Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred

This is a great introduction to the ideas of Gregory Bateson, one of the most important thinkers of our times. He is able to bridge the gap between our ideas about a materialistic world and concepts of mind. He said that Western science did not explain mind, it explained mind away. Anyone who feels that there is more to life than logic and science, but who doesn't feel comfortable with every new age quack idea, should read this book. Bateson's thesis is that aesthetics, beauty, and the sacred are as valid as ways of knowing as logic and science are, and he can back that up with real ideas about the real world.

Gregory Bateson is well known, among those with the perseverance to wrestle through his very compact prose, for his highly original synthesis of cybernetics, biology, anthropology and -- above all -- epistemology. Near the end of his one book written with a general audience in mind (Mind and Nature), he mentions his intention to continue his explorations into the realms of the sacred and the aesthetic. By the time of his death in 1980 he had written several drafts and discussed the project in depth with his daughter Mary Catherine Bateson, an investigator of great insight in her own right and a better writer than Gregory's devotion to formal rigor allowed him to be. This book is the end result of that collaboration, which Mary completed in 1986. Those familiar with Gregory's work will find some of his familiar themes explored in somewhat more accessible terms, along with some unexpected new ideas. As with his earlier works, Bateson often has to redefine some familiar words, and introduce new usages for others, which makes reading him a struggle, but a rewarding struggle in the long run. Those familiar with Mary Catherine's work will not be disappointed either. Her summarizing chapter which pulls together the various strands of the book and of her father's thought is a masterpiece of synthesis in its own right. And this book, which is above all about *relationships* at every level from the cellular to the cultural to the religious, is a fascinating record of the very human relationship between father and daughter. Like all of the elder Bateson's work, this one will take some time to digest. How much have I learned from it about "the epistemology of the sacred"? I expect it will take years to find out, and that I'll be revisiting this book many times while its implications work themselves out. As G.B. said, Life is a game whose purpose is discovering the rules. This volume is a voyage of discovery.