antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 2:30 am on October 1, 2024
Tags: systems thinking ( 6 )

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

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 3:00 pm on January 8, 2026

patterns vol. 4

December 2025

https://www.patternmaking.org/patternsvol4

“You are not going in circles.

You are growing in them.

Spiraling upward, applying

old lessons to the

unfathomable new.”

Allena Staples, Cow Parade

A year like 2025 can make us feel like we are in a swirl. What felt important no longer feels quite right. We head in one direction, and then abruptly turn to the next. We want to cover our eyes in horror, only to be softened by kindness. We feel like we’ve climbed a hill to stand on, only to realize it is sand, and there are others.

When it feels like the merry-go-round is going too fast, I’ve found the best thing to do is to focus in, to feel the cold metal in my palms, and to remind myself to just hold on. As David Whyte might say, to start close in. It’s good advice for any day, but when the stakes are high there is no choice but to learn. By focusing in, we find what is ours to do.

Trees have no choice but to start from where they are. Unlike us, they cannot even pretend to start afresh. Their growth is always in circles, and on their edges.

Which leads me to wonder, does the bark of trees ache as it expands, like a young child’s legs?

Might our aches be our becoming? In a world where I cannot determine if I am terrified or excited, I’ve come to accept we may never know.

Our pattern making community calls this fall felt like a rare respite from the swirl, providing space to metabolize our rage with our love. Our joy with our despair. We let ourselves swell with paradox and marvel at the sustenance that comes through connection, all while noticing our respective edges.

Perhaps more than ever, the work in this volume was generated with a fierce determination to stay present, and a tender awareness of how impossible this can feel.

In this volume, you will read about becoming at the cost of belonging, the benefits of rage, the dangers of care, the importance of being in our bodies, and how creativity and reflection can be a reliable if not murky way through. We will share lessons of middle age and long-held grief and honor the sacred act of nurturing spores of magic, love, and tradition. We conclude by sharing how discussions of new technology have helpfully led us to grapple with what we hold most dear.

And, through it all, we hope you will receive a subtler message: loving encouragement to reframe the ache of what can feel like circles as something else entirely.

With grace and in community,

Jessica

— along with the intrepid Dee, Kayla, Jen, Gabi, Anne, Efraín, Denise, Paula, Kevin, Skye, Dana, Laura, Annie, Kelci, Josiane, Nadya, Signe, Amanda, Allena, and Sandra.

Volume 4 Index
1. Cow Pants — Allena Staples
2. Will the real Jessica please stand up? — Jessica Kiessel
3. Joyful Lightness — Kevin Hong
4. The Proverbial Lift — Paula Hodges
5. Throw the Boots — Kayla Christopherson
6. You want me to care less? — Jessica Kiessel
7. Grace — Annie Norbeck
8. Lately — Dee Thomas-Butler
9. bit o’ art — Kelci Price
10. Margins II — Annie Norbeck
11. Learning to See — Jessica Kiessel
12. Mushroom House — Josiane Smith
13. A Remixed Mixtape — Amanda Spector
14. You Gotta Lean Forward — Paula Hodges
15. Barbie — Sandra Wegmann
16. Hike — Allena Staples
17. Olive Night — Laura Lehman
18. Our new “AI Protocol” …erm…Process Notes

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 5:27 am on January 7, 2026

Autopoietic modernism: literature, reflexivity, and the ecology of meaning in Robert Musil – Watson (2025, preprint)

[Sound because I was searching (in a lazy internet way) to see if anyone had coined ‘autopoeitic drift’ before me]

Download file PDF Read file

Preprints and early-stage research may not have been peer reviewed yet.

Abstract

This article proposes that Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities anticipates the systemic reflexivity that defines modern social and ecological life. Reading Musil through Maturana and Varela’s concept of autopoiesis, Luhmann’s theory of second-order observation, and Watson and Brezovec’s recent work on autopoietic ecology, the essay argues that the novel functions as a living system 1 : a network that reproduces meaning through continuous self-observation. Musil’s portrayal of Kakania reveals a society that endures through procedural vitality rather than belief, exposing the recursive operations that sustain modern institutions. In this context, Laclau’s notion of the empty signifier and Derrida’s différance illuminate how communication survives the exhaustion of meaning, while the rise of populism and mistrust in institutions mark the global extension of Musil’s crisis of reflexivity. Ulrich and Agathe’s “other condition” represents the counter-movement to this drift-an experiment in relational consciousness that models the ecological coupling absent from bureaucratic systems. Their intimacy, interpreted through Haraway’s situated knowledges and Latour’s actor-network theory, exemplifies an ethics of recursive relation rather than transcendence. The essay concludes that Musil’s unfinished modernism articulates an autopoietic ethics: a mode of responsiveness and adaptation suited to a world in which meaning, communication, and life are co-extensive operations. In translating early modernist reflexivity into contemporary ecological terms, Musil offers a paradigm for rethinking ethics and politics under the conditions of global systemic interdependence. I treat autopoiesis as a structural homology rather than a biological literalism: the novel models how meaning reproduces its own enabling distinctions. This clarifies Musil’s contemporary relevance: under audit cultures and platform governance, communication increasingly survives by reproducing procedures after conviction has waned.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/397379750_Autopoietic_modernism_literature_reflexivity_and_the_ecology_of_meaning_in_Robert_Musil

[Other uses of the phrase ‘autopoeitic drift’ appear to be around the maintenance of a specific ‘living’ artowrk or set of artworks:]

https://www.getty.edu/publications/living-matter/keynote/

Click to access RivencRoth_LivingMatter.pdf

[And this, which speaks of Assemblages and Plato, Tarski and, um, other things too:]

Of Assembly

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 5:23 am on January 7, 2026

Elinor Ostrom’s IAD – A framework for analyzing institutions through individual choices

The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework was designed by Ostrom and her colleagues from the Ostrom Workshop in 2005 to facilitate analysis of institution processes through which individual and collective choices occur.

The IAD framework includes analyzing actors, norms, institutional settings, incentive structures, rules, and more. Social scientists have widely adopted the IAD framework to study institutional arrangements and the emerge and changes of institutions over time.

[Lots of explanations, teaching tools, useful materials]

https://ostromworkshop.indiana.edu/courses-teaching/teaching-tools/iad-framework/index.html

Jon Awbrey 5:28 pm on January 5, 2026
Tags: Algebra ( 2 ), Arithmetic, Combinatorics ( 2 ), Computation, Graph Theory ( 5 ), Group Theory ( 3 ), logic ( 23 ), Mathematics ( 22 ), Number Theory, Recursion, Representation, Riffs and Rotes, Semiotics ( 19 ), Visualization ( 9 )

Riffs and Rotes • Happy New Year 2026

$\text{Let} ~ p_n = \text{the} ~ n^\text{th} ~ \text{prime}.$

$\begin{array}{llcl} \text{Then} & 2026 & = & 2 \cdot 1013 \\ && = & p_1 p_{170} \\ && = & p_1 p_{2 \cdot 5 \cdot 17} \\ && = & p_1 p_{p_1 p_3 p_7} \\ && = & p_1 p_{p_1 p_{p_2} p_{p_4}} \\ && = & p_1 p_{p_1 p_{p_{p_1}} p_{p_{{p_1}^{p_1}}}} \end{array}$

No information is lost by dropping the terminal 1s. Thus we may write the following form.

$2026 = p p_{p p_{p_p} p_{p_{p^p}}}$

The article linked below tells how forms of that order correspond to a family of digraphs called riffs and a family of graphs called rotes. The riff and rote for $2026$ are shown in the next two Figures.

Riff 2026

Rote 2026

Reference

Riffs and Rotes

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

#algebra, #arithmetic, #combinatorics, #computation, #graph-theory, #group-theory, #logic, #mathematics, #number-theory, #recursion, #representation, #riffs-and-rotes, #semiotics, #visualization

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 4:46 pm on January 5, 2026

The cybernetic music of Bebe and Louis Barron – the score to Forbidden Planet (1956)

I learned about this from Imaginary Worlds podcast Episode 288: Music of a Forbidden Planet from Eric Molinsky

https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/episodes/music-of-a-forbidden-planet

The First Electronic Filmscore-Forbidden Planet: A Conversation with Bebe Barron

by Jane Brockman

The First Electronic Filmscore-Forbidden Planet: A Conversation with Bebe Barron

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bebe_and_Louis_Barron

From ChatGPT:

Forbidden Planet (1956) is one of the cleanest, most literal intersections of film music and cybernetics.

The connection in one line
Louis and Bebe Barron built and ‘performed’ cybernetic electronic circuits, inspired directly by Norbert Wiener’s cybernetics, and used the circuits’ feedback-driven behaviours to generate the entire electronic score for Forbidden Planet. Effectrode+1

Who the musicians were, and why they matter
The film’s ‘music’ (credited on-screen as ‘electronic tonalities’) was created by the composer-engineer couple Bebe Barron and Louis Barron. It is widely recognised as the first entirely electronic score for a major feature film. Wikipedia+1

They were not working like later synth composers who play stable instruments. They were building unstable systems and harvesting the sonic traces of those systems behaving, failing, and sometimes ‘dying’.

What ‘cybernetics’ meant in their studio (not metaphorically, but technically)
Cybernetics, in Wiener’s 1948 sense, is about control and communication in animals and machines, especially via feedback. JSTOR+1

The Barrons took that seriously, and operationalised it:

They built ‘cybernetic circuits’
They followed concepts and equations from Wiener’s Cybernetics (1948) to design bespoke electronic circuits for different themes and characters. Wikipedia+1
They treated circuits as quasi-organisms
They described their circuits as behaving like ‘lower life-forms’ with characteristic activity patterns and ‘voices’. In their own liner notes they emphasised that each circuit had its own behaviour, not just a timbre. Wikipedia
Feedback and instability were the sound source
They pushed circuits into overload, where feedback, oscillation, and breakdown generated complex, unpredictable outputs. Many circuits burned out, which meant sounds were often unrepeatable. So they recorded everything. Wikipedia+1

This is a cybernetic method: you set up a system with internal feedback loops, perturb it, observe how it responds, and then select results. It is composition via controlled emergence.

Why this is cybernetics rather than ‘just electronic music’
A lot of electronic music uses electronics as instruments.

The Barrons used electronics as systems with autonomous behaviour.

That distinction matters:

instrument model: human chooses notes; machine produces them predictably
cybernetic model: human sets conditions; machine produces behaviours; human curates and edits outputs

Their process looks like an early form of what we would now call generative or procedural sound design, except fully analogue, and with real physical failure modes.

How it shaped film music history (and why the credit matters)
The Musicians’ Union pushed MGM to avoid calling it ‘music’, so the Barrons were credited with ‘electronic tonalities’. This labour/definition conflict had real consequences: it helped block them from further Hollywood scoring work. Wikipedia+1

This is an important cybernetics-adjacent point: institutions defend existing categories to preserve stability. The Barrons produced a disturbance in the system (a new form of scoring), and the system compensated by relabelling it and excluding them.

The deeper connection: cybernetics inside the film’s story-world
Forbidden Planet is already a cybernetics-saturated film: control rooms, automation, feedback, and the ‘monster from the Id’ as an emergent product of a man-machine system.

The score is not just accompaniment. It is structurally aligned with the film’s themes because it is produced by the same conceptual machinery: humans interacting with autonomous systems that respond in ways you cannot fully predict. A scholarly analysis of the score explicitly reads its sound world through organism-machine hybrids and ecology, which is very much in the cybernetics lineage. JSTOR

A useful way to think about it (very Wiener, very Barron)
If you want the cybernetic punchline:

The Barrons composed by designing a feedback system, letting it behave, and then selecting the behaviours that best regulated the audience’s emotional state in the film.

That is control and communication, via sound, using actual cybernetic artefacts.

Jon Awbrey 10:10 am on January 1, 2026
Tags: C.S. Peirce ( 21 ), Connotation ( 10 ), Denotation ( 10 ), inquiry ( 17 ), logic ( 23 ), Logic of Relatives ( 14 ), Mathematics ( 22 ), Relation Theory ( 15 ), Semiosis ( 13 ), Semiotic Equivalence Relations ( 10 ), Semiotics ( 19 ), Sign Relations ( 17 ), Triadic Relations ( 16 )

Sign Relations • Semiotic Equivalence Relations 2

A few items of notation are useful in discussing equivalence relations in general and semiotic equivalence relations in particular.

In general, if $E$ is an equivalence relation on a set $X$ then every element $x$ of $X$ belongs to a unique equivalence class under $E$ called the equivalence class of $x$ under $E$ . Convention provides the square bracket notation for denoting such equivalence classes, in either the form $[x]_E$ or the simpler form $[x]$ when the subscript $E$ is understood. A statement that the elements $x$ and $y$ are equivalent under $E$ is called an equation or an equivalence and may be expressed in any of the following ways.

Thus we have the following definitions.

In the application to sign relations it is useful to extend the square bracket notation in the following ways. If $L$ is a sign relation whose connotative component $L_{SI}$ is an equivalence relation on $S = I,$ let $[s]_L$ be the equivalence class of $s$ under $L_{SI}.$ In short, $[s]_L = [s]_{L_{SI}}.$ A statement that the signs $x$ and $y$ belong to the same equivalence class under a semiotic equivalence relation $L_{SI}$ is called a semiotic equation (SEQ) and may be written in either of the following forms.

In many situations there is one further adaptation of the square bracket notation for semiotic equivalence classes which can be useful. Namely, when there is known to exist a particular triple $(o, s, i)$ in a sign relation $L,$ it is permissible to let $[o]_L$ be defined as $[s]_L.$ This lets the notation for semiotic equivalence classes harmonize more smoothly with the frequent use of similar devices for the denotations of signs and expressions.

Applying the array of equivalence notations to the sign relations for $A$ and $B$ will serve to illustrate their use and utility.

The semiotic equivalence relation for interpreter $\mathrm{A}$ yields the following semiotic equations.

In this way the SER for $\mathrm{A}$ induces the following semiotic partition.

The semiotic equivalence relation for interpreter $\mathrm{B}$ yields the following semiotic equations.

In this way the SER for $\mathrm{B}$ induces the following semiotic partition.

Taken all together we have the following picture.

Resources

Sign Relation • OEIS • MyWikiBiz • Wikiversity
Survey of Semiotics, Semiosis, Sign Relations

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

Jon Awbrey 12:08 pm on December 30, 2025
Tags: C.S. Peirce ( 21 ), Connotation ( 10 ), Denotation ( 10 ), inquiry ( 17 ), logic ( 23 ), Logic of Relatives ( 14 ), Mathematics ( 22 ), Relation Theory ( 15 ), Semiosis ( 13 ), Semiotic Equivalence Relations ( 10 ), Semiotics ( 19 ), Sign Relations ( 17 ), Triadic Relations ( 16 )

Sign Relations • Semiotic Equivalence Relations 1

A semiotic equivalence relation (SER) is a special type of equivalence relation arising in the analysis of sign relations. Generally speaking, any equivalence relation induces a partition of the underlying set of elements, known as the domain or space of the relation, into a family of equivalence classes. In the case of a SER the equivalence classes are called semiotic equivalence classes (SECs) and the partition is called a semiotic partition (SEP).

The sign relations $L_\mathrm{A}$ and $L_\mathrm{B}$ have many interesting properties over and above those possessed by sign relations in general. Some of those properties have to do with the relation between signs and their interpretant signs, as reflected in the projections of $L_\mathrm{A}$ and $L_\mathrm{B}$ on the $SI$ ‑plane, notated as $\mathrm{proj}_{SI} L_\mathrm{A}$ and $\mathrm{proj}_{SI} L_\mathrm{B},$ respectively. The dyadic relations on $S \times I$ induced by those projections are also referred to as the connotative components of the corresponding sign relations, notated as $\mathrm{Con}(L_\mathrm{A})$ and $\mathrm{Con}(L_\mathrm{B}),$ respectively. Tables 6a and 6b show the corresponding connotative components.

A nice property of the sign relations $L_\mathrm{A}$ and $L_\mathrm{B}$ is that their connotative components $\mathrm{Con}(L_\mathrm{A})$ and $\mathrm{Con}(L_\mathrm{B})$ form a pair of equivalence relations on their common syntactic domain $S = I.$ This type of equivalence relation is called a semiotic equivalence relation (SER) because it equates signs having the same meaning to some interpreter.

Each of the semiotic equivalence relations, $\mathrm{Con}(L_\mathrm{A}), \mathrm{Con}(L_\mathrm{B}) \subseteq S \times I \cong S \times S$ partitions the collection of signs into semiotic equivalence classes. This constitutes a strong form of representation in that the structure of the interpreters’ common object domain $\{ \mathrm{A}, \mathrm{B} \}$ is reflected or reconstructed, part for part, in the structure of each one’s semiotic partition of the syntactic domain $\{ ``\text{A}", ``\text{B}", ``\text{i}", ``\text{u}" \}.$

It’s important to observe the semiotic partitions for interpreters $\mathrm{A}$ and $\mathrm{B}$ are not identical, indeed, they are orthogonal to each other. Thus we may regard the form of the partitions as corresponding to an objective structure or invariant reality, but not the literal sets of signs themselves, independent of the individual interpreter’s point of view.

Information about the contrasting patterns of semiotic equivalence corresponding to the interpreters $\mathrm{A}$ and $\mathrm{B}$ is summarized in Tables 7a and 7b. The form of the Tables serves to explain what is meant by saying the SEPs for $\mathrm{A}$ and $\mathrm{B}$ are orthogonal to each other.

Resources

Sign Relation • OEIS • MyWikiBiz • Wikiversity
Survey of Semiotics, Semiosis, Sign Relations

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

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 6:47 am on December 30, 2025

Improving the reporting of intervention studies underpinned by a systems approach to address obesity or other public health challenges – Li et al (2022)

Bai Li¹^*Steven Allender²Boyd Swinburn³Mohammed Alharbi¹Charlie Foster¹

Share by Michele Battle-Fisher, PhD on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mbattlefisher_bai-et-al-2022-improving-reporting-of-activity-7407444850884775936-X18o?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAACuq-oBecVFDW6PCf3lkoG-peMeuLBeoho

Introduction

A systems approach to obesity prevention is increasingly urged (1, 2). However, confusion exists on what a systems approach entails in practice, and the empirical evidence on this new approach is unclear. Several reviews (3–6) have tried to synthesize available evidence on a systems approach targeting obesity and other public health areas, but found that authentic, comprehensive application of this approach is scarce. We believe this is largely due to the uncertainty around the exact meaning of “a systems approach,” and sub-optimal reporting.

Fully and transparently reported evidence can improve our understanding of how a systems approach is applied practically in different cultures and settings, support methodological development, and improve synthesis of emerging evidence on the effectiveness of this new approach.

https://media.licdn.com/dms/document/media/v2/D561FAQHVn8QF_FU7gg/feedshare-document-pdf-analyzed/B56ZsyG4yOGsAY-/0/1766072226785?e=1767830400&v=beta&t=Vqd8Z7evETKR9aTrrUJoSH4Y9XlWqfqjTsrT7W2QRlA

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.892931/full

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 5:28 am on December 30, 2025

Russell L. Ackoff seminars 2003-2006 from the Deming Cooperative via David Ing’s Coevolving Innovations blog

Russell L. Ackoff seminars | The Deming Cooperative | 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 5:24 am on December 30, 2025

Machine Intelligence is not Artificial – Part 5: The Ratio Club and British Cybernetics – Manion (2024)

Sean Manion

Mar 08, 2024

https://seanmanion.substack.com/p/machine-intelligence-is-not-artificial-956

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 11:00 am on December 29, 2025

Systems Thinking: How to address highly complex problems – Prof Gerald Midgley (YouTube, AGN+ Network) (2024)

They say:

Anyone who’s tried to unravel and address problems in the agri-food system will know how complex it is: Agri-food researchers, stakeholders and professionals working towards net zero also have to account for other economic, health, social and environmental issues, which are often multiple, interlinked and overlapping. If this sounds familiar, so will the below characteristics of highly complex problems (sometimes called ‘wicked problems’ by policy makers): · Interlinked issues, where trying to address one in isolation worsens the others. · Multiple perspectives and conflict on which issues matter most, and therefore what action should be taken. · Power relations making change difficult, and · Pervasive uncertainty While traditional scientific, policy and management approaches can make useful contributions, we need something in addition if we want to address more of the complexity and conflict associated with these kinds of complex problems. Systems thinking can help. In this talk, Prof Gerald Midgley will introduce a framework of systems thinking skills, plus a variety of systems ideas and methods, that can help people put these skills into practice. He will illustrate the use of the methods with examples from food system, natural resource management, social policy and community development projects undertaken over the last thirty years in the UK, New Zealand and Nigeria. Some of these projects involved working with agri-food companies and their stakeholders, while others focused on intransigent social issues. Through these examples, Gerald will show how we can begin to get a better handle on highly complex problems. About Gerald: Prof Gerald Midgley is a foremost authority on the theory and practice of systems thinking and systemic leadership, and has been researching it for 40 years. His work is transdisciplinary and he has worked across public health, health and social service design, natural resource management, community development, public sector management and technology foresight. He is currently researching how to integrate neuroscience and cognitive psychology into systemic leadership and systems thinking, to address some of the most challenging local-to-global issues of our time. He is an emeritus professor at the University of Hull, and a visiting professor at the Birmingham Leadership Institute at the University of Birmingham. To download Gerald’s presentation slides, go here https://www.agrifood4netzero.net/uplo…. These should obviously be credited appropriately to him if used in any way. About the webinar series: The webinar is chaired by Jez Fredenburgh, Knowledge Exchange Fellow for the AFN Network+, and agri-food journalist. Jez is based at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia. This webinar is part of a series run by AFN Network+ which explores net zero in the UK agri-food system with leading movers and shakers. Expect deep and varied insight from across the sector, including farmers, scientists, policy analysts, community leaders, retailers, politicians, businesses and health professionals. The series is put together by Jez and Prof Neil Ward, also based at the University of East Anglia, and a co-lead of AFN Network+. Watch past webinars here – / @afn-network-plus Follow AFN Network+ on Twitter/X https://x.com/AFNnetwork and LinkedIn / agrifood4netzero Join our growing network of 1,600+ people across UK agri-food working on food system transformation, from academics to farmers, food companies, NGOs, policy makers and citizens https://www.agrifood4netzero.net/join The AFN Network+ is funded by UKRI https://www.ukri.org/

Link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GMXXkinHp0

Jon Awbrey 10:15 am on December 29, 2025
Tags: C.S. Peirce ( 21 ), Connotation ( 10 ), Denotation ( 10 ), inquiry ( 17 ), logic ( 23 ), Logic of Relatives ( 14 ), Mathematics ( 22 ), Relation Theory ( 15 ), Semiosis ( 13 ), Semiotic Equivalence Relations ( 10 ), Semiotics ( 19 ), Sign Relations ( 17 ), Triadic Relations ( 16 )

Sign Relations • Ennotation

A third aspect of a sign’s complete meaning concerns the relation between its objects and its interpretants, which has no standard name in semiotics. It would be called an induced relation in graph theory or the result of relational composition in relation theory. If an interpretant is recognized as a sign in its own right then its independent reference to an object can be taken as belonging to another moment of denotation, but this neglects the mediational character of the whole transaction in which this occurs. Denotation and connotation have to do with dyadic relations in which the sign plays an active role but here we are dealing with a dyadic relation between objects and interpretants mediated by the sign from an off‑stage position, as it were.

As a relation between objects and interpretants mediated by a sign, this third aspect of meaning may be referred to as the ennotation of a sign and the dyadic relation making up the ennotative aspect of a sign relation $L$ may be notated as $\mathrm{Enn}(L).$ Information about the ennotative aspect of meaning is obtained from $L$ by taking its projection on the object‑interpretant plane and visualized as the “shadow” $L$ casts on the 2‑dimensional space whose axes are the object domain $O$ and the interpretant domain $I.$ The ennotative component of a sign relation $L,$ variously written as $\mathrm{proj}_{OI} L,$ $L_{OI},$ $\mathrm{proj}_{13} L,$ or $L_{13},$ is defined as follows.

As it happens, the sign relations $L_\mathrm{A}$ and $L_\mathrm{B}$ are fully symmetric with respect to exchanging signs and interpretants, so all the data of $\mathrm{proj}_{OS} L_\mathrm{A}$ is echoed unchanged in $\mathrm{proj}_{OI} L_\mathrm{A}$ and all the data of $\mathrm{proj}_{OS} L_\mathrm{B}$ is echoed unchanged in $\mathrm{proj}_{OI} L_\mathrm{B}.$

Tables 5a and 5b show the ennotative components of the sign relations associated with the interpreters $\mathrm{A}$ and $\mathrm{B},$ respectively. The rows of each Table list the ordered pairs $(o, i)$ in the corresponding projections, $\mathrm{Enn}(L_\mathrm{A}), \mathrm{Enn}(L_\mathrm{B}) \subseteq O \times I.$

Resources

Sign Relation • OEIS • MyWikiBiz • Wikiversity
Survey of Semiotics, Semiosis, Sign Relations

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

Jon Awbrey 11:45 am on December 28, 2025
Tags: C.S. Peirce ( 21 ), Connotation ( 10 ), Denotation ( 10 ), inquiry ( 17 ), logic ( 23 ), Logic of Relatives ( 14 ), Mathematics ( 22 ), Relation Theory ( 15 ), Semiosis ( 13 ), Semiotic Equivalence Relations ( 10 ), Semiotics ( 19 ), Sign Relations ( 17 ), Triadic Relations ( 16 )

Sign Relations • Connotation

Another aspect of a sign’s complete meaning concerns the reference a sign has to its interpretants, which interpretants are collectively known as the connotation of the sign. In the pragmatic theory of sign relations, connotative references fall within the projection of the sign relation on the plane spanned by its sign domain and its interpretant domain.

In the full theory of sign relations the connotative aspect of meaning includes the links a sign has to affects, concepts, ideas, impressions, intentions, and the whole realm of an interpretive agent’s mental states and allied activities, broadly encompassing intellectual associations, emotional impressions, motivational impulses, and real conduct. Taken at the full, in the natural setting of semiotic phenomena, this complex system of references is unlikely ever to find itself mapped in much detail, much less completely formalized, but the tangible warp of its accumulated mass is commonly alluded to as the connotative import of language.

Formally speaking, however, the connotative aspect of meaning presents no additional difficulty. The dyadic relation making up the connotative aspect of a sign relation $L$ is notated as $\mathrm{Con}(L).$ Information about the connotative aspect of meaning is obtained from $L$ by taking its projection on the sign‑interpretant plane and visualized as the “shadow” $L$ casts on the 2‑dimensional space whose axes are the sign domain $S$ and the interpretant domain $I.$ The connotative component of a sign relation $L,$ variously written as $\mathrm{proj}_{SI} L,$ $L_{SI},$ $\mathrm{proj}_{23} L,$ or $L_{23},$ is defined as follows.

Tables 4a and 4b show the connotative components of the sign relations associated with the interpreters $\mathrm{A}$ and $\mathrm{B},$ respectively. The rows of each Table list the ordered pairs $(s, i)$ in the corresponding projections, $\mathrm{Con}(L_\mathrm{A}), \mathrm{Con}(L_\mathrm{B}) \subseteq S \times I.$

Resources

Sign Relation • OEIS • MyWikiBiz • Wikiversity
Survey of Semiotics, Semiosis, Sign Relations

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

Jon Awbrey 10:17 am on December 27, 2025
Tags: C.S. Peirce ( 21 ), Connotation ( 10 ), Denotation ( 10 ), inquiry ( 17 ), logic ( 23 ), Logic of Relatives ( 14 ), Mathematics ( 22 ), Relation Theory ( 15 ), Semiosis ( 13 ), Semiotic Equivalence Relations ( 10 ), Semiotics ( 19 ), Sign Relations ( 17 ), Triadic Relations ( 16 )

Sign Relations • Denotation

One aspect of a sign’s complete meaning concerns the reference a sign has to its objects, which objects are collectively known as the denotation of the sign. In the pragmatic theory of sign relations, denotative references fall within the projection of the sign relation on the plane spanned by its object domain and its sign domain.

The dyadic relation making up the denotative, referent, or semantic aspect of a sign relation $L$ is notated as $\mathrm{Den}(L).$ Information about the denotative aspect of meaning is obtained from $L$ by taking its projection on the object‑sign plane. The result may be visualized as the “shadow” $L$ casts on the 2‑dimensional space whose axes are the object domain $O$ and the sign domain $S.$ The denotative component of a sign relation $L,$ variously written as $\mathrm{proj}_{OS} L,$ $L_{OS},$ $\mathrm{proj}_{12} L,$ or $L_{12},$ is defined as follows.

Tables 3a and 3b show the denotative components of the sign relations associated with the interpreters $\mathrm{A}$ and $\mathrm{B},$ respectively. The rows of each Table list the ordered pairs $(o, s)$ in the corresponding projections, $\mathrm{Den}(L_\mathrm{A}), \mathrm{Den}(L_\mathrm{B}) \subseteq O \times S.$

Looking to the denotative aspects of $L_\mathrm{A}$ and $L_\mathrm{B},$ various rows of the Tables specify, for example, that $\mathrm{A}$ uses $``\text{i}"$ to denote $\mathrm{A}$ and $``\text{u}"$ to denote $\mathrm{B},$ while $\mathrm{B}$ uses $``\text{i}"$ to denote $\mathrm{B}$ and $``\text{u}"$ to denote $\mathrm{A}.$

Resources

Sign Relation • OEIS • MyWikiBiz • Wikiversity
Survey of Semiotics, Semiosis, Sign Relations

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

Jon Awbrey 11:24 am on December 25, 2025
Tags: C.S. Peirce ( 21 ), Connotation ( 10 ), Denotation ( 10 ), inquiry ( 17 ), logic ( 23 ), Logic of Relatives ( 14 ), Mathematics ( 22 ), Relation Theory ( 15 ), Semiosis ( 13 ), Semiotic Equivalence Relations ( 10 ), Semiotics ( 19 ), Sign Relations ( 17 ), Triadic Relations ( 16 )

Sign Relations • Dyadic Aspects

For an arbitrary triadic relation $L \subseteq O \times S \times I,$ whether it happens to be a sign relation or not, there are six dyadic relations obtained by projecting $L$ on one of the planes of the $OSI$ ‑space $O \times S \times I.$ The six dyadic projections of a triadic relation $L$ are defined and notated as shown in Table 2.

$\text{Table 2. Dyadic Aspects of Triadic Relations}$

By way of unpacking the set‑theoretic notation, here is what the first definition says in ordinary language.

The dyadic relation resulting from the projection of $L$ on the $OS$ ‑plane $O \times S$ is written briefly as $L_{OS}$ or written more fully as $\mathrm{proj}_{OS}(L)$ and is defined as the set of all ordered pairs $(o, s)$ in the cartesian product $O \times S$ for which there exists an ordered triple $(o, s, i)$ in $L$ for some element $i$ in the set $I.$

In the case where $L$ is a sign relation, which it becomes by satisfying one of the definitions of a sign relation, some of the dyadic aspects of $L$ can be recognized as formalizing aspects of sign meaning which have received their share of attention from students of signs over the centuries, and thus they can be associated with traditional concepts and terminology.

Of course, traditions vary with respect to the precise formation and usage of such concepts and terms. Other aspects of meaning have not received their fair share of attention and thus remain innominate in current anatomies of sign relations.