Recent Updates

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 2:30 am on October 1, 2024
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Updated rough draft systems | complexity | cybernetics reading list

See my post on LinkedIn (replicated below) and join the discussion there:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_rough-draft-systemscomplexitycybernetics-activity-7246779585235664896-64Xz

pdf: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/85zlt0t6ph8qarx7d7gic/2024-09-27-rough-draft-systems-thinking-reading-list-v1.1BT.pdf?rlkey=3rfavacsy4n6sl8j0pyedph1q&st=qagh1418&dl=0
Commentable Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Tt8GgQQj4Qw4HnR7DxKeF370o_HlDlpv/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=115526108239573817578&rtpof=true&sd=true

How do you get into systems | complexity | cybernetics?

Here’s my rough reading list.

There are a lot of answers to the question, many of them connecting with some kind of disjointing break from ‘normal’ ways of seeing and being. Anything from being bullied at school to being dyslexic. Being in an outsider group. Naively applying thinking from one domain to another. Studying a technical problem long enough to suddenly see it in a completely different light – then either have your breakthrough celebrated or rejected.

It isn’t some mystic thing and it doesn’t require to you break from polite society. But it is one of the richest, weirdest, most diverse and challenging, inspiring and confounding, confronting and validating things you can study.

I’m often asked for a reading list for people interested in the field, and I usually suck my teeth. Some of the books are engaging, insightful, humorous, relevant. Others are dry as old twigs but less likely to kindle a spark.

Really, it depends on you and your context – as David Ing says, it’s better to talk of the thinkers and their individual constellations of interests, history, learning, and personal tendencies than it is to talk of schools and fields and separate places.

And even presenting this reading list, I’d say that I’d recommend Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, Ursula K Le Guin, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Star Trek, old 20th Century Sci-Fi and Apartheid-era South African writing, art movies and music more – if you happen to be a bit like me. You’ll find your thing, if you’re interested.

But. The books are there – and many of them are *really good*. Top ones I’d recommend came out this decade

  • Hoverstadt’s Grammar of Systems
  • Jackson’s Critical Systems Thinking: A practitioner’s Guide
  • Opening the box – a slim little thing from SCiO colleagues
  • Essential Balances by Velitchkov

The attached list is a bit systems-practice focused. It is also too long and incomplete and partial simply for lack of time and energy.

There are *so many* flavours of systems thinking / complexity / cybernetics – do yourself a favour and don’t flog through stuff that doesn’t work for you, find things that bring your mind alive. Start with the articles and skim through.

But do start, because you will find in here the thinking and tools to find better ways of doing things for organisations, societies, the ecosystem, for people – and a lot of fun.

Tip: to save the pdf, hover over the image of the first page and find the rectangle bottom right – click that and it should go full screen. Top right you’ll have a download option, which when clicked will then resolve into a download button… (which might then open in your browser, but at least as a proper pdf you can save).

So… deep breath… what would you recommend? What do you think is missing?

#systems-thinking

Unknown's avatar Jon Awbrey 6:00 pm on December 19, 2025  

Sign Relations • Examples

Soon after I made my third foray into grad school, this time in Systems Engineering, I was trying to explain sign relations to my advisor and he, being the very model of a modern systems engineer, asked me to give a concrete example of a sign relation, as simple as possible without being trivial.  After much cudgeling of the grey matter I came up with a pair of examples which had the added benefit of bearing instructive relationships to each other.  Despite their simplicity, the examples to follow have subtleties of their own and their careful treatment serves to illustrate important issues in the general theory of signs.

Imagine a discussion between two people, Ann and Bob, and attend only to the aspects of their interpretive practice involving the use of the following nouns and pronouns.

\{ ``\text{Ann}", ``\text{Bob}", ``\text{I}", ``\text{you}" \}

  • The object domain of their discussion is the set of two people \{ \text{Ann}, \text{Bob} \}.
  • The sign domain of their discussion is the set of four signs \{ ``\text{Ann}", ``\text{Bob}", ``\text{I}", ``\text{you}" \}.

Ann and Bob are not only the passive objects of linguistic references but also the active interpreters of the language they use.  The system of interpretation associated with each language user can be represented in the form of an individual three‑place relation known as the sign relation of that interpreter.

In terms of its set‑theoretic extension, a sign relation L is a subset of a cartesian product O \times S \times I.  The three sets O, S, I are known as the object domain, the sign domain, and the interpretant domain, respectively, of the sign relation L \subseteq O \times S \times I.

Broadly speaking, the three domains of a sign relation may be any sets at all but the types of sign relations contemplated in formal settings are usually constrained to having I \subseteq S.  In those cases it becomes convenient to lump signs and interpretants together in a single class called a sign system or syntactic domain.  In the forthcoming examples S and I are identical as sets, so the same elements manifest themselves in two different roles of the sign relations in question.

When it becomes necessary to refer to the whole set of objects and signs in the union of the domains O, S, I for a given sign relation L, we will call this set the World of L and write W = W_L = O \cup S \cup I.

To facilitate an interest in the formal structures of sign relations and to keep notations as simple as possible as the examples become more complicated, it serves to introduce the following general notations.

Display 1

Introducing a few abbreviations for use in the Example, we have the following data.

Display 2

In the present example, S = I = \text{Syntactic Domain}.

Tables 1a and 1b show the sign relations associated with the interpreters \mathrm{A} and \mathrm{B}, respectively.  In this arrangement the rows of each Table list the ordered triples of the form (o, s, i) belonging to the corresponding sign relations, L_\mathrm{A}, L_\mathrm{B} \subseteq O \times S \times I.

Sign Relation Twin Tables LA & LB

The Tables codify a rudimentary level of interpretive practice for the agents \mathrm{A} and \mathrm{B} and provide a basis for formalizing the initial semantics appropriate to their common syntactic domain.  Each row of a Table lists an object and two co‑referent signs, together forming an ordered triple (o, s, i) called an elementary sign relation, in other words, one element of the relation’s set‑theoretic extension.

Already in this elementary context, there are several meanings which might attach to the project of a formal semiotics, or a formal theory of meaning for signs.  In the process of discussing the alternatives, it is useful to introduce a few terms occasionally used in the philosophy of language to point out the needed distinctions.  That is the task we’ll turn to next.

Resources

cc: Academia.edu • Laws of Form • Research Gate • Syscoi
cc: Cybernetics • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 7:04 pm on December 16, 2025  

An Interview with Eric Trist, Father of the Sociotechnical Systems Approach – Fox (1990)

Not available except behind paywall from main link, but fully readable if not downloadable on Scribd:

William M. Fox

The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science Volume 26, Issue 2

https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886390262014

Abstract

William M. Fox interviews Eric Trist, eminent scholar and social scientist, who was a founder and chairman of the Tavistock Institute in London. Trist recounts the foundation of the institute as an outpatient clinic and its evolution into a leading center of action research and applied behavioral science. He discusses his work in the British coal mining industry, from which he developed the concept of the sociotechnical system. Descriptions of his work and experiences with the British Army during World War II and of the various projects he undertook with multinational firms and smaller companies illustrate the resistance, suspicion, and other obstacles that he and his colleagues often encountered while working to implement new systems. Finally, Trist describes his sociotechnical systems work in the ailing industrial town of Jamestown, New York, and on the Ten recommendations.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0021886390262014

Unknown's avatar Jon Awbrey 12:56 pm on December 16, 2025
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Sign Relations • Signs and Inquiry

There is a close relationship between the pragmatic theory of signs and the pragmatic theory of inquiry.  In fact, the correspondence between the two studies exhibits so many congruences and parallels it is often best to treat them as integral parts of one and the same subject.  In a very real sense, inquiry is the process by which sign relations come to be established and continue to evolve.  In other words, inquiry, “thinking” in its best sense, “is a term denoting the various ways in which things acquire significance” (Dewey, 38).

Tracing the passage of inquiry through the medium of signs calls for an active, intricate form of cooperation between the converging modes of investigation.  Its proper character is best understood by realizing the theory of inquiry is adapted to study the developmental aspects of sign relations, a subject the theory of signs is specialized to treat from comparative and structural points of view.

References

  • Dewey, J. (1910), How We Think, D.C. Heath, Boston, MA.  Reprinted (1991), Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY.  Online.
  • Awbrey, J.L., and Awbrey, S.M. (1995), “Interpretation as Action : The Risk of Inquiry”, Inquiry : Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 15(1), pp. 40–52.  Archive.  Journal.  Online (doc) (pdf).

Resources

cc: Academia.edu • Laws of Form • Research Gate • Syscoi
cc: Cybernetics • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

#c-s-peirce, #connotation, #denotation, #inquiry, #logic, #logic-of-relatives, #mathematics, #relation-theory, #semiosis, #semiotic-equivalence-relations, #semiotics, #sign-relations, #triadic-relations

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 2:10 am on December 16, 2025  

The IFSR Quarterly 4_2025 – a window into and mirror of the cybersystemic community. Brought to you by the IFSR.org

[Includes my short reflections on the SysPrac25 conference – longer version will be published here eventually, if I haven’t already done that!]

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ifsr-quarterly-42025-window-mirror-3vnff/

Louis Klein introduced it thusly:

#quarterly International Federation for Systems Research (IFSR) with musings by Ray Ison, a generated reflection on hashtag#sysprac25 by Benjamin P. Taylor, a link by Dr. Louis Klein, a (one more thing …) contribution by Philippe Vandenbroeck and the attention of Rika Preiser Pamela Buckle Dr. Nam Nguyen as well as in gratitude to the numerous contributors for a series of hashtag#calls Angela Espinosa Cathal Brugha Martin Reynolds Sven-Volker Rehm (…) into the cybersystemic community – enjoy reading, and sharing!

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ifsr-quarterly-42025-window-mirror-3vnff/

Unknown's avatar Jon Awbrey 12:00 pm on December 15, 2025  

Sign Relations • Definition

One of Peirce’s clearest and most complete definitions of a sign is one he gives in the context of providing a definition for logic, and so it is informative to view it in that setting.

Logic will here be defined as formal semiotic.  A definition of a sign will be given which no more refers to human thought than does the definition of a line as the place which a particle occupies, part by part, during a lapse of time.  Namely, a sign is something, A, which brings something, B, its interpretant sign determined or created by it, into the same sort of correspondence with something, C, its object, as that in which itself stands to C.

It is from this definition, together with a definition of “formal”, that I deduce mathematically the principles of logic.  I also make a historical review of all the definitions and conceptions of logic, and show, not merely that my definition is no novelty, but that my non‑psychological conception of logic has virtually been quite generally held, though not generally recognized.

— C.S. Peirce, New Elements of Mathematics, vol. 4, 20–21

In the general discussion of diverse theories of signs, the question arises whether signhood is an absolute, essential, indelible, or ontological property of a thing, or whether it is a relational, interpretive, and mutable role a thing may be said to have only within a particular context of relationships.

Peirce’s definition of a sign defines it in relation to its objects and its interpretant signs, and thus defines signhood in relative terms, by means of a predicate with three places.  In that definition, signhood is a role in a triadic relation, a role a thing bears or plays in a determinate context of relationships — it is not an absolute or non‑relative property of a thing‑in‑itself, one it possesses independently of all relationships to other things.

Some of the terms Peirce uses in his definition of a sign may need to be elaborated for the contemporary reader.

  • Correspondence.  From the way Peirce uses the term throughout his work, it is clear he means what he elsewhere calls a “triple correspondence”, and thus this is just another way of referring to the whole triadic sign relation itself.  In particular, his use of the term should not be taken to imply a dyadic correspondence, like the kinds of “mirror image” correspondence between realities and representations bandied about in contemporary controversies about “correspondence theories of truth”.
  • Determination.  Peirce’s concept of determination is broader in several directions than the sense of the word referring to strictly deterministic causal‑temporal processes.  First, and especially in this context, he is invoking a more general concept of determination, what is called a formal or informational determination, as in saying “two points determine a line”, rather than the more special cases of causal and temporal determinisms.  Second, he characteristically allows for what is called determination in measure, that is, an order of determinism admitting a full spectrum of more and less determined relationships.
  • Non‑psychological.  Peirce’s “non‑psychological conception of logic” must be distinguished from any variety of anti‑psychologism.  He was quite interested in matters of psychology and had much of import to say about them.  But logic and psychology operate on different planes of study even when they have occasion to view the same data, as logic is a normative science where psychology is a descriptive science, and so they have very different aims, methods, and rationales.

Reference

  • Peirce, C.S. (1902), “Parts of Carnegie Application” (L 75), in Carolyn Eisele (ed., 1976), The New Elements of Mathematics by Charles S. Peirce, vol. 4, 13–73.  Online.

Resources

cc: Academia.edu • Laws of Form • Research Gate • Syscoi
cc: Cybernetics • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

Unknown's avatar Jon Awbrey 9:36 am on December 14, 2025
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Sign Relations • Anthesis

Thus, if a sunflower, in turning towards the sun, becomes by that very act fully capable, without further condition, of reproducing a sunflower which turns in precisely corresponding ways toward the sun, and of doing so with the same reproductive power, the sunflower would become a Representamen of the sun.

— C.S. Peirce, Collected Papers, CP 2.274

In his picturesque illustration of a sign relation, along with his tracing of a corresponding sign process, or semiosis, Peirce uses the technical term representamen for his concept of a sign, but the shorter word is precise enough, so long as one recognizes its meaning in a particular theory of signs is given by a specific definition of what it means to be a sign.

Resources

cc: Academia.edu • Laws of Form • Research Gate • Syscoi
cc: Cybernetics • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

#c-s-peirce, #connotation, #denotation, #inquiry, #logic, #logic-of-relatives, #mathematics, #relation-theory, #semiosis, #semiotic-equivalence-relations, #semiotics, #sign-relations, #triadic-relations

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 12:59 pm on December 5, 2025  

@RedHotWorld on Twitter: thread on Limits to Growth

[Interesting to see how the story is told]

@RedHotWorld

It has been called “the most prophetic work of humanity”. In 1971, it told us why collapse is coming and how to avoid it. It was denounced by almost every leading economist – but it was right. This is the story of The Limits To Growth.

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 3:31 am on December 5, 2025  

The Structure of Wholes – Angyal (1939)

[I don’t usually share papers you can’t download without a paywall but you can get this – or a version of it, or the thinking behind it – in this book by the same author

https://ia902902.us.archive.org/13/items/foundationsforascienceofpersonality/Foundations%20For%20A%20Science%20Of%20Personality_text.pdf

…shared here obviously as early thinking on wholism, connection to gestalt, precursor to systems thinking etc. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andras_Angyal ]

Andras Angyal

Get accessShareCite

Rights & Permissions[Opens in a new window]

Extract

In attempting to clarify the problem of personality integration the writer gained the impression that the difficulty of such a task does does not lie alone in the paucity of usable factual data but it is due, even to a greater extent, to the inadequacy of our logical tools. Such a handicap is felt not only in the study of personality, but in the study of wholes in general. Here the attempt will be made to develop some concepts which may be useful for the understanding of the structure of wholes.

You can see the beautiful classic type here

https://www.jstor.org/stable/184329

Another link if you have academic access:

https://resolve.cambridge.org/core/journals/philosophy-of-science/article/abs/structure-of-wholes/D9C306F0D4B2D2AA9A2CF6BD70DFB88D

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 3:25 am on December 5, 2025  

Katarxis Nº 3 – NEW SCIENCE, NEW URBANISM, NEW ARCHITECTURE? with a forward by Christopher Alexander (2004)

‘People used to say that just as the twentieth century had been the century of physics, the twenty-first century would be the century of biology…  We would gradually move into a world whose prevailing paradigm was one of complexity, and whose techniques sought the co-adapted harmony of hundreds or thousands of variables.  This would, inevitably, involve new technique, new vision, new models of thought, and new models of action.  I believe that such a transformation is starting to occur…. To be well, we must set our sights on such a future.’

  –  Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order

http://www.katarxis3.com/Introduction.htm

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 3:55 pm on December 2, 2025  

Complex Systems Toolkit from the Enginering Professors Council – the voice of engineering academics

Find the right tool

Use the search to find the tools you need.

The EPC’s Complex Systems Toolkit provides accessible, practical resources for embedding complex systems concepts into engineering education. The Complex Systems Toolkit is supported by Quanser.
Complex Systems Toolkit
Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 9:39 am on December 2, 2025  

WæverConflictualization: A theory of how relations, societies and issues become formed by the logic of conflict – Bramsen and Wæver (2025)

Isabel Bramsen*, Ole Wæver

This article presents a Luhmann-inspired theory of conflictualization, that is, how objects, relations, and societies come to be defined by the logic of conflict. This article presents a Galtung- and Luhmann-inspired theory of conflictualization, that is, how objects, relations, and societies come to be defined by the logic of conflict. The article conceptualizes conflictualization as a threefold process of (1) forming social relationships, (2) displacing the focus toward “winning” the conflict, and (3) making an increasing number of issues into objects of contestation. It positions the concept of conflictualization in relation to contemporary (Nordic) peace research, securitization, politicization, and polarization, showing the added value of the theory in terms of teasing out how conflict “does something” and should therefore not be reduced to its causes or effects, but understood distinctly as conflict. To illustrate this, the article discusses three examples of how a society, a relationship, and an issue, respectively, are conflictualized: (1) how the Danish-Greenlandic relationship has been conflictualized, (2) how the war in Gaza has shaped social relations and conflictualized other issues like climate activism and LGBTQ+ rights across the Nordic countries, and (3) conflictualization of the Colombian society post-accord. Moreover, we discuss how conflictualization relates to agency and change, that is, the degree to which conflictualization can be seen as a deliberate process and calls for strategies of conflictualizing and de-conflictualizing issues.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00108367251382794
Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 9:33 am on December 2, 2025  

Using ecosystem thinking to shape your value proposition (2022)

25 Oct 2022|Strategy

It’s not about you. In a volatile market, brands should move away from focusing on individual product excellence alone – and instead adopt a broader framework going beyond individual offerings. By factoring in the larger network effect and needs of customers, society, ambitious partners and competitors, ecosystem thinking helps to consider broader possibilities, paving the way to a more resilient business and increased impact.

https://www.futurice.com/blog/ecosystem-thinking-value-proposition

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 2:41 am on December 2, 2025  

System Dynamics Society on LinkedIn 🎥 Here’s what Linda Booth Sweeney of Toggle Labs has to say about how storytelling can nurture children to become systems thinkers. 🙌🏻

🎥 Here’s what Linda Booth Sweeney of Toggle Labs has to say about how storytelling can nurture children to become systems thinkers. 🙌🏻

Linda is internationally recognized for her efforts to make systems thinking actionable by a wide range of audiences. She is co-author of The Systems Thinking Playbook, The Climate Change Playbook, and numerous other books and journal articles.

🔗 Learn more about Toggle Lab of Kids: https://ow.ly/hqK350XwNGK
👥 Join our global community: https://ow.ly/lVeU50XwNup

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/system-dynamics-society-inc_systemdynamics-systemsthinking-activity-7399507337813684224-Zzaj

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 2:26 am on December 2, 2025  

Systems Thinking – Unlocking the Power of Systems Thinking: Lessons from the public sector: OR-SOC SIG with Martin Fletcher of HMRC, UK, 9 December 2025 12:30

Join us for an insightful presentation based on recent research into systems use in the public sector. We will delve into current use of systems thinking, setting out what we’ve learned about the where, when, what and how, in this fascinating and powerful area. We’ll explore practices, enablers and blockers identified, as well as different approaches across the public sector, which will allow us to reflect constructively on lessons and implications for our own practice.

This presentation will also set the stage for an open discussion on the enablers and obstacles to the broader adoption of systems thinking. We invite you to share your experiences, insights, and ideas on how we can collectively overcome challenges and unlock new opportunities.

Here are some questions to think about ahead of the discussion:

1. What barriers do you see in applying systems thinking in the public sector?
2. What opportunities do you see in applying systems thinking in the public sector?

About the Speakers: 

Martin Fletcher – HM Revenue and Customs 

Martin has a decade of experience in strategy and policy in HMRC and the wider government and now focuses on innovation and emerging technology policy/strategy. He recently completed a research project looking at current practices, uses, enablers and blockers to systems thinking within a public sector context. 

CPD Hours: 1 Hour

When

09/12/2025 12:30 – 13:30
GMT Standard Time

Where

Online

https://www.theorsociety.com/ORS/Event_Display.aspx?EventKey=STD25A&WebsiteKey=c1745213-aec0-45e5-a960-0ec98ebabd4e
Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 4:37 am on December 1, 2025  

Reimagining Systems Thinking as Cybersystemic Researching: An Invitation to a Cyber-Systemic Co-Inquiry – Ison et al (2025)

Ray Ison, Pamela Buckle, Nam Nguyen, Rika Preiser, Philippe Vandenbroeck, Louis Klein

First published: 13 October 2025

https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.3189

Citations: 1

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

ABSTRACT

This paper reimagines the future of systems research as an enacted cybersystemic praxis that moves beyond traditional notions of systems thinking. We argue that systems research is best understood as a reflexive, embodied and situated practice that integrates systemic sensibilities, systems literacy and capabilities in (cyber)systemic co-inquiry. Drawing on insights from systems theory, cybernetics, complexity science and process philosophy, we critique the limitations of goal-seeking behaviours and advocate for a shift towards purposeful, co-inquiry-driven approaches to systems research. Our analysis foregrounds the role of conversation, relational agency and ethical responsibility in systems thinking, highlighting how systems research can be institutionalised as a dynamic practice that fosters transformative change within ongoing, conducive governance arrangements. Written from the perspective of the current executive committee (EC) members of the International Federation for Systems Research (IFSR), an invitation is extended via this paper to join a cybersystemic co-inquiry into the future of systems research, encouraging practitioners to engage with a meta-level praxis that enables bridging of new modes of knowing, governing and society transforming. Through this paper, we call for a renewed commitment to cybersystemic thinking that enables new forms of knowing and acting in the Anthropocene, positioning systems research as a vital practice for navigating complex global challenges.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sres.3189