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

Jon Awbrey 11:34 am on May 23, 2026
Tags: Analogy ( 7 ), Aristotle ( 5 ), C.S. Peirce ( 54 ), Icon Index Symbol ( 5 ), Induction ( 7 ), inquiry ( 21 ), Likelihood ( 3 ), Likely Story ( 3 ), Likeness ( 3 ), logic ( 56 ), Mathematics ( 55 ), Probability ( 3 ), Probable Reasoning ( 5 ), Semiotics ( 31 ), Sign Relations ( 27 )

Icon, Likeness, Likely Story, Likelihood, Probability • 3

Re: Peirce List • Phyllis Chiasson

A more complete excerpt and the translator’s notes are very helpful here.

A probability (εικος) is not the same as a sign (σηµειον). The former is a generally accepted premiss ; for that which people know to happen or not to happen, or to be or not to be, usually in a particular way, is a probability : e.g., that the envious are malevolent or that those who are loved are affectionate. A sign, however, means a demonstrative premiss which is necessary or generally accepted.^¹ That which coexists with something else, or before or after whose happening something else has happened, is a sign of that something’s having happened or being.

An enthymeme is a syllogism from probabilities or signs ; and a sign can be taken in three ways — in just as many ways as there are of taking the middle term in the several figures : either as in the first figure or as in the second or as in the third.

E.g., the proof that a woman is pregnant because she has milk is by the first figure ; for the middle term is ‘having milk’. A stands for ‘pregnant’, B for ‘having milk’, and C for ‘woman’.
The proof that the wise are good because Pittacus was good is by the third figure. A stands for ‘good’, B for ‘the wise’, and C for Pittacus. Then it is true to predicate both A and B of C ; only we do not state the latter, because we know it, whereas we formally assume the former.
The proof that a woman is pregnant because she is sallow is intended to be by the middle figure ; for since sallowness is a characteristic of woman in pregnancy, and is associated with this particular woman, they suppose that she is proved to be pregnant. A stands for ‘sallowness’, B for ‘being pregnant’, C for ‘woman’.

If only one premiss is stated, we get only a sign ; but if the other premiss is assumed as well, we get a syllogism,^² e.g., that Pittacus is high-minded, because those who love honour are high-minded, and Pittacus loves honour ; or again that the wise are good, because Pittacus is good and also wise.

In this way syllogisms can be effected ; but whereas a syllogism in the first figure cannot be refuted if it is true, since it is universal, a syllogism in the last figure can be refuted even if the conclusion is true, because the syllogism is neither universal nor relevant to our purpose.^³ For if Pittacus is good, it is not necessary for this reason that all other wise men are good. A syllogism in the middle figure is always and in every way refutable, since we never get a syllogism with the terms in this relation^⁴ ; for it does not necessarily follow, if a pregnant woman is sallow, and this woman is sallow, that she is pregnant. Thus truth can be found in all signs, but they differ in the ways which have been described.

We must either classify signs in this way, and regard their middle term as an index (τεκµηριον)^⁵ (for the name ‘index’ is given to that which causes us to know, and the middle term is especially of this nature), or describe the arguments drawn from the extremes^⁶ as ‘signs’, and that which is drawn from the middle as an ‘index’. For the conclusion which is reached through the first figure is most generally accepted and most true. (Aristotle, Prior Analytics 2.27, 70^a3–70^b6).

Translator’s Notes

If referable to one phenomenon only, a sign has objective necessity ; if to more than one, its value is a matter of opinion.
Strictly an enthymeme.
If the signs of an enthymeme in the first figure are true, the conclusion is inevitable. Aristotle does not mean that the conclusion is universal, but that the universality of the major premiss implies the validity of the minor and conclusion. The example (<all> those who have honour, etc.) quoted for the third figure contains no universal premiss or sign, and fails to establish a universal conclusion.
i.e. when both premisses are affirmative.
Signs may be classified as irrefutable (1st figure) and refutable (2nd and 3rd figures), and the name ‘index’ may be attached to their middle terms, either in all figures or (more probably) only in the first, where the middle is distinctively middle.
Alternatively the name ‘sign’ may be restricted to the 2nd and 3rd figures, and may be replaced by ‘index’ in the first.

Reference

Aristotle, “Prior Analytics”, Hugh Tredennick (trans.), pp. 181–531 in Aristotle, Volume 1, Loeb Classical Library, William Heinemann, London, UK, 1938.

Resource

Theme One Program • User Guide • Appendix A

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

#analogy, #aristotle, #c-s-peirce, #icon-index-symbol, #induction, #inquiry, #likelihood, #likely-story, #likeness, #logic, #mathematics, #probability, #probable-reasoning, #semiotics, #sign-relations

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 2:20 am on May 22, 2026

Bet hedging (biology)

Shared by https://x.com/male_leo_xxvi in a cybernetics chat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bet_hedging_(biology)

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 9:16 am on May 20, 2026

Why we don’t get complexity: Stafford Beer, ‘requisite variety’ and systems thinking

Why we don’t get complexity: Stafford Beer, ‘requisite variety’ and systems thinking. Claire Hartnell. https://open.substack.com/pub/clairejhartnell/p/why-we-dont-get-complexity-stafford?r=slo6&utm_medium=ios

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 9:15 am on May 20, 2026

Machine Intelligence is not Artificial – Part 7

Machine Intelligence is not Artificial – Part 7. Sean Manion. https://seanmanion.substack.com/p/machine-intelligence-is-not-artificial-d42?r=slo6&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 9:13 am on May 20, 2026

HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article. Front. Syst. Neurosci., 24 March 2022

HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Syst. Neurosci., 24 March 2022

Volume 16 – 2022 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnsys.2022.768201

Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere: An Experimentally-Grounded Framework for Understanding Diverse Bodies and Minds

Michael Levin 1,2*

1. Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University, Medford, MA, United States

2. Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States

Abstract
Synthetic biology and bioengineering provide the opportunity to create novel embodied cognitive systems (otherwise known as minds) in a very wide variety of chimeric architectures combining evolved and designed material and software. These advances are disrupting familiar concepts in the philosophy of mind, and require new ways of thinking about and comparing truly diverse intelligences, whose composition and origin are not like any of the available natural model species. In this Perspective, I introduce TAME—Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere—a framework for understanding and manipulating cognition in unconventional substrates. TAME formalizes a non-binary (continuous), empirically-based approach to strongly embodied agency. TAME provides a natural way to think about animal sentience as an instance of collective intelligence of cell groups, arising from dynamics that manifest in similar ways in numerous other substrates. When applied to regenerating/developmental systems, TAME suggests a perspective on morphogenesis as an example of basal cognition. The deep symmetry between problem-solving in anatomical, physiological, transcriptional, and 3D (traditional behavioral) spaces drives specific hypotheses by which cognitive capacities can increase during evolution. An important medium exploited by evolution for joining active subunits into greater agents is developmental bioelectricity, implemented by pre-neural use of ion channels and gap junctions to scale up cell-level feedback loops into anatomical homeostasis. This architecture of multi-scale competency of biological systems has important implications for plasticity of bodies and minds, greatly potentiating evolvability. Considering classical and recent data from the perspectives of computational science, evolutionary biology, and basal cognition, reveals a rich research program with many implications for cognitive science, evolutionary biology, regenerative medicine, and artificial intelligence.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/systems-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2022.768201/full

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 9:12 am on May 20, 2026

The Cybernetics Thought Collective (Digital Surrogates). Digital Collections at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library

The Cybernetics Thought Collective (Digital Surrogates) | Digital Collections at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library https://digital.library.illinois.edu/items/82eaef70-29ac-0136-4d81-0050569601ca-d

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 9:11 am on May 20, 2026

On Our Own Terms: Systems change through Lived Experience Leadership

On Our Own Terms: Systems change through Lived Experience Leadership. Morgan & Co. https://morganandco.au/project/on-our-own-terms/

On Our Own Terms – Systems change through Lived Experience Leadership

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 9:09 am on May 20, 2026

Systems Practice as a Practice of the Middle Voice

Systems Practice as a Practice of the Middle Voice. Philippe Vandenbroeck. https://philippevandenbroeck.medium.com/systems-practice-as-a-practice-of-the-middle-voice-f89d81509e1e

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 9:05 am on May 20, 2026

Conceptual understanding is a myth – by Greg Ashman

https://substack.com/home/post/p-198345707

Jon Awbrey 8:45 am on May 20, 2026
Tags: Analogy ( 7 ), Aristotle ( 5 ), C.S. Peirce ( 54 ), Icon Index Symbol ( 5 ), Induction ( 7 ), inquiry ( 21 ), Likelihood ( 3 ), Likely Story ( 3 ), Likeness ( 3 ), logic ( 56 ), Mathematics ( 55 ), Probability ( 3 ), Probable Reasoning ( 5 ), Semiotics ( 31 ), Sign Relations ( 27 )

Icon, Likeness, Likely Story, Likelihood, Probability • 2

Re: Peirce List • Phyllis Chiasson

I’m still a bit fuzzy on how Aristotle’s account relates to Peirce’s usage, though I’m pretty sure Peirce must have taken Aristotle’s usage into account, but it does seem that Aristotle drew some sort of distinction here, using a term “tekmerion” which gets translated as “index” to make the following remark later on in that chapter.

We must either classify signs in this way, and regard their middle term as an index [τεκµηριον] (for the name ‘index’ is given to that which causes us to know, and the middle term is especially of this nature), or describe the arguments drawn from the extremes as ‘signs’, and that which is drawn from the middle as an ‘index’. For the conclusion which is reached through the first figure is most generally accepted and most true. (Aristotle, Prior Analytics, 2.27.70^b1–6).

Reference

Aristotle, “Prior Analytics”, Hugh Tredennick (trans.), pp. 181–531 in Aristotle, Volume 1, Loeb Classical Library, William Heinemann, London, UK, 1938.

Resource

Theme One Program • User Guide • Appendix A

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

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 2:27 am on May 19, 2026

The Last Redoubt of Complexity Theory – Downham (2026)

As launched on LinkedIn:

🔥 THE LAST REDOUBT OF COMPLEXITY THEORY is now live.

道 · 愛 · 革命 — The Way · Revolutionary Energy · Transformation of Things

📖 Full paper (HTML) → https://lnkd.in/eEQy_cKu

(6) Post | LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mark-downham-frics-mba-fnara-rpr_complexitytheory-organisationalchange-leadership-share-7461465441153019905-RNCs/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAAACuq-oBecVFDW6PCf3lkoG-peMeuLBeoho#

Links to

https://markdownham88-crypto.github.io/the-last-redoubt-redux

[I have no way of evaluating this right now – it may be a heartbreaking work of staggering genius!]

Jon Awbrey 4:48 pm on May 18, 2026
Tags: Analogy ( 7 ), Aristotle ( 5 ), C.S. Peirce ( 54 ), Icon Index Symbol ( 5 ), Induction ( 7 ), inquiry ( 21 ), Likelihood ( 3 ), Likely Story ( 3 ), Likeness ( 3 ), logic ( 56 ), Mathematics ( 55 ), Probability ( 3 ), Probable Reasoning ( 5 ), Semiotics ( 31 ), Sign Relations ( 27 )

Icon, Likeness, Likely Story, Likelihood, Probability • 1

Re: Peirce List • Benjamin Udell • Michael Shapiro

Here’s a likely locus classicus for “icon” in its logical sense —

A probability (εικος) is not the same as a sign (σηµειον). The former is a generally accepted premiss; for that which people know to happen or not to happen, or to be or not to be, usually in a particular way, is a probability: e.g., that the envious are malevolent or that those who are loved are affectionate. A sign, however, means a demonstrative premiss which is necessary or generally accepted. That which coexists with something else, or before or after whose happening something else has happened, is a sign of that something’s having happened or being. (Aristotle, Prior Analytics, 2.27.70^a3–10).

Reference

Aristotle, “Prior Analytics”, Hugh Tredennick (trans.), pp. 181–531 in Aristotle, Volume 1, Loeb Classical Library, William Heinemann, London, UK, 1938.

Resource

Theme One Program • User Guide • Appendix A

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

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 3:31 pm on May 18, 2026

In Memoriam: Peter Checkland (1930–2026)

[On day when I was in (virtual) attendance at a service for Oliver Westall (my dad’s best and lifelong friend: https://portal.lancaster.ac.uk/intranet/news/article/oliver-martin-westall-acss-frhists and evidently a truly good man) at Lancaster University, it can as a shock to hear of the death of Peter Checkland]

Søren Kerndrup gives a lovely and very fitting tribute here: In Memoriam: Peter Checkland (1930–2026)
(1) Post | LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/s%C3%B8ren-kerndrup-7a447715_in-memoriam-peter-checkland-19302026-activity-7462164623262257152-z3Vc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAACuq-oBecVFDW6PCf3lkoG-peMeuLBeoho

Here is Checkland himself, appropriately at the OR Society, from 2081:

A nice tribute to (more than) 50 years of Soft Systems Methodology (also OR Society):

https://www.theorsociety.com/ORS/ORS/Publications/Magazines/IOR/July-2025/SSM_Checkland.aspx

Systems explained, by Checkland also fittingly, on the OU website):

https://www.open.edu/openlearn/money-business/leadership-management/systems-explained-peter-checkland

A nice short summary of his ‘journey’:

Peter Checkland’s Journey from Hard to Soft Thinking

His piece Soft Systems Methodology: A Thirty Year Retrospective

Click to access ChecklandSSM.pdf

A piece I came across he wrote in 2021 [another echo of a world that is leaving us: my dad was a big Trad jazz man]

JJ 02/71: Tell Me The Truth About Jazz

And other references here on syscoi.com – surprisingly tangential but perhaps illustrating his ‘background status’ in recent years, despite enormous influence [similarly, he has never been central to my personal thinking or practice – not explicitly, though implicitly hugely important]

https://stream.syscoi.com/?s=checkland

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 5:27 pm on May 13, 2026

The Hand That Thinks – Complexity, causality and the gap nobody manages – Aziz (2026)

Main article:

https://abaz786.substack.com/p/the-hand-that-thinks

On LinkedIn, Abdul posted/asked

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7460422808808968193-BK9g?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAACuq-oBecVFDW6PCf3lkoG-peMeuLBeoho

New piece on Substack: The Hand That Thinks – complexity, causality, and the gap nobody manages.

Most critiques of complexity frameworks stop at the critique. This one tries to go further.

The argument in brief:
1) Senge’s famous line – “cause and effect are not closely related in time and space” – is self-defeating. It uses the reductive model to critique the reductive model.

2) Cynefin and Jackson’s SOSM and CSP are genuine advances. But even the most sophisticated pluralism, when organised as a process of methodological selection, leaves one question insufficiently examined: what kind of observer is doing the selecting?

3) Complexity is not a property of situations. It is a relational quantity – it exists between a system and a describing observer. Change the observer and you change the complexity.

4) Almost no methodology makes explicit the distinction between organising models (neurological – VSM, SSM, CSH) and structural models (anatomy and physiology – Enterprise Architecture, Agile, Organisational Design). The gap between them is where most transformation fails.

5) That gap cannot be managed with a one-off consultancy engagement that hands over to a unitary IT delivery. It must be perpetual. That is what the hashtag#ViableOperatingModel is designed to do.

Along the way: Maturana and Varela, Kauffman on Constraint Closure, Beer’s Triple Index, Gell-Mann on complexity as a relational quantity and a pragmatist reframing of what it means to develop as a practitioner.

And a Yorkshire verdict on where we currently find ourselves.

hashtag#EnterpriseArchitecture hashtag#DataMesh

The Hand That Thinks

Whilst general feedback is always welcome, I am especially interested in informed reactions to the specific hypotheses:

1) The organising model vs structural model distinction, how it could hold in practice
2) The Hand That Thinks metaphor as a way into the VSM
3) Complexity as a relational quantity and its dual implication for developing both situation and observer
4) The Systemic Performance Surface (not a dashboard) as the instrument that makes perpetual mediation operational
5) Domain-based VSM as a foundation for Data Mesh architecture

I am keen to follow up in individual conversations. This is not about right or wrong, or defending a particular approach. It is about developing understanding together.

I will tag a few people, who I believe are in the know, will push back, add to, or redirect where needed. These are people who live theory in practice and vice versa. If it helps a few others along the way, all the better.