my 2005 publication on that topic.)
The plain fact is that EC does not come through easily as a theme in
Bateson (which is what makes his work an interesting alternative to
the incipient orthodoxy within the academic discourse of EC, espe-
cially in North America). What follows, therefore, is a matter of
deciding to examine and piece together his thoughts on a range of
issues that are relevant to EC and are somehow interrelated. Included
among those thoughts are his reformulations of such critical terms
from his times as communication, information, cybernetics, evolution,
and ecology. I shall discuss them under the following four subhead-
ings—each representative of a distinctive strand within his thought:
(A) Psychiatry, (B) Ecology, (C) Cybernetics, and (D) Evolution.
While these subheadings may not suggest that social communication
was a direct interest of Bateson, the discussions below shall show
otherwise. Communication got Bateson’s attention in the earlier years
of his career—in connection with his research in psychiatry—whereas
ecology increasingly occupied him in the latter years. It would not be
incorrect to say that ecology eventually became the dominant
framework within his thought, even as it was rendered in terms of his
redefined communication.
 G. Bateson, N. Luhmann, and Ecological Communication 155

Psychiatry: Entropy, Codification, Metacommunication

Bateson developed his thoughts on psychiatry in a close association with

Ruesch; the representative elements of their hypothesis and methodology
are found in Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry, a treatise
originally published in 1951 (Ruesch & Bateson, 1968). What the two
authors offer could be aptly called a communicative system theory of
psychiatry (even though Ruesch refers to it once as a “unified theory of
communication”) (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 4). At the heart of their efforts is
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a thorough reworking of psychiatry into a social science about general

communicative interrelationships among individuals—from its previous
avatars as (1) a medical, somatic treatment of major individual psychoses
(through insulin or shock therapy, for example), and (2) psychoanalytic
treatment of individuals traumatized by unfortunate personal or family
affairs (such as through counseling sessions). As such, Ruesch and
Bateson take the following steps: (1) identify psychiatry and psychiatric
illnesses as systemic problems of communication; (2) deem the reflexive
aspect of communication as the pivotal theoretical problematic (whereas,
in the words of Ruesch, “the scientific investigation of communication is
made difficult by the fact that we have to communicate in order to investi-
gate communication”) (Ruesch & Bateson, pp. 6–7); (3) highlight and
address the problem of putting boundaries on, or levels to, communication
(as in delineating the communicative context of the patient amid stimuli
from the outside world, within the clinic, and within himself or herself);8
and (4) underline communication as the neutral process that links the
biological and psychological aspects of being.
Here, it is useful to reminisce that Ruesch and Bateson were inspired
by the intellectual synergies of the late 1940s (and their outgrowths),
particularly those related to the advances in research on information;
alongside, these two authors were influenced by the socio-psychological
environs of the industrialized world in the aftermath of World War II.
Those environs had the following two major dimensions to them: One,
there was the massification of psychological and psychiatric illnesses
caused by the large-scale destruction, suffering, involuntary migrations,
and unsettlements resulting from the World Wars. Two, there was the
concomitant rise of systemic thinking, projected in the surge of capitalistic
industrialism, on the one hand, and in welfare programs in liberal democ-
racies and centralized planning in the communist bloc, on the other.
Ruesh and Bateson viewed the above developments as the sign of the
passing of “the age of individual,” concluding that “the old ways of coping
with human problems had become ineffective” (p. vii). Specifically, they
lamented the unavailability of any “unified or general theory . . . that
could adequately represent the person, the group and society all within
 156 P. Mathur

one system” (Ruesch & Bateson, p. vii). It is such a theory that they
sought to provide in the given treatise.
On the broadest level, Ruesch and Bateson refuse to reduce communication
to the verbal or written exchange among humans. Instead, deeming “[the
psychiatrist] and the communication engineer, of all scientists . . . to be
most aware of the laws of communication,” Ruesch looks toward cyber-
netics and communication engineering for their key conceptual defini-
tions (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 13). The reliance on the above fields has
partly to do with the assumption that they bridge the gap between human
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and nonhuman domains by focusing “not upon the person or the group,
but upon the message and the circuit as units of study” (Ruesch &
Bateson, p. vi). In sync with the above, Ruesch defines communication as
a “social matrix” in which human beings are exposed to

repetitive and consistent bombardment with stimuli [originating,] on

the one hand, in the social behavior of other people and, on the other
hand, in the objects, plants, and animals with which people surround
themselves. (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 8)

Likewise, he defines information as the “arrangement of nervous

impulses and connections [consisting] of relationships which are system-
atically derived from those among the original events outside the organ-
ism” (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 7). The organism being considered, however,
is under highly particular, and heretofore unknown, pressures—in that the
“modern man has to contend with human interaction, man-machine inter-
action, and machine-machine interaction” (Ruesch & Bateson, p. viii).
Ruesch and Bateson apply the concept of entropy—also understood as
random errors (noise) occurring through the transmission of signals and
as a measure of the efficiency of transmission systems—and the Second
Law of Thermodynamics to frame the holistic problem of individual and
systemic psychiatric irregularities. Viewing these irregularities as manifes-
tations of informational disequilibrium within a communicative system,
Ruesch argues that

physiologist, psychologist, and psychiatrist alike are concerned with

problems of order and disorder, entropy and the maintenance of the
organism; the difference between these scientists is that the physiologist
is concerned with the exchange of calories and chemical elements, and
the psychiatrist and psychologist with the exchange of information [ . . . ].
(Ruesch & Bateson, pp. 90–91)

In focusing upon the dynamics of communication among interacting

individuals, Ruesch prominently includes the body as the “communication
 G. Bateson, N. Luhmann, and Ecological Communication 157

apparatus of man,” but warns against thinking in “anatomical terms when

considering the internal network of communication” (Ruesch & Bateson,
p. 16 & p. 29, respectively). Instead, he advises comparing “the individual
with a social organization”—such as a nation-state, whereas “messages
from the borders and from all parts of the nation are transmitted to the
capital and to all other places by means of intricate network” (Ruesch &
Bateson, p. 29). The presumed motive behind such a comparison is to
ensure that the analytical focus stays on the transmission or interaction
rather than on the message or the carrier; the effect of the comparison,
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however, is that it obliges us to view communication in inescapably

systemic terms. This is also considered scientifically sound—something
that Luhmann would vigorously argue in his writings—because the “com-
munication apparatus of man [is] a functional entity without anatomical
localization” (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 16). Hence, the following statement:

For practical purposes . . . events occurring in other persons are

accessible to an observer in terms of inference alone; all he observes is
the stimuli which reach the other person and the latter’s reactions; the
rest is subject to conjecture. Furthermore, the observer, being a social
stimulus for others, possesses knowledge about the origin and the
nature of some of the stimuli which he feeds to other individuals. In
such a system, which includes the observer as an integral part, the
actions of the first person are stimuli for the second person and the
response of the second person are stimuli for the first person. (Ruesch &
Bateson, p. 26)

Expectedly, Ruesch and Bateson underline relativism as the trait

inherent to all communication. In order to explain the mechanism of this
relativism, they introduce the concepts of interpretation, perception of
perception, choice, codification, circularity, self-preservation, and meta-
communication. Interpretation ensures that “any change in the state of an
organism can be viewed from varied standpoints and can be registered
consciously or unconsciously” (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 31). And, to the
extent that all individuals are inescapably part of the game of interpretation,
“the term ‘role’ refers to nothing but the code which is used to interpret the
flow of messages” (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 27). Accordingly, all communi-
cators are at once observers or interpreters of each other, and the resultant
posture of observing-while-being-observed is a prerequisite for any social
communicative system:

The perception of . . . perception . . . is the sign that a silent agreement

has been reached by the participants, to the effect that mutual influ-
ence is to be expected. The mutual recognition of having entered into
 158 P. Mathur

each other’s field of perception equals the establishment of a system of

communication. The criteria of mutual awareness of perception are in all
cases instances of communications about communication. (Ruesch &
Bateson, pp. 23–24)

The “communication about communication” mandates the exercise of

choice by the individual in the form of his or her “preference”—and is
instrumental in simplifying existential/informational complexity through
categorization. Consider the following:
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“Preference” always refers to an organism’s reaction to two or more

possibilities which have been perceived. These possibilities refer on
the one hand to a series of perceived stimuli and on the other hand to
a series of anticipated reactions of the organism. In order to facilitate
a decision in the face of these multiple choices, the organism
subdivides the perceived stimuli and the anticipated reactions into
groups. Through a series of complicated processes, the individual
finally comes out with a statement of preference. Such a statement of
preference we shall term value. (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 45)

“Choice,” “value,” and “preference” occur in the treatise mostly as

Ruesch’s summary statements; they attain their refined, systematized, and
developed meanings in Bateson’s formulation of codification. In other
words, codification provides the sophisticated explanation for how
Ruesch’s choice, preference, and value act out at the level of individual
cognition and expression.9
Borrowing the idea from communication engineering’s binary system,
Bateson defines codification as “the substitution of one type of event for
another, such that the event substituted shall in some sense stand for the
other” (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 169). As such, codification has the following
normative and functional features: (1) It “must be such that relationships
are preserved”—indicating the presence of negative entropy (Ruesch &
Bateson, p. 170); (2) codified information is “multiplicative,” i.e., “the
elementary unit of information must contain at least [the] double aspect of
asserting one truth and denying some often undefined opposite” (Ruesch &
Bateson, p. 175); (3) (codified) messages look both backwards and for-
wards in terms of time, i.e., “[o]n the one hand, the message is a statement
or a report about events at a previous moment, and on the other hand it is
a command—a cause or stimulus for events at a later moment” (Ruesch &
Bateson, p. 179); and (4) codification necessarily includes the “informa-
tion” about, and the “value system,” of the speaker (Ruesch & Bateson,
p. 178). A codification failure—for being a matter of incongruence either
between the internal code and its external referent within the individual
 G. Bateson, N. Luhmann, and Ecological Communication 159

mind or among individuals in reference to a given set of realities—is to be

understood as a communicative rupture or a psychiatric disorder.10 The
theoretical corollary of such a failure lies, of course, in the idea of treat-
ment—whereas Ruesch defines “mental health” as the “ability to mutu-
ally correct the meaning of messages and to mutually influence each
other’s behavior to each other’s satisfaction” (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 87).
Ruesch and Bateson go on to reason why and when codification
succeeds and fails—both at the general level of social communication and
at the specialized level of psychiatric treatment. In the latter case, Ruesch
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frames the dynamics between the patient and the psychotherapist as the
primary problematic deserving a well worked-out explanation.11 How-
ever, insofar as dissenting individuals within society—including patients
and psychiatrists in their mutual interactions—often succeed in reaching a
point of congruence or a state of communicative equilibrium, Ruesch and
Bateson deem the system of social communication self-corrective as a
whole. Partly inspired by Walter B. Cannon’s theory of “homeostasis,”
Ruesch locates the evidence for systemic self-correction, -sustenance, and –
organization at least at the following four levels: (1) the evolvement and
availability of psychiatric clinics or mental hospitals (and associated ser-
vices); (2) successful treatments; (3) the general willingness of communi-
cators to influence, and be influenced by, each other to appreciable
degrees; and (4) the general ability of individuals to live meaningfully
within the system despite their personal differences or disagreements
from it (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 58). Bateson views this self-corrective
mechanism in terms of “irritability” and “adaptive action” (Ruesch &
Bateson, p. 212).
Together with Ruesch’s definitions of communication, value, and
preference, sketch of the disciplinary needs of psychiatry, and general
reflections on psychiatry and culture, Bateson’s elaboration of codification
is meant to fulfill “the basic requirements for the construction of a psychiatric
system” (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 79). This is insofar as a psychiatric
system—in the words of Ruesch—must: (1) “be circular”; (2) “have the
characteristics of self-correction”; (3) be able to “satisfactorily solve the
problem of part and whole function”; and (4) “clearly define the position
of the observer and therefore state the influence of the observer upon that
which is observed and vice versa” (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 79). Notably, by
“psychiatric system” Ruesch and Bateson meant not only the communica-
tive system of society, nor just the medical setting of a typical psychiatric
treatment, but also the theoretical system employed to explain the above
two in continuous terms of communication. As such, the structure of
Ruesch and Bateson’s construction is significant because it betrays a
remarkable, even though qualified, affinity both to Luhmann’s portrayal of
society (or social systems) and to the structure of his theoretical arguments.
 160 P. Mathur

Perhaps the most important facet to keep in mind about the psychiatric
system here involves the norms of circularity and self-preservation (the
latter being closely related to self-correction or self-organization): They
both point up the requirement for psychiatry and psychiatric discourse to
be able to explain consistently, rationally, and fully (at least) the most
important concepts and events typically involved in the praxis—in the
terms that they themselves proffer. That is because circularity is to be
expected not just from the operational reality of an actual psychiatric or
communicative system in society, but also from the mechanism employed
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to explain it. In other words, circularity is also to be expected from the

theory of psychiatry (or communication), whereas a theory of psychia-
try—just like a psychiatric or social system—would attempt to “preserve”
itself by virtue of being self-reflexive.
That a communicative system can preserve itself by relying entirely
upon itself—i.e., upon communication—is consistent with Ruesch’s idea
that “the perception of perception” or “communications about communi-
cation” constitutes a prerequisite for any operative psychiatric/communi-
cative system (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 23 & p. 24, respectively). However,
this prerequisite of a self-perpetuating self-reliance (or self-reflexivity) is
at once the central theoretical problematic (of circularity) within the
clinic: This is because this prerequisite apparently leaves no outside—or
perfectly objective—position from which to ascertain the success of a
communication or treatment. Ruesch details the problematic as under:

As a result of participation in the system—and non-participation is

impossible—the patient’s behavior is going to be influenced by the
psychiatrist, and vice versa. Not only may the patient get better or
worse while we explore him for the first time, but our own distur-
bances of communication may obscure our assessment of the patient.
We are never quite secure in what we are doing, and only a check by
another person, either an outsider or the patient himself, will enable us
to gauge the effect of our own actions. The ability to mutually correct
the meaning of messages and to mutually influence each other’s behav-
ior to each other’s satisfaction is the result of successful communication.
This is the only criterion we possess, and if we possess, and if we achieve
such a state, it indicates mental health. (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 87)

As a way out of this circularity, Bateson pleads for attending to

metacommunication, i.e., “all exchanged cues and propositions about (a)
codification and (b) relationship between the communicators” (Ruesch &
Bateson, p. 209). Even though this plea comes on the top of their refusal
to localize the communication apparatus within the individual anatomy and
rejection of the importance of consciousness to the study of codification
 G. Bateson, N. Luhmann, and Ecological Communication 161

and communication, it is not meant to deny the importance of the individ-

ual to the communicative system.12 The primary unit of Ruesch and
Bateson’s analysis (and hence of their view of the communicative system
called society) remains the human individual insofar as the ideal of a
completely objective, all-observant “superhuman observer” is ruled out as
a fallacious fantasy (pp. 273–274). In other words, metacommunication
shows the way out of the circularity through a reaffirmation of observational
relativism at the expense of the hope for the ideal superhuman observer.
Wherefore, according to Ruesch and Bateson, the following holds:
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At the intrapersonal level, the focus of the observer is limited by the

self, and the various functions of communication are found within the
self. At the interpersonal level the perceptual field is occupied by two
people, at the group level by many people, and at the cultural level by
many groups. (p. 274)

In the end, and following Kurt Gödel, Bateson admits contradiction as

an inevitable condition of dealing “simultaneously with both objective
communication and metacommunication”—as in psychotherapy—
whereas “all attempts to build a coherent body of statements at several
levels of abstraction must always end in paradox and contradiction”
(Ruesch & Bateson, pp. 223–224 and p. 227, respectively). On the social
level, he stresses the significance of subjective relativism—rather than
some transcendental objectivity—to the entire phenomenon, pointing out
that “the qualities and characteristics of metacommunication between per-
sons will depend upon the qualities and degree of their mutual awareness
of each other’s perception” (Ruesch & Bateson, pp. 209–210). This is
despite the fact that “the importance of the single individual diminishes,
and at the higher levels one person becomes only a small element in the
system of communication” (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 274).
Ruesch and Bateson’s reworked model of psychiatry, intended to
explain larger systemic problems in the communicative terms, basically
added a communicative dimension to the other systemic models that
pervaded the intellectual milieu of the period between the 1940s and the
1970s. Viewed especially in the retrospective light of Luhmann’s theory
of EC, the most relevant theoretical contributions of their psychiatric
model can now be recapitulated. They must include the following:

• the rendition of communication and society as a psychiatric system

and vice versa;
• the problematization of communicative limits or levels (and the
resultant delocalization of communication—and its understanding
as a system without any definitive boundaries);
 162 P. Mathur

• the view of communication as a self-sustaining, self-corrective,

and self-organizing evolutionary system;
• the stance that absolute objectivity is impossible within the com-
municative realm at each and every level—whereas “perception
of perception” or “communication about communication” is at
the heart of any communicative success;
• the idea that communicative dynamics are part of the same sys-
temic continuum across biological, psychological, social, and
physical interfaces, and can be studied—for a start—based upon
“a non-human model”;13
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• the continued focus on the individual despite the acknowledg-

ment of both relativism and systemic dynamics;
• the hypothesis that codification is the way through which humans
connect among themselves within given environments, with the
worst disconnects constituting serious psychiatric or communi-
cative problems.

Of all of the above, the last bit is perhaps the most significant because
it underlines the communicative relativism among humans as well as with
respect to the environment—and the effort involved in connecting. In
relation to the above, Bateson argues that

[n]egative entropy, value, and information, are in fact alike in so far as

the system to which these notions refer is the man plus environment,
and in so far as, both in seeking information and in seeking values, the
man is trying to establish an otherwise improbable congruence
between ideas and events. (Ruesch & Bateson, p. 179)

Ecology

In the foregoing section, I discussed how Bateson (and Ruesch) viewed psy-
chiatry as a mightily useful subset—and the handiest exemplar—of
communication, which in turn was the general epistemological framework of
his choice.14 However, Bateson’s subsequent writings suggest that ecology
ended up replacing communication as his chosen general epistemological
framework. Keeping in mind his philosophical nomadism and mutability,
I personally consider this development a matter of chronology rather than
a decisive evidence that ecology finally superceded all else in his thought
on the whole. Hence, I shall view ecology as only one of Bateson’s major
concerns;15 of interest would be its shape and character within his writings.
The significance of discussing ecology in the context of Bateson lies
primarily in the fact that it did not mean to him just what it commonly
does—let us say, (the study of) the relationships and interactions among
 G. Bateson, N. Luhmann, and Ecological Communication 163

living organisms against the backdrop of a natural or developed environment.

Instead, endowed with a conspicuously broadened and particularized
meaning at once, ecology occurs strictly alongside three other major
concepts in his writings: communication, information, and evolution. This
placement is critical for us in retrospect because it appears to have
allowed Bateson to generate a particular modality of relationship between
ecology and communication that by default bears upon the future
theorization of EC.
Ecology concerned Bateson primarily as part of his overall epistemological
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quest—regarding, let’s say, how phenomena “work” or “make sense”—

and not the other way around.16 As a natural existential phenomenon, it
provided him with the exemplar of an inescapably open-ended intercon-
nectedness ironically asking for particular, concrete, and real explanations.
However, as a field of scientific inquiry, ecology fascinated him—someone
who loved to think big—because, while concerning itself with specifics, it
also matches several features of his all-encompassing and seemingly ad
hoc epistemological ambitions that conventionally belong in the realm of
abstractions or metaphysics. In other words, both as an existential
phenomenon and as a science, ecology inherently validated Bateson’s
tireless efforts at explaining nothing-in-particular or everything-in-
general! Accordingly, his latter-day ruminations crystallized in the form
of what he called the ecology of mind, which he defined all too loosely as
under:

In the past few days, people have asked me, “What do you mean, ecol-
ogy of mind?” Approximately what I mean is the various kinds of stuff
that goes on in one’s head and in one’s behavior and in dealing with
other people, and walking up and down mountains, and getting sick,
and getting well. All that stuff interlocks, and, in fact, constitutes a
network which, in the local language, is called mandala. I am more
comfortable with the word “ecology,” but they’re very closely related
ideas. (1991, p. 264)

Though it may seem from the above that the older Bateson turned out
to be a New Age guru expounding the virtues of obscure oriental spiritual
cults, the fact of the matter is that the man remained heavily invested in
figuring out a “neutral” way to speak about how this system called “the
world” works! The thrust in the above passage, therefore, is on
“network”—though it is true that Bateson also wrote, cursorily, about
Occidental and Oriental systems of thinking and doing (critiquing modern
science and technology of the West for their belief in control of nature). In
any case, he did not consider (his) spiritualism to be opposed to verifiable
or rationalistic truth; quite the contrary, he believed that the real reality,
 164 P. Mathur

examined in an unbiased manner, was sure to betray spiritualistic linkages

across the universe.
Unsurprisingly, Bateson attempted to realize the “neutral” ways of
investigating into reality by thinking doggedly in terms of minimalist
continua rather than conventional material blocks—or definitional divi-
sions, separations, or binaries among, within, or between radically
“different” activities, things, or phenomena. Hence: ecology—presumably
(a science of) empirical and concrete realities—of mind, (continuing
through) the hub of (human) abstractions and ideas. A robust acceptance
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of the material and the nonliving in the same space as the nonmaterial and
the living is the sine qua non for Bateson’s idea of ecology; contrarily, in
his framework ecology is part of the proof that logically reality cannot and
should not be compartmentalized.

Cybernetics: Existence as Communication

Bateson adopted cybernetics as the framework and methodology to

pursue his epistemological quest and, eventually, to demonstrate and
establish the fact of elemental continuum or interconnectedness. This
choice presumes that cybernetics is the best-positioned and best-
articulated system to expose epistemological mechanisms at their deep-
est and widest. However, as with ecology, so with cybernetics: Bateson
upheld a deliberately selective idea of it, based upon his personal medi-
tation on the topic.17 Specifically, while accepting the focus within
cybernetics on relationships (among myriad phenomena), he rejects the
parallel focus in it on the control of those relationships (to particular
ends or objectives)18—because he finds the latter incongruous with the
ecological sensibility:

I prefer to use the term ‘cybernetic’ to describe complete circuiting

systems. For me, the system is man-and-environment; to introduce the
notion of “control” would draw a boundary between these two, to give
a picture of man versus environment. (Bateson, 1991, p. 202)

While the cybernetic interconnectedness is isomorphic to the ecological,

it is also a highly promising provider of universalistic interfaces—let us
say—between organisms and the environment, organisms and machines,
and organisms and organisms. The universalistic aspect derives from the
fact that information—rather, “transfer of information”—is the unit of
cybernetic analysis, whereas “[t]he subject matter of cybernetics is not
events and objects but the information ‘carried’ by events and objects”
(Bateson, 1991, p. 407). Hence, differentiating a “cybernetic explanation”
from a “causal explanation,” Bateson alludes to a third reason behind his
 G. Bateson, N. Luhmann, and Ecological Communication 165

own choice of the former—and hence, of the cybernetic framework itself:

It makes one attend to alternatives. Consider the following:

Causal explanation is usually positive. We say that billiard ball B

moved in such and such a direction because billiard ball A hit it at
such and such an angle. In contrast to this, cybernetic explanation is
always negative. We consider what alternative possibilities could con-
ceivably have occurred and then ask why many of the alternatives
were not followed, so that the particular event was one of those few
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which could, in fact, occur. (Bateson, 1972, p. 405)

Thus, cybernetic explanation allowed Bateson to think of happen-

stances or events in terms of negatives that presumably prevented alternative
events from taking place: More technically, it made him focus on
restraints that make a positive a probability. This comes out clearly in the
following passage:

In cybernetic language, the course of events is said to be subject to

restraints, and it is assumed that, apart from such restraints, the pathways
of change would be governed only by equality of probability. In fact,
the “restraints” upon which cybernetic explanation depends can in all
cases be regarded as factors which determine inequality of probability.
(Bateson, 1972, pp. 405–406)

Bateson’s overall valuation of cybernetics translates into the idea that

all available existence is, or can be seen as, positive or meaningful com-
munication put into effect by a set of decipherable restraints or negatives.
By viewing meaningful existence itself as the patterned leftover from all
odds, so to speak, Bateson renders reality into a communicational
dynamic between (negative) restraints and their (positive) eventual prob-
ability; conversely, he regards “patterning or predictability as the very
raison d’être of communication” (Bateson, 1972, p. 412). In accordance,
he asserts the following: “All that is not information, not redundancy, not
form and not restraints—is noise, the only possible source of new
patterns” (Bateson, 1972, p. 416).
In dispersed passages, Bateson attempts to explain what a typical
cybernetic approach to (analyzing) phenomena would or should look like;
let me quote one such telling account below:

If we find a monkey striking a typewriter apparently at random but in

fact writing meaningful prose, we shall look for restraints, either inside
the monkey or inside the typewriter. Perhaps the monkey could not
strike inappropriate letters; perhaps the type bars could not move if
 166 P. Mathur

improperly struck; perhaps incorrect letters could not survive on the

paper. Somewhere there must have been a circuit which could identify
error and eliminate it. (1972, pp. 405–406)

For the staunch relativist that Bateson was, he considered both restraints
and the resultant patterns integral to the overall communicational dynamics
called existence or reality or truth. The fourth reason, then, why Bateson
preferred the cybernetic approach was that it could capably explain the
logical only in relation to the nonlogical, thereby making it unavoidable
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to include both as equally central and germane to the process of explana-

tion and to communication as a whole.
Bateson introduced the concept of redundancy in elaborating his
cybernetic approach—and as part of his conviction that any production or
even existence of meaningful(ness) requires the inclusion of absolute
context. Used generally, and in simpler terms, redundancy refers to the
collective—but partial—overlap of all observers and everything observed
through, and onto, the production of meaning. In some specific situations,
such as those exemplified by the passages below, redundancy exposes the
mechanism behind the substitution of message for reality:

If . . . we say that a message has “meaning” or is “about” some ref-

erent, what we mean is that there is a larger universe of relevance
consisting of message-plus-referent, and that redundancy or pattern
or predictability is introduced into this universe by the message.
(Bateson, 1972, p. 413)

If I say to you “It is raining,” this message introduces redundancy into

the universe, message-plus-raindrops, so that from the message alone
you could have guessed—with better than random success—
something of what you would see if you looked out of the window.
(Bateson, 1972, p. 414)

Evolution as Meaningful Communication: “Restraints”

and “Redundancies”

Redundancy assumes significance in the context of evolution: Rather, it

allows Bateson to link communication and ecology against the backdrop of
evolution, but well within the framework of cybernetics. Just as in ecology
Bateson found the exemplar of a natural, open-ended, and defiant intercon-
nectedness amenable to scientific explanations, in evolution he believed to
have encountered a natural system demonstrative of cybernetically explain-
able (and/or generated) restraints and redundancies. Following this logic,
a species, a genus, or a patterned group of organisms can be seen—by yet
 G. Bateson, N. Luhmann, and Ecological Communication 167

another group of fellow organisms called humans—as a package of infor-

mation about the environment presumably developed in response to the
same over a period of time:

[T]here is the matter of phylogenetic learning and phylogeny in gen-

eral. There is redundancy in the system, organism-plus-environment,
such that from the morphology and behavior of the organism a human
observer can guess with better than random success at the nature of
the environment. This “information” about the environment has
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become lodged in the organism through a long phylogenetic process,

and its coding is of a very special kind. (Bateson, 1972, p. 422)

While positing evolution in communicative or cybernetic terms at the level

of the group, Bateson also reached out to trace its microcosmic counterpart in
the gene, the carrier of information at the level of the individual organism:

If, in the communicational and organizational processes of biological

evolution, there be something like levels—items, patterns, and possibly
patterns of patterns—then it is logically possible for the evolutionary
system to make something like positive choices. Such levels and
patterning might conceivably be in or among genes or elsewhere.
(Bateson, 1972, p. 411)

In short, the gene—as the carrier of information—offers itself as the

common cybernetic unit for the analysis of evolution as communication
and, therefore, as the unit of an “ecological” communication in the end.
Although Bateson accorded significance to the gene for its informational or
cybernetic value, he was no biological determinist. Quite to the contrary,
it was his sworn opposition to Darwinian determinism—coupled with his
commitment to reflexivity—that led to his viewing of evolution as a com-
munication among various species and with the environment. For, it is
only in a resolutely indeterminate and reflexive framework that all entities
could have been looked at as partially (re)creating themselves in response
to, or in communication with, all other entities.

CONCLUSION

Luhmann’s formulations concerning ecological communication appear to

be significantly influenced by the thoughts of Bateson (especially those
that come in conjunction with the work of Ruesch). I make that claim
despite the fact that direct references to Bateson and Ruesch in
Luhmann’s publications are very few: I believe that we have to go beyond
those references in order to appreciate the strength of the connection
 168 P. Mathur

between Bateson and Ruesch’s collective work and Luhmann’s theory of

EC. It is not so much the answers provided by Bateson and Ruesch as the
questions raised by them that have guided Luhmann’s theory; as such,
Luhmann’s “ecology of ignorance” is at least in part a funnelled culmina-
tion of Bateson’s “ecology of mind” (Luhmann, 1998, pp. 76–112;
Bateson, 1972, 1991).
Space limitations prohibit me from providing an elaborate support of
my claim above; let me, therefore, make only some broad points to that
end. For a start, Bateson put together concepts such as information,
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communication, cybernetics, evolution, and ecology in a unique analytical

constellation—a constellation that was simply not articulated before, but
has since been used by Luhmann (albeit with a lot more precision,
refinement, and detail). What Bateson added to Ruesch—and which
would also be useful to Luhmann’s systems theory of EC—is the
dimension of ecology.
In the main, Bateson and Ruesch’s centralization of communication to
psychiatry—under the thrust of cybernetics, information theory, and
systems theory—retained significant clues for Luhmann’s resolute
distinctions between psychological and social systems, on the one hand,
and system and environment, on the other. This is because, as discussed
previously, Bateson and Ruesch viewed psychiatry and psychiatric
illnesses as systemic problems of communication—whereby a key focus
of investigation and analysis turned out to be identification of the bound-
aries or levels of communication. Within that context, Ruesch’s rejection
of the importance of consciousness to communication and refusal to
localize communication within the individual anatomy appear to culmi-
nate in Luhmann’s rendition of communication as a strictly social system
operation and dismissal of the human individual (contra Ruesch and
Bateson) from communication (Mathur, p. 334). As such, Luhmann was
able to frame the environmental question (environment) strictly as a
matter of intersystemic social communication (system).
Many associated concepts from Bateson and Ruesch’s collective
work—such as the perception of perception, codification, circularity, self-
preservation, categorization, choice, and metacommunication—also have
clear and strong parallels, resolutions, or application (respectively) in the
following concepts in Luhmann’s framework: the observation of observa-
tion and self-reflexivity; binary coding and programming; self-reference;
asymmetry and complexity; selection, ordering, and differentiation; and,
second-order cybernetics. To give one example of a resolution, Luhmann
offers the concept of difference (presumably) as a way out of Bateson’s
conceptual deadlock of paradox or contradiction (in self-reflexive
communication). Likewise, “[i]nstead of [Bateson’s idea of] transference
[of information from the natural to the social world], Luhmann proposes
 G. Bateson, N. Luhmann, and Ecological Communication 169

the idea of selection of information by system through the employment of

the system/environment differential (typically to overlap with the
internal/external schema)” (Mathur, 2005, p. 341).
On the whole, though, the meaning of ecological communication
changes radically as we move from Bateson to Luhmann—as the latter
rejects the naturalist, open-ended universalism of the former. In many
ways, Luhmann’s theory of EC is an elaborate explanation for precisely
how the “otherwise improbable congruence between ideas and events”
relating to the environment—that Bateson refers to—is in fact achieved
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on the systemic level (Ruesch & Bateson, 1968, p. 179). Unlike Bateson
(and Ruesch), Luhmann excludes the individual from the equation
altogether—focusing, instead, on how social subsystems interact among
themselves (in their bid to fabricate the aforementioned congruence). In
fact, Luhmann radicalizes the systemic aspect by sharply demarcating the
psychological from the social, resting ecological communication at the
latter.
As such, Luhmann’s theory of EC turns out to be a narrative about a
self-enclosing, self-perpetuating society—that leaves no real (environ-
mental or individual) outs for the human observer, the only legitimate
observer by default! Worse, as Blüdorn argues, “Luhmann’s model is
blind to ecological issues in the ecologist sense, or that by reshuffling the
basic parameters of analysis, Luhmann reveals the contingency of the
ecologist perspective” (p. 130). This characterization of Luhmann’s
model of EC, however, also qualifies it—and the intellectual tradition
behind it—for the privilege of being considered an alternative to the
academic discourse of EC (especially in the United States). One might
reject Luhmann’s model—as I already have—both for its content and as a
practical methodology (Mathur, 2005); however, considering it and the
tradition behind it can encourage us to go beyond the hasty “empirical
approaches”—with “a rather limited explanatory capacity”—currently
popular within EC’s academic discourse (Blüdorn, 2000, p. 3; emphasis
in original).

NOTES

1. As I mention in my article (2005), Ecological Communication has had a “pecu-

liarly bibliographic presence” in EC’s academic literature (p. 329); English-lan-
guage publications engaging with the treatise in some detail are exceptional—and
include the following: Peterson & Peterson (1996), Peterson (1997), Coppola
(1997), Francis (2006), and, Haberl, H., V. Winiwarter, K. Andersson, R. U.
Ayres, C. Boone, A. Castillo, G. Cunfer, M. Fischer-Kowalski, W. R. Freudenburg,
E. Furman, R. Kaufman, F. Krausmann, E. Langthater, H. Lotze-Campen,
M. Mirtl, C. L. Redman, A. Reenberg, A. Wardell, B. Warr, and H. Zechmeister.
 170 P. Mathur

(2006). Outside EC, the treatise has been discussed in some detail by Blühdorn
(within the European context of socio-political theory). Indeed, the environmen-
talist neglect of Luhmann’s overall theoretical ideas led Blühdorn to state the
following:
[Luhmann’s model of contemporary society] is fundamentally incompatible
with ecologist thinking, which is probably why ecological theorists and
environmental sociologists, in particular, have so far refused to engage in a
serious exploration of this work. (p. xv)
That said, Luhmann’s ideas—as expressed in his publications other than Ecologi-
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cal Communication—have since been discussed, applied, or mentioned in a few

publications belonging to the following environmentally oriented fields: ecologi-
cal history (Simmons, 2000); ecological modeling (Grant, Peterson, & Peterson,
2002); wildlife management (Cvetkovich & Winter, 2003); sustainability (Jamal,
T., M. Borges, M. Peterson, T. Peterson, and R. S. Figueiredo, 2004; Becker,
2005); cultural-literary critique concerning the environment (Economides, 2005);
bioprospecting (Pottage, 2006); and long-term socio-ecological research (Haberl
et al., 2006).
2. See Mathur (2005).
3. See Peterson, Peterson, and Peterson (2007), especially their following state-
ments: “We concur with Cox’s claim that environmental communication (EC),
like conservation biology, is a crisis discipline,” and “We wholeheartedly support
Cox, and take his essay as provocation to radically challenge magical notions of
scientific objectivity . . . ” (p. 74, p. 75, respectively).
4. In pointing out that “a principal ethical duty of environmental communication
[is] the obligation to enhance the ability of society to respond appropriately to
environmental signals relevant to the well-being of both human communities and
natural biological systems,” the essay’s abstract inadvertently highlights the
banality and vacuity of Cox’s articulation (Cox, p. 5). This statement is far too
vague to be of any use—except that it does accurately capture that of which it is
partially an abstract.
5. Cox’s statements lacking logical coherence are far too many to be listed here; so
let me quote just one statement below as a representative sample:
I want . . . to pose a . . . question for those scholars, teachers, and practitio-
ners loosely allied in an emerging field of environmental communication:
Should such a field have an ethical duty? That is, should environmental
communication be considered a ‘crisis discipline’? (2007, p. 6)
Even within the context of what precedes the above statement, it is not clear how
a question concerning a field’s “ethical duty” necessarily translates into whether
that field is a crisis discipline.
6. Accordingly, Harries-Jones candidly admits that “[m]odern environmentalists
have generally ignored Bateson” (1995, p. 4).
7. Please see the following: Brockman (1977), Harries-Jones (1995), Donaldson
(1991), and Bateson and Bateson (1987).
8. Ruesch declares it the need—and the objective—for his contemporary psychiatry
to design epistemological “systems which would embrace both events confined to
 G. Bateson, N. Luhmann, and Ecological Communication 171

the individual and events encompassing several people and larger groups”
(Ruesch & Bateson, 1968, p. 62). He attaches a universalistic significance to the
proposed framework—because the connections between the internal and external
world form the crux of the generic psychiatric conundrum. Evidently, the focus
within the treatise on valuation or choice assists in the atriculation of such a
framework as it points to the connection that the individual—observer—seeks to
establish between his internal mental world and the larger external system of
communication. This is because “[t]hrough statements of preference, the inner
workings of the mind of a person are revealed” (Ruesch & Bateson, 1968, p. 45).
9. Claiming that the “brain is predominantly digital in its functioning,” and that
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“codification must . . . be systematic,” Ruesch and Bateson go on to detail the

functional system of codification. This is significant to their framework because
[t]o describe codification [at the intrapersonal level] is to specify the rela-
tion between the neural, chemical, and other signals and the internal or
external events to which they refer . . . At the interpersonal level, [on the
other hand,] the description of codification will define the symbolization
processes of language together with the more tenuous symbolisms present
in nonverbal communication. (1968, p. 283)
For all that, Bateson considers codification the central conceptual bridge
between the so-called “mentalist” and “organicist” approaches within psychia-
try—the former focusing on the individual (mind), the latter on the larger con-
text (Ruesch & Bateson, 1968, p. 169).
10. Whereas
[t]he condition which the psychiatrist labels “psychosis” is essentially the result
of the patient’s misinterpretation of messages received; and the condition
which we commonly label “neurosis” is the result of unfortunate attempts of a
patient to manipulate social situations with the purpose of creating a stage to
convey messages to others more effectively. (Ruesch & Bateson, 1968, p. 88)
11. Ruesch argues the following:
The central problem of psychotherapy may . . . be restated as follows: How
does it happen that in the interchange of messages between two persons
with differing systems of codification and evaluation, a change occurs
in the system of codification and evaluation of either or both persons?
(Ruesch & Bateson, 1968, p. 82)
12. As Bateson concludes, “[T]he introduction of consciousness as a concept will
not profoundly modify the type of question which is here studied” (Ruesch &
Bateson, 1968, p. 183).
13. See Bateson (especially in Ruesch & Bateson, 1968, p. 186).
14. Ruesch and Bateson did not intend their findings to serve as a mere reworking
of psychiatry, but also as a general epistemological framework for the social
sciences at large. In this regard, consider what Ruesch notes:
The present book has been dedicated to the task of stating and illustrating
at length the premises which underlie the various approaches to social
 172 P. Mathur

science. We have chosen psychiatry as the focus of our attention because

the psychiatrist in his daily practice is concerned with disturbances of
communication; he and the communication engineer, of all scientists,
seem to be most aware of the laws of communication. The essence of our
message to the reader is that communication is the matrix in which all
human activities are embedded. In practice, communication links object
to person and person; and scientifically speaking, this interrelatedness is
understood best in terms of systems of communication. (Ruesch & Bateson,
1968, p. 13)
15. I want to stress this point keeping in mind the otherwise outstanding account of
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Bateson’s overall philosophy that Harries-Jones (1995) provides. His account—

erroneously in my view—centralizes ecology, making it appear to be Bateson’s
representative concern.
16. A clear hint of Bateson’s resolute truth-centered objective is found, ironically, in
one of those elusive literary genres called poetry. Bateson wrote the following
(referring to the manuscript of what his daughter further developed posthu-
mously and published as Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred
(1987):
“The Manuscript”

So there it is in words
Precise
You will find nothing there
For that is the discipline I ask
Not more, not less

Not the world as it is

Nor ought to be—
Only the precision
The skeleton of truth
I do not dabble in emotion
Hint at implications
Evoke the ghosts of old forgotten creeds

All that is for the preacher

The hypnotist, therapist and missionary
They will come after me
And use the little that I said
To bait more traps
 G. Bateson, N. Luhmann, and Ecological Communication 173

For those who cannot bear

The lonely
Skeleton
of Truth.
17. For a more general introduction to the cybernetic movement, see Parsegian
(1973). See the following also: Wiener (1961), Pask (1961), Moray (1963), Singh
(1966), Crosson and Sayre (1967), Dechert (1967), Müller (1968), Brix (1970),
and Longo (1973).
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18. Parsegian notes these two components very specifically as follows:

[E]ach of the [cybernetic] situations involves variables. Each involves
interactions of machines or organisms with the environment, the interac-
tions often taking circuitous routes. Each involves an element of pur-
pose, or objective, and utilizes control principles addressed to those
purposes. . . . In fact the utilization and control of energy constitutes a
main interest of cybernetics whether the energy is mechanical or
human. (1973, p. 2)

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