antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 9:40 am on August 10, 2026

announcing The Necessary Tangle – a living evidence atlas of systems | cybernetics | complexity

I’ve been wanting for years to do a ‘better map’ of systems | complexity | cybernetics, having strongly criticised the Castellani ‘complexity map’ and seen some others – and been involved in the SCiO SysBoK where we tried to map key concepts, their necessary antecedents and dependent thingummies, people, meaning, and so on (- and always inspired by ‘rock family trees’ and the way it’s the constellation of influences and people around individual practitioners that actually makes the difference, as David Ing says).

So with the assistance of ChatGPT, and I’ve been building The Necessary Tangle – a living, evidence-backed atlas of systems | complexity | cybernetics.

It currently maps 411 public entries and 32 developed profiles from 93 registered sources.

The key difference from the usual family tree is that every line has to say what sort of relationship it represents: logical antecedent, historical precursor, documented influence, teaching, collaboration, practical use, and so on.

The eventual ambition to: trace the human as well as conceptual lineages; connect theory to practice; distinguish espoused intellectual genealogy from the clusters the evidence actually produces; and let categories emerge from the resulting network rather than deciding the schools in advance.

It’s very much a public alpha. Some areas are already quite deep; others are little more than markers saying ‘this belongs here’. I’m putting it out now precisely because corrections, missing connections, rival genealogies and ‘surely you can’t say that’ responses are part of building it.

AND I’m very happy to share, collaborate or whatever….

Have a look
https://transduction.systems

Benjamin
www.antlerboy.com

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 2:41 pm on August 18, 2026

RIP Merrely Emery, 1940-2026

Another really significant figure sadly gone, and Merrelyn was still working and contributing very recently. I’ll leave the first brief obituary to the Socio-Technica Systems Round Table, as per their mailing list announcement:

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 3:36 am on August 18, 2026

This week in systemic design

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 1:04 pm on August 17, 2026

The Porter Ratio and the Systems Survival Theorem

The Porter Ratio (Quinn Porter, AHQ papers) is R = λ_self / λ_env.
λ_self is the rate of internal structure restoration and propagation.
λ_env is the rate of environmental disruption.

When R ≥ R★ (the ostiary/coherence threshold), prior states remain active, forming a self-sustaining interior with temporal depth and recursive coherence. Below it, structure dissipates and the system stays externally driven.

Primary sources:
https://philarchive.org/rec/PORATT-2
https://philarchive.org/rec/PORTCT-15

Some obvious similarities to Hoverstadt’s: “to survive, the system must be capable of a rate of change that is greater than or equal to the rate of change in the environment on which it depends”: ΔS ≥ ΔE. (Grammar of Systems, 2022)

(he also says the strategies to achieve this include moving faster, retarding the environmental change rate, or directing environmental change)

See

https://researchgate.net/profile/Patrick-Hoverstadt/publication/332082232_Organisational_agility_and_its_measurement/links/5c9e5a9da6fdccd460438dae/Organisational-agility-and-its-measurement.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com&__cf_chl_rt_tk=PIder.UzjUOsdZLeNwyBUII3oE1kRQb3Sc7_6SoFK7E-1786986626-1.0.1.1-E2LwoKpdqyPkvzAMkczO8p92KOHOQ5zW0hRzdRDJOJM (2018)

https://mesg.ch/en/organisational-agility/ (2021)

https://systemspractice.org/system/files/2022-03/2022.2%20hoverstadt.pdf (2022)

The 2018 measurement paper and 2021 MESG piece turn ΔS ≥ ΔE into a practical diagnostic: quantify environmental change rate, then assess scanning, orientation, decision speed and pivot capacity. Those levers directly raise the effective internal rate, matching the three strategies and the quantitative Porter threshold.

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 10:37 am on August 17, 2026

VSM7 Walkthrough – Intelligent Organisations

VSM7 Walkthrough

Jon Awbrey 2:48 pm on August 16, 2026
Tags: Abduction ( 17 ), C.S. Peirce ( 68 ), Comprehension ( 14 ), Deduction ( 19 ), Extension ( 14 ), Hypothesis ( 13 ), Icon Index Symbol ( 19 ), Induction ( 21 ), Inference ( 14 ), Information = Comprehension × Extension ( 16 ), inquiry ( 35 ), Intension ( 13 ), logic ( 70 ), Peirce's Categories ( 13 ), Pragmatic Semiotic Information ( 13 ), Pragmatism ( 14 ), Scientific Method ( 17 ), Semiotics ( 45 ), Sign Relations ( 41 )

Information = Comprehension × Extension • Comment 6

Returning to Peirce’s example of inductive inference in Comment 2, let’s try to get a clearer picture of why he connects it with disjunctive terms and indicial signs.

At this point in time I can’t say I’m entirely satisfied with my understanding of the relationship between disjunctive terms, indicial signs, and inductive inferences as presented by Peirce in his early accounts. What follows is just one of the simplest and least question‑begging attempts at rational reconstruction I’ve been able to devise.

Figure 2 shows the implication ordering of logical terms in the form of a lattice diagram.

$\text{Figure 2. Disjunctive Term}~ u, \text{Taken as Subject}$

Figure 4 shows an inductive step of inquiry, as taken on the cue of an indicial sign.

$\text{Figure 4. Disjunctive Subject}~ u, \text{Induction of Rule}~ v \Rightarrow w$

If there is any distinguishing feature shared by all the instances under the disjunctive description “neat, swine, sheep, deer” then sign users may take that feature as a predictor of being herbivorous, precisely because all the things under the disjunctive description are herbivorous. But everything under the disjunctive description is cloven‑hoofed, so the cases under the disjunctive description serve to indicate, support, or witness the utility of the induction from cloven‑hoofed to herbivorous.

References

Peirce, C.S. (1866), “The Logic of Science, or, Induction and Hypothesis”, Lowell Lectures of 1866, pp. 357–504 in Writings of Charles S. Peirce : A Chronological Edition, Volume 1, 1857–1866, Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.
Peirce, C.S. (1867), “Upon Logical Comprehension and Extension”, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 7, pp. 416–432. Archive. Online.

Resources

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

#abduction, #c-s-peirce, #comprehension, #deduction, #extension, #hypothesis, #icon-index-symbol, #induction, #inference, #information-comprehension-x-extension, #inquiry, #intension, #logic, #peirces-categories, #pragmatic-semiotic-information, #pragmatism, #scientific-method, #semiotics, #sign-relations

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 9:21 am on August 14, 2026

Kyla Avis: Have you ever tried to work with a group of people to do system mapping?

Linkedin post from Kyla Avis: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kylaavis_have-you-ever-tried-to-work-with-a-group-activity-7493696398811598848-MI6E?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAACuq-oBecVFDW6PCf3lkoG-peMeuLBeoho

Have you ever tried to work with a group of people to do system mapping? Maybe you tried it on Kumu or MIro or even on a whiteboard. It gets very messy, very fast. Even when the dialogue is powerful, the map can be useless at the end.

Gene Bellinger has created a really interesting tool with AI. His program will ask you/your team a series of questions to understand the problem and create a system map for you complete with highlighted feedback loops and system archetype descriptions. I’ve only started playing with it but it’s a very valuable tool if you like system thinking.

Here is a link to the tool: https://lnkd.in/gSTZ4SAB
Here is an explainer video: https://lnkd.in/gkuzvMaB

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 7:56 am on August 14, 2026

Requisite Variety for safety – Jun 6, 2026 Todd Conklin’s PreAccident Podcast 601 – Rethinking Safety: AI, Pre-Jobs, and the Power of Listening Ron Gantt about the future of safety

I enjoy this podcast and – underprisingly perhaps – it’s quite systems | cybernetics | complexity – ish.
In this interview with Ron Gantt I was just thinking ‘hmm this is Requitie Variety for safety – that’s insightful/obvious’ and sure enough, Ron Gantt actually uses the phrase ‘the requisite variety necessary to manage a construction site’.
https://preaccidentpodcast.podbean.com/e/rethinking-safety-ai-pre-jobs-and-the-power-of-listening/

So I asked my chat j’ai pété to do a dive into RV as a concept in Safety. It said:

His argument has a recognisable lineage, but he gives it a particularly useful inter-organisational and political twist.

### The closest precedent: high reliability organising

The nearest match I have found is Karl Weick, Kathleen Sutcliffe and David Obstfeld’s 1999 paper, [‘Organizing for High Reliability: Processes of Collective Mindfulness’](https://www.theisrm.org/documents/Weick%20%281999%29%20Organizing%20for%20High%20Reliability%20-%20Processes%20of%20Collective%20Mindfulness.pdf).

They say that high-reliability organisations:

‘cultivate requisite variety and assume that it takes a complex system to sense a complex environment’.

Their mechanisms include diverse perspectives, overlapping checks, job rotation, adversarial review and what Schulman called ‘conceptual slack’: disagreement and alternative interpretations that prevent the organisation from collapsing complexity too soon.

Even closer to Gantt, they describe safety as depending on ‘negotiated complexity’: informal and continually renewed relationships between organisations. Those relationships are not peripheral niceties. They form part of the machinery through which safe operation is produced.

That is almost exactly Gantt’s construction-site problem. The expertise needed to regulate the work is dispersed among client, principal contractor, subcontractors, supervisors, trades and workers. No single organisation contains enough of the relevant variety.

### The direct safety literature

There is also a paper whose title answers your question almost comically directly:

Vanessa Becker Bertoni, Tarcisio Abreu Saurin and Flávio Sanson Fogliatto, [‘Law of requisite variety in practice: Assessing the match between risk and actors’ contribution to resilient performance’](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2022.105895), published in *Safety Science* in 2022.

It applies Ashby’s law to the relationship between the variety of risks and the contribution of different actors to resilient performance, using social-network analysis in a healthcare setting. The practical proposition is that safety depends not just on possessing expertise somewhere in the organisation, but on whether the network makes the necessary people and capabilities available to one another.

A related paper by Hirose and colleagues, [‘Functional Analysis of Law of Requisite Variety’](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ifacol.2022.10.231), links Ashby explicitly with resilience engineering and FRAM. Their modelling suggests that strategies with a greater repertoire of possible actions cope better with variability in working conditions.

So there is an identifiable, if still rather small, literature explicitly joining requisite variety and safety.

### Safety-II and resilience engineering

A much larger body of safety work makes essentially the same argument without always naming Ashby.

The early resilience-engineering formulation defines resilience as the capacity to adjust functioning before, during or after disturbances so that required operations continue under expected and unexpected conditions. The [EUROCONTROL resilience-engineering white paper](https://www.eurocontrol.int/archive_download/all/node/11591) says, in effect, that the less completely work can be specified in advance, the more performance variability is needed.

That is requisite variety translated into safety language:

Work generates more states and disturbances than procedures can enumerate.
People therefore have to notice differences, interpret them and adjust.
A safe system needs a sufficiently differentiated repertoire of responses.
Attempts to remove all variation from human performance can remove the very capacity that keeps the system safe.

Todd Conklin’s formulation that safety is ‘the presence of capacity’, rather than merely the absence of accidents, belongs in this family. Dekker and Tooma develop that idea more systematically in [‘A capacity index to replace flawed incident-based metrics for worker safety’](https://sidneydekker.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/ilr.12210.pdf). Among the capacities they identify are operational knowledge, resources, diversity of voices, local decision authority and the ability to respond to emerging risk.

### What Gantt is adding

Gantt’s point is not simply ‘we need more perspectives’. It is that the variety already present on a construction site is prevented from becoming usable regulatory variety.

This makes power a cybernetic variable. A worker or contractor may perceive a dangerous condition and know how to respond, but anticipated blame, contractual exposure or lack of authority can remove that response from the system’s effective repertoire.

In other words, nominal variety is not enough. It has to be:

perceptible;
communicable;
authorised;
resourced;
co-ordinated;
available quickly enough to matter.

Gantt’s suggestion that the more powerful client should accept some liability risk and actively earn trust is therefore not merely a cultural recommendation. It is an attempt to alter the control structure so that distributed knowledge can participate in regulation.

### One important qualification

Requisite variety is a necessary condition for regulation, not a complete theory of safety.

More variety is not automatically better. Unstructured diversity may produce noise, conflict or paralysis. Systems also achieve safety by attenuating disturbance variety: guarding machinery, separating traffic, simplifying interfaces, providing physical buffers and standardising genuinely repeatable work.

The useful question is therefore not simply ‘How do we increase variety?’ It is:

Which disturbances should we prevent or attenuate, and what remaining variety must the system be able to detect, interpret and respond to?

So my short answer is: yes, several traditions have done this. The strongest explicit precursor to Gantt is Weick, Sutcliffe and Obstfeld’s combination of requisite variety, collective mindfulness and ‘negotiated complexity’. What seems particularly sharp in Gantt’s version is the application to the client–contractor boundary: liability, hierarchy and mistrust can leave a construction system full of expertise while making that expertise cybernetically unavailable.

Jon Awbrey 7:40 am on August 12, 2026
Tags: Abduction ( 17 ), C.S. Peirce ( 68 ), Comprehension ( 14 ), Deduction ( 19 ), Extension ( 14 ), Hypothesis ( 13 ), Icon Index Symbol ( 19 ), Induction ( 21 ), Inference ( 14 ), Information = Comprehension × Extension ( 16 ), inquiry ( 35 ), Intension ( 13 ), logic ( 70 ), Peirce's Categories ( 13 ), Pragmatic Semiotic Information ( 13 ), Pragmatism ( 14 ), Scientific Method ( 17 ), Semiotics ( 45 ), Sign Relations ( 41 )

Information = Comprehension × Extension • Comment 5

Let’s stay with Peirce’s example of abductive inference a little longer and try to clear up the more troublesome confusions tending to arise.

Figure 1 shows the implication ordering of logical terms in the form of a lattice diagram.

$\text{Figure 1. Conjunctive Term}~ z, \text{Taken as Predicate}$

Figure 3 shows an abductive step of inquiry, as taken on the cue of an iconic sign.

$\text{Figure 3. Conjunctive Predicate}~ z, \text{Abduction of Case}~ x \Rightarrow y$

One thing needs to be stressed at this point. It is important to recognize the conjunctive term itself — namely, the syntactic string “spherical bright fragrant juicy tropical fruit” — is not an icon but a symbol.‡ It has its place in a formal system of symbols, for example, a propositional calculus, where it would normally be interpreted as a logical conjunction of six elementary propositions, denoting anything in the universe of discourse with all six of the corresponding properties.

The symbol “spherical bright fragrant juicy tropical fruit” denotes objects which may be taken as icons of oranges by virtue of their bearing those six properties in common with oranges. But there are no objects denoted by the symbol which aren’t already oranges themselves. Thus we observe a natural reduction in the denotation of the symbol, consisting in the absence of cases outside of oranges which have all the properties indicated.

The above analysis provides another way to understand the abductive inference from the Fact $x \Rightarrow z$ and the Rule $y \Rightarrow z$ to the Case $x \Rightarrow y.$ The lack of any cases which are $z$ and not $y$ is expressed by the implication $z \Rightarrow y.$ Taking that in conjunction with the Rule $y \Rightarrow z$ gives the logical equivalence $y = z.$ But that reduces the Case $x \Rightarrow y$ to the Fact $x \Rightarrow z$ and so the Case is justified.

Viewed in the light of the above analysis, Peirce’s example of abductive reasoning exhibits an especially strong form of inference, almost deductive in character. Do all abductive arguments take that form, or may there be weaker styles of abductive reasoning which enjoy their own levels of plausibility? That must remain an open question at this point.

Remark

Readers will notice I have slipped at this point from using symbol in the precise technical sense Peirce introduced at the beginning of this discussion to the more ordinary sense all of us, Peirce included, tend to use on other occasions. Should it become a big problem we can always find a way to mark the distinction but so far it seems context has usually sufficed to resolve any likely confusion.

References

Peirce, C.S. (1866), “The Logic of Science, or, Induction and Hypothesis”, Lowell Lectures of 1866, pp. 357–504 in Writings of Charles S. Peirce : A Chronological Edition, Volume 1, 1857–1866, Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.
Peirce, C.S. (1867), “Upon Logical Comprehension and Extension”, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 7, pp. 416–432. Archive. Online.

Resources

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

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 9:37 am on August 11, 2026

Loops all the way up: Recurrency as an implementation-first primitive for consciousness – ScienceDirect

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571064526000606

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 9:37 am on August 11, 2026

Strategic Foresight for Viable Futures

https://publicvitality.substack.com/p/strategic-foresight-for-viable-futures

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 9:36 am on August 11, 2026

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/gandolfo-dominici-48206a9_bslab2027-systemsthinking-complexity-share-7491625601338863616-rsHN/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAACuq-oBecVFDW6PCf3lkoG-peMeuLBeoho

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 8:44 am on August 11, 2026

Teaching with the wrong ends of the constructivist stick – Christian Moore-Anderson

Teaching with the wrong ends of the constructivist stick

Jon Awbrey 2:06 pm on August 9, 2026
Tags: Abduction ( 17 ), C.S. Peirce ( 68 ), Comprehension ( 14 ), Deduction ( 19 ), Extension ( 14 ), Hypothesis ( 13 ), Icon Index Symbol ( 19 ), Induction ( 21 ), Inference ( 14 ), Information = Comprehension × Extension ( 16 ), inquiry ( 35 ), Intension ( 13 ), logic ( 70 ), Peirce's Categories ( 13 ), Pragmatic Semiotic Information ( 13 ), Pragmatism ( 14 ), Scientific Method ( 17 ), Semiotics ( 45 ), Sign Relations ( 41 )

Information = Comprehension × Extension • Comment 4

Reflecting further on Comment 3, many things still puzzle me about Peirce’s account at this point. The question marks I added to the Figures of that post indicate the node labels I have remaining doubts about. For example, in Figure 3, is $z$ really an icon of object $y?$ Again, in Figure 4, is $u$ really an index of object $v?$ There is nothing for it but returning to Peirce’s text and trying once more to follow his reasoning.

Let’s go back to Peirce’s example of abductive inference and try to get a clearer picture of why he connects it with conjunctive terms and iconic signs.

Figure 1 shows the implication ordering of logical terms in the form of a lattice diagram.

$\text{Figure 1. Conjunctive Term}~ z, \text{Taken as Predicate}$

Figure 3 shows an abductive step of inquiry, as taken on the cue of an iconic sign.

$\text{Figure 3. Conjunctive Predicate}~ z, \text{Abduction of Case}~ x \Rightarrow y$

The relationship between conjunctive terms and iconic signs may be understood along the following lines. If there is anything with all the properties described by the conjunctive term “spherical bright fragrant juicy tropical fruit” then sign users may use that thing as an icon of an orange, precisely because it shares those properties with an orange. But the only natural examples of things with all those properties are oranges themselves, so the only thing qualified to serve as a natural icon of an orange by virtue of those very properties is that orange itself or another orange.

References

Peirce, C.S. (1866), “The Logic of Science, or, Induction and Hypothesis”, Lowell Lectures of 1866, pp. 357–504 in Writings of Charles S. Peirce : A Chronological Edition, Volume 1, 1857–1866, Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.
Peirce, C.S. (1867), “Upon Logical Comprehension and Extension”, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 7, pp. 416–432. Archive. Online.

Resources

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

Jon Awbrey 6:40 am on August 9, 2026
Tags: Abduction ( 17 ), C.S. Peirce ( 68 ), Comprehension ( 14 ), Deduction ( 19 ), Extension ( 14 ), Hypothesis ( 13 ), Icon Index Symbol ( 19 ), Induction ( 21 ), Inference ( 14 ), Information = Comprehension × Extension ( 16 ), inquiry ( 35 ), Intension ( 13 ), logic ( 70 ), Peirce's Categories ( 13 ), Pragmatic Semiotic Information ( 13 ), Pragmatism ( 14 ), Scientific Method ( 17 ), Semiotics ( 45 ), Sign Relations ( 41 )

Information = Comprehension × Extension • Comment 3

Peirce identifies inference with a process he describes as symbolization. Let us consider what that might imply.

I am going, next, to show that inference is symbolization and that the puzzle of the validity of scientific inference lies merely in this superfluous comprehension and is therefore entirely removed by a consideration of the laws of information. (467).

Even if it were only a rough analogy between inference and symbolization, a principle of logical continuity, what is known in physics as a correspondence principle, would suggest parallels between steps of reasoning in the neighborhood of exact inferences and signs in the vicinity of genuine symbols. This would lead us to expect a correspondence between degrees of inference and degrees of symbolization extending from exact to approximate (non‑demonstrative) inferences and from genuine to approximate (degenerate) symbols.

For this purpose, I must call your attention to the differences there are in the manner in which different representations stand for their objects.

In the first place there are likenesses or copies — such as statues, pictures, emblems, hieroglyphics, and the like. Such representations stand for their objects only so far as they have an actual resemblance to them — that is agree with them in some characters. The peculiarity of such representations is that they do not determine their objects — they stand for anything more or less; for they stand for whatever they resemble and they resemble everything more or less.

The second kind of representations are such as are set up by a convention of men or a decree of God. Such are tallies, proper names, &c. The peculiarity of these conventional signs is that they represent no character of their objects.

Likenesses denote nothing in particular; conventional signs connote nothing in particular.

The third and last kind of representations are symbols or general representations. They connote attributes and so connote them as to determine what they denote. To this class belong all words and all conceptions. Most combinations of words are also symbols. A proposition, an argument, even a whole book may be, and should be, a single symbol. (467–468).

In addition to Aristotle, the influence of Kant on Peirce is very strongly marked in these earliest expositions. The invocations of “conceptions of the understanding”, the “use of concepts” and thus of symbols in reducing the manifold of extension, and the not so subtle hint of the synthetic à priori in Peirce’s discussion, not only of natural kinds but also of the kinds of signs leading up to genuine symbols, can all be recognized as pervasive Kantian themes.

In order to draw out those themes and see how Peirce was led to develop their leading ideas, let us bring together our previous Figures, abstracting from their concrete details, and see if we can figure out what is going on.

Figure 3 shows an abductive step of inquiry, as taken on the cue of an iconic sign.

$\text{Figure 3. Conjunctive Predicate}~ z, \text{Abduction of Case}~ x \Rightarrow y$

Figure 4 shows an inductive step of inquiry, as taken on the cue of an indicial sign.

$\text{Figure 4. Disjunctive Subject}~ u, \text{Induction of Rule}~ v \Rightarrow w$

References

Peirce, C.S. (1866), “The Logic of Science, or, Induction and Hypothesis”, Lowell Lectures of 1866, pp. 357–504 in Writings of Charles S. Peirce : A Chronological Edition, Volume 1, 1857–1866, Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.
Peirce, C.S. (1867), “Upon Logical Comprehension and Extension”, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 7, pp. 416–432. Archive. Online.