Mystics and Scientists Conference 2025: An Ecology Of Mind – Online Film Screening and Panel Discussion
The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think – Gregory Bateson
An Ecology of Mind is a film portrait of Gregory Bateson, celebrated anthropologist, philosopher, author, naturalist, systems theorist, and filmmaker, produced and directed by his daughter, Nora Bateson.
The film includes footage from Bateson’s own films shot in the 1930s in Bali (with Margaret Mead) and New Guinea, along with photographs, filmed lectures, and interviews. His youngest child, Nora, depicts him as a man who studied the interrelationships of the complex systems in which we live with a depth motivated by scientific rigour and caring integrity.
Nora Bateson’s rediscovery of his work documents the vast – and continuing – influence Bateson’s thinking has had on the work of an amazingly wide range of disciplines. Through contemporary interviews, along with his own words, Bateson’s way of thinking reveals practical approaches to the enormous challenges confronting the human race and the natural world.
Gregory Bateson’s theories, such as “the double bind” and “the pattern which connects”, continue to impact the fields of anthropology, psychiatry, information science, cybernetics, urban planning, biology, and ecology, challenging people to think in new ways.
Until now, his work has been largely inaccessible to most of us. Through this film, Nora Bateson sets out to show that his ideas are not just fodder for academic theory, but can help instruct a way of life. She presents his thinking using a richly personal perspective, focusing on the stories Bateson used to present his ideas and how the beauty of life itself provided the framework of his life’s pursuits.
This film hopes to inspire its audience to see our lives within a larger system – glistening with symmetry, play, and metaphor. An invitation to ask the kinds of questions that could help thread the world back together from the inside.
The relevance of Gregory Bateson’s work continues to grow as science seeks to understand ‘the pattern that connects’ across multiple disciplines and its implications for the future of life on our planet. We have set our own evolutionary challenge that absolutely cannot be resolved within existing ways of thinking and acting that gave rise to our current predicament in the first place!
We have chosen this film as a prelude to our conference on Grounding and Flourishing in an Era of Chaos, Complexity and Transformation precisely because Bateson’s style of thinking has so much to offer us in our turbulent times.
Come and join David Lorimer to explore the human future with new lenses in the company of film-maker Nora Bateson, Prof Stuart Kauffman, Katherine Peil Kauffman and Dr Vasileios Basios.
.
Panel Members
Nora Bateson is an award-winning filmmaker, research designer, writer, educator, international lecturer, as well as President of the International Bateson Institute based in Sweden. She is the creator of the Warm Data theory and practices. Nora’s work brings the fields of biology, cognition, art, anthropology, psychology, and information technology together into a study of the patterns in ecology of living systems.
She wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary, An Ecology of Mind, a portrait of her father Gregory Bateson. Her first book, Small Arcs of Larger Circles, released by Triarchy Press, UK, 2016 is a revolutionary personal approach to the study of systems and complexity. She was the recipient of the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity in 2019.
In her latest book Combining, Nora invites us into an ecology of communication where nothing stands alone, and every action sets off a chain of incalculable consequences. She challenges conventional fixes for our problems, highlighting the need to tackle issues at multiple levels, understand interdependence, and embrace ambiguity.
Dr Vasileios Basios is a senior researcher in the Physics of Complex Systems at the University of Brussels, with over 25 years of experience in research and coaching. His interdisciplinary work focuses on self-organisation, emergence in complex matter, complementarity and the foundations of complex systems. Mentored by Nobel laureates Ilya Prigogine and Grégoire Nicolis, Dr Basios received his Ph.D. from the University of Brussels after studying cybernetics with John S. Nicolis. His research interests include foundations of complexity science, emergence in complex matter, nonlinear dynamics and chaos in biological information processing, computability and the logic of extended Bayesian inference.
He is deeply interested in the history of scientific ideas and their role in transforming science beyond the mechanistic worldview. His work aims to bring insights from complex systems science to consciousness studies, working towards an inclusive and self-reflexive interdisciplinary science of consciousness. In 2023, his research team received the inaugural Linda G. O’Bryant Noetic Sciences Research Prize for their study on detecting deviations from random activity as indicators of nonlocal consciousness correlates beyond the brain. By contributing to complexity and consciousness research in a variety of formats, from podcasts to books to peer-reviewed papers, he aspires to advance knowledge in this evolving field.
Prof Stuart Kauffman MD, PhD, FRSC (Canada) is an American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher who studies the origin of life on Earth. Kauffman graduated from Dartmouth in 1960, was awarded the BA (Hons) by Oxford University (where he was a Marshall Scholar) in 1963, and completed a medical degree (MD) at the University of California, San Francisco in 1968. After completing his residency in Emergency Medicine, he moved into developmental genetics of the fruit fly, genetic regulatory networks, and origin of life, holding appointments first at the University of Chicago 1969-1973, National Cancer Institute 1973-1975, then at the University of Pennsylvania from 1975 to 1995, where he served as Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics. Kauffman held a MacArthur Fellowship, 1987–1992. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He also holds an Honorary Degree in Science from the University of Louvain; and was awarded a Gold Medal of the Accademia Lincea in Rome.
Recently, Kauffman and Andrea Roli have published “The World is Not a Theorem”, in Entropy (2021), and “A Third Transition in Science?”, J. Roy. Soc. Interface 4/14/2023, maintaining that the evolving biosphere is a propagating construction, not an entailed deduction, and that no mathematics based on set theory can be used to deduce the diachronic emergence of adaptations in evolution. The implication is that there can be no Final Theory that entails the becoming of the universe. Dr. Kauffman has published over 400 articles and 6 books: The Origins of Order (1993), At Home in the Universe (1995), Investigations (2000), Reinventing the Sacred (2008), Humanity in a Creative Universe (2016) and A World Beyond Physics (2019). He is an Honorary Member of the Scientific and Medical Network.
Katherine Peil Kauffman is Founding Director of non-profit EFS International, whose mission is fostering global emotional wisdom. With degrees from University of Washington and the Harvard Divinity School, she writes and speaks on the function, evolution, physio-chemical, and informational nature of emotion, its role in optimal health, development, psychological function, moral reasoning, and spirituality. Introductions to this work: http://emotionalsentience.com/.
Suggested Film Viewing Time: 5 – 6 PM (BST, UK)
Live Panel Discussion: 6:15 – 7:30 PM (BST, UK)
Please note: We will send out a link to view the film on Wednesday 9 April – 24 hours before the event start time. You may view the film at any time, but we recommend that you watch it at 5 PM (BST UK), just before the panel discussion.
The film screening and subsequent panel event are bound to make for a memorable evening – one which fills the soul with deep inspiration and insight.
TICKETS
Tickets for this event can be purchased separately – or as part of the Mystics and Scientists Conference ticket.
Please note: All bookings will receive a link to view the panel discussion RECORDING.
Speakers
-
David LorimerWriter, Lecturer, Poet, EditorDavid Lorimer, MA, PGCE, FRSA is a visionary polymath – writer, lecturer, poet and editor who is a Founder of Character Education Scotland, Programme Director of the Scientific and Medical Network and former President of Wrekin Trust and the Swedenborg Society. David is also the Editor of Paradigm Explorer, and Chair of the Galileo Commission, which seeks the expand the evidence base of science of consciousness beyond a materialistic world view.
Originally a merchant banker then a teacher of philosophy and modern languages at Winchester College, he is the author and editor of over a dozen books, including Survival? Death as Transition (1984,2017) Resonant Mind (originally Whole in One) (1990/2017), The Spirit of Science (1998), Thinking Beyond the Brain (2001), The Protein Crunch (with Jason Drew) and A New Renaissance (edited with Oliver Robinson). He has edited three books about the Bulgarian sage Beinsa Douno (Peter Deunov): Prophet for our Times (1991, 2015), The Circle of Sacred Dance, and Gems of Love, which is a translation of his prayers and formulas into English. His book on the ideas and work of the Prince of Wales – Radical Prince (2003) – has been translated into Dutch, Spanish and French. His most recent books are A Quest for Wisdom and his collection of poems, Better Light a Candle.
-
Vasileios BasiosPhysicist, Senior researcherDr Vasileios Basios is a senior researcher in the Physics of Complex Systems at the University of Brussels, with over 25 years of experience in research and coaching. His interdisciplinary work focuses on self-organisation, emergence in complex matter, complementarity and the foundations of complex systems. Mentored by Nobel laureates Ilya Prigogine and Grégoire Nicolis, Dr Basios received his Ph.D. from the University of Brussels after studying cybernetics with John S. Nicolis. His research interests include foundations of complexity science, emergence in complex matter, nonlinear dynamics and chaos in biological information processing, computability and the logic of extended Bayesian inference.
He is deeply interested in the history of scientific ideas and their role in transforming science beyond the mechanistic worldview. His work aims to bring insights from complex systems science to consciousness studies, working towards an inclusive and self-reflexive interdisciplinary science of consciousness. In 2023, his research team received the inaugural Linda G. O’Bryant Noetic Sciences Research Prize for their study on detecting deviations from random activity as indicators of nonlocal consciousness correlates beyond the brain. By contributing to complexity and consciousness research in a variety of formats, from podcasts to books to peer-reviewed papers, he aspires to advance knowledge in this evolving field.
-
Nora BatesonFilmmaker, writer, President of the International Bateson InstituteNora Bateson is an award-winning filmmaker, research designer, writer, educator, international lecturer, as well as President of the International Bateson Institute based in Sweden. She is the creator of the Warm Data theory and practices. Nora’s work brings the fields of biology, cognition, art, anthropology, psychology, and information technology together into a study of the patterns in ecology of living systems.
She wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary, An Ecology of Mind, a portrait of her father Gregory Bateson. Her first book, Small Arcs of Larger Circles, released by Triarchy Press, UK, 2016 is a revolutionary personal approach to the study of systems and complexity. She was the recipient of the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity in 2019.
In her latest book Combining, Nora invites us into an ecology of communication where nothing stands alone, and every action sets off a chain of incalculable consequences. She challenges conventional fixes for our problems, highlighting the need to tackle issues at multiple levels, understand interdependence, and embrace ambiguity.
-
Stuart KauffmanMD, PhD, FRSCProf Stuart Kauffman MD, PhD, FRSC (Canada) is an American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher who studies the origin of life on Earth. Kauffman graduated from Dartmouth in 1960, was awarded the BA (Hons) by Oxford University (where he was a Marshall Scholar) in 1963, and completed a medical degree (MD) at the University of California, San Francisco in 1968. After completing his residency in Emergency Medicine, he moved into developmental genetics of the fruit fly, genetic regulatory networks, and origin of life, holding appointments first at the University of Chicago 1969-1973, National Cancer Institute 1973-1975, then at the University of Pennsylvania from 1975 to 1995, where he served as Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics. Kauffman held a MacArthur Fellowship, 1987–1992. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He also holds an Honorary Degree in Science from the University of Louvain; and was awarded a Gold Medal of the Accademia Lincea in Rome.
Recently, Kauffman and Andrea Roli have published “The World is Not a Theorem”, in Entropy (2021), and “A Third Transition in Science?”, J. Roy. Soc. Interface 4/14/2023, maintaining that the evolving biosphere is a propagating construction, not an entailed deduction, and that no mathematics based on set theory can be used to deduce the diachronic emergence of adaptations in evolution. The implication is that there can be no Final Theory that entails the becoming of the universe. Dr. Kauffman has published over 400 articles and 6 books: The Origins of Order (1993), At Home in the Universe (1995), Investigations (2000), Reinventing the Sacred (2008), Humanity in a Creative Universe (2016) and A World Beyond Physics (2019). He is an Honorary Member of the Scientific and Medical Network.
-
Katherine Peil KauffmanFounding Director of non-profitKatherine Peil Kauffman is Founding Director of non-profit EFS International, whose mission is fostering global emotional wisdom. With degrees from University of Washington and the Harvard Divinity School, she writes and speaks on the function, evolution, physio-chemical, and informational nature of emotion, its role in optimal health, development, psychological function, moral reasoning, and spirituality.
