Bateson’s whole thinking was in terms of patterns and relationships. His main aim, like Maturana’s, was to discover the pattern of organization common to all living creatures. “What pattern,” Bateson (1979, p. 8) asked, “connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose and all four of them to me? And me to you?”
Bateson developed his criteria of mental process intuitively from his keen observation of the living world. It was clear to him that the phenomenon of mind was inseparably connected with the phenomenon of life. When he looked at the living world, he saw its organizing activity as being essentially mental. In his own words (personal communication to Capra, 1979), “mind is the essence of being alive.”