(1) FRITJOF CAPRA - Originally aired April 2009
(2) NORA BATESON - Originally aired July 2012
Both interviews this week explore systems thinking - one of the key ingredients of a world that just might work.
First. I speak with FRITJOF CAPRA, who wrote a book in 1981 that greatly influenced my view not only of science, medicine, agriculture, energy, and even politics - it influenced my view of reality. That book was THE TURNING POINT, and its message is as profound and revolutionary today. "We live today in a globally interconnected world, in which biological, psychological, social, and environmental phenomena are all interdependent. To describe this world appropriately we need an ecological perspective which the Cartesian world view does not offer. What we need, then, is a new 'paradigm' - a new vision of reality; a fundamental change in our thoughts, perceptions, and values." Capra wrote those words in its preface.
In the second half my guest will be NORA BATESON, and we'll talk about AN ECOLOGY OF MIND, the wonderful documentary she's made about her father, the late anthropologist GREGORY BATESON. Her documentary is subtitled A Daughter's Portrait of Gregory Bateson. It tells of the unique anthropologist, philosopher, author, naturalist, and systems theorist, who was ahead of his time in seeing reality as made up not of things or even of ideas, but of relationships. The film features interviews with California Governor Jerry Brown, physicist and systems theorist Fritjof Capra, Whole Earth Catalogue publisher Stewart Brand, cultural philosopher and poet William Irwin Thompson; and Nora's sister, anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson. Nora's film will introduce Bateson to a new generation and remind many of us of the impact her father had on the way a lot of people perceived the world.
"The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think." Those are the words of the late Gregory Bateson - and I couldn't agree more.
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