80 NATURE-BASED EXPRESSIVE ARTS THERAPY
phenomena (such as a family, an organization, the human body or
an ecosystem) to its component parts, systems theories focus on the
relationship and interaction among the parts.Human systems
The British anthropologist Gregory Bateson, considered the father
of contemporary family therapy, helped to found the science of
cybernetics and thus to extend concepts of systems theories to the
social and behavioral sciences, focusing especially on how complex
systems interact and communicate. Bateson (1972) calls for fuller
awareness of the contexts in which all aspects of experience,
including thinking, are embedded. He questions the dominant
human-centered epistemology of the West, including the view of the
world as a collection of objects, the understanding of intelligence
as individual and the myths of linear time and linear progress. He
connects our Western epistemology, especially the unexamined, often
unconscious aspects of our belief systems, to the existence of widely
held values that privilege abstract thinking and rationality, capitalism
and individualism and accompanying behaviors that lead to the
destruction of the planet.
Bateson points out that largely taken-for-granted cultural
assumptions influence what will be seen, noticed and categorized
and thus considered to be reality. This selective awareness and
interpretation that dominates Western thinking fails to recognize
that the natural environment is not reducible to matter. He sees the
emphasis on things or persons as separate entities, a perspective
reinforced by our Western language systems that favor nouns and
pronouns over verbs, as a major epistemological error of Western
thought. Bateson says that things cannot be understood in isolation
from their context, separate from the ecology of relationships in
which they participate and communicate. He believes that the
most important task of our time is to learn to think in new ways,
to embrace the epistemological shift from seeing the world as
things to seeing the world as interdependent, self-renewing and