In 2018, to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Club of Rome, the Executive Committee of the Club of Rome has decided to hold its Annual General Assembly in Rome, followed by a 2-day Conference, open to the public, on the Sustainability Challenges for a World of 10 Billion People.
— Read on 50thclubofrome.com/en/

Cover image: Gordon Pask.

PASK COLLECTION

Gordon Pask

• Photographs © Paul Pangaro 1978–1988

COLLOQUY 2018 Project

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• Remaking Pask’s COLLOQUY OF MOBILES, a series of blog posts recounting the project of MFA Interaction Design Program, College for Creative Studies, Detroit, 2018
• Project Description on CCS Web Site
• ColloquyOfMobiles.com, project web site built by CCS MFA IxD Students

Videos about Gordon Pask & Conversation Theory

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• Contributions to the Viennese Archive of Gordon Pask about materials donated to University of Vienna
• Paskian Artifacts about Pask’s machines and the concepts embodied in them
• Pask’s Entailment Meshes
• See especially Gordon Pask on Video

Texts about Gordon Pask

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• Pangaro’s Pask Archive Listings described further in this 2007 chapter from edition echoraum
• Conversation Theory in Two Pages 1996
• THOUGHTSTICKER software for training and intelligent content delivery, 2001
• Pask Obituary in The Guardian Newspaper 1996
• Pask as Dramaturg from Systems Research Journal 1993

Review Papers by Gordon Pask/Relatively Accessible

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• These materials are offered with the desire to make them available to the widest possible audience. The files are large PDFs with variable download times and variable visual quality. They may be searched using the usual “find” functions in PDF readers. Last updated June 20, 2018.

Details of Pask’s cybernetic machines, Musicolour and Colloquy of Mobiles

“A Comment, A Case History, and a Plan”, in Cybernetic Serendipity, J. Reichardt, (Ed.), Rapp and Carroll, 1970. Reprinted in Cybernetics, Art and Ideas, Reichardt, J., (Ed.) Studio Vista, London, 1971, 76-99.

Review of Pask’s approach to conversation, its embodiment and representation

“The Limits of Togetherness”, Proceedings, Invited Keynote address to IFIP, World Congress in Tokyo and Melbourne, Editor, S. Lavington. Amsterdam, New York, Oxford: North holland Pub. Co., 1980, 999-1012.

On the nature of goal-directed systems (Heinz von Foerster’s favorite Pask paper)

“The meaning of cybernetics in the behavioural sciences”, reprinted in Progress of Cybernetics, edited by J. Rose, 1969.

Critique of Computer-Aided Instruction from 1972, still valid today

“Anti-Hodmanship: a Report on the State and Prospects of CAI”, in Programmed Learning and Educational Technology, Volume 9, No. 5, September 1972, p.235-244.

Foundational reading on Pask’s approach to learning

“Conversational Techniques in the Study and Practice of Education”, in British Journal of Educational Psychology, Volume 46, I, 1976, 12-25.

Continuation of prior paper, about distinguishing different types of learning

“Styles and Strategies of Learning”, in British Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 46, II, 128-148, 1976.

Later review by Pask of his approach to learning and teaching

“Learning Strategies, Teaching Strategies, and Conceptual or Learning Style”, in Schmeck, R. (Ed.), Learning Strategies and Learning Styles, Plenum Publishing Corp., New York, 1988.

For a general audience, Pask on anthropological applications in the here-and-now

“Conversation and Support”, Inaugural Address presented 30 November 1987 on the occasion of assuming responsibility as guest professor in General Andragological Sciences.

Critique of social science

“Against Conferences” or “The Poverty of Reduction in Sop-Science and Pop-Systems”, Proceedings, Silver Anniversary International Meeting of Society for General Systems Research, London, August 1979, Washington: SGSR, xii-xxv.

In-Depth Papers by Pask/Requiring more investment

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Thorough review of Conversation Theory

“Developments in Conversation Theory—Part 1”, in International Journal of Man-Machine Studies [now International Journal of Human-Computer Studies] 13, 357-411, 1980

Concise description of applications of Conversation Theory and its protologic, Lp

“Developments in Conversation Theory: Actual and Potential Applications”, International Congress on Applied Systems Research and Cybernetics, Acapulco, Mexico, December 1980

Formal view of Conversation Theory construed as an architecture of conversation

“Artificial Intelligence: A Preface and a Theory”, published as introduction to chapter entitled “Aspects of Machine Intelligence” in Soft Architecture Machines, edited by Nicholas Negroponte, MIT Press, 1976. (See also a simpler description of the framework.)

Review of Pask’s knowledge representation scheme called “entailment meshes”

“An Essay on the Kinetics of Language, Behavior and Thought”, Proceedings, Silver Anniversary International Meeting of Society for General Systems Research, London, August 1979, Washington: SGSR, 111-128.

A theory of consciousness and its mechanisms

“Consciousness”, Proceedings 4th European Meeting on Cybernetics and System research, Linz, Austria, March 1978, in Journal of Cybernetics, Washington: Hemisphere, 1980, 211-258.

Further elaboration of the topic of previous paper

“Organisational Closure of Potentially Conscious Systems”, Proceedings NATO Congress on Applied General Systems Research, Recent Developments and Trends, Binghamton, New York 1977; and Realities Conference, EST Foundation, San Fransisco 1977. Reprinted in Autopoiesis, Editor, M. Zelany. New York: North Holland Elsevier.

Cybernetics of interaction, precursor to interaction models of Conversation Theory

“Comments on the Cybernetics of Ethical, Psychological and Sociological Systems”, in Progress in Bio-Cybernetics, Volume 3 (Norbert Weiner Memorial Volume), J.P.Shade (ed.). Elsevier Press, 1966, p.158-250.

Early views on interactive media experiences based on a cybernetic model

“Proposals for a Cybernetic Theatre”, privately circulated monograph (System Research Ltd and Theatre Workshop), 1964.

Cybernetic view of the process of design, including commentary on Musicolour

“The conception of a shape and the evolution of a design”, conference on Design Methods, September 1962, J. C. Jones and D. G. Thornley, editors. London: Pergamon Press 1963.

Cellular automata as basis for simulated evolution

“A proposed evolutionary model”, reprinted in Principles of Self-Organisation, H. von Foerster and G. Zopf, editors. London: Pergamon Press, 1961.

Mathematics of self-organizing networks including electro-chemical threads

“The Natural History of Networks“, reprinted in Self-Organizing Systems, M. C. Yovits and S. Cameron, editors. London: Pergamon Press, 1960.

Early paper on chemical computing

“Physical Analogues to the Growth of a Concept”, reprinted in Mechanisation of Thought Processes, A. Uttley (ed.). London: HMSO, 1959, p.877-922.

Pask’s Books/Maximum Investment

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• Approach To Cybernetics, 1961 (PDF)
• Cybernetics Of Human Learning And Performance, 1975 (ZIP)
• Conversation, Cognition, And Learning, 1975 (ZIP)
• Conversation Theory, 1976 (ZIP)

Source: Gordon Pask PDFs & Other Resources — Conversation Theory

Are models objective?

Aidan Ward and Philip Hellyer

It is vital that the observer takes on responsibility for their observations, language, and action. The observer is inextricably linked to the object that they are observing. Heinz von Foerster

Is an explicit model such as a mathematical equation or a theory in theoretical physics objective? Should it be treated as independent of the people observing it?[1]

My introduction to this question was many moons ago in St Andrews. I participated in a course about Larch, an algebraic proof language designed to do rigorous analysis of technical systems and programme code. The class solved equations for a ring of oscillators that excited each other. (Hmmm…) Anyway, the real excitement came when this rigorous proof system came up with two very different solutions. I think the instructor was genuinely concerned but worked out that the two solutions corresponded to two physical states: synchronous and asynchronous oscillation. For what it is worth, the cover of the Larch manual features an Egyptian holding a scroll and a pyramid being built upside down.

For half my life, I have held that this event shows that theoretical jiggery-pokery can lead to enlightenment about the “real world”. I think I have changed my mind.

Let me recommend The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli. Carlo is a world-class theoretical physicist working on quantum loop gravity. He can write like an angel, so his deep and deeply confusing theoretical explorations are paralleled by highly accessible writing that keeps him engaged with fully human and properly subjective questions.

In Rovelli’s models, time is not universally flowing. The notion that time happened whether anyone was observing it or not, like Berkeley’s tree falling in a forest, is down to Newton who got it precisely wrong. Newton is very interesting to us here because his work was funded, essentially as a political programme, by the then equivalent of Atlantic dark money. Rich men wanted to change the world to their advantage and a thinker like Newton was what they needed to upend the power of the Church, amongst other things. Newton himself was ruined by this process, becoming bitter and feeling used despite his apparent success.[2] So much for being one of history’s great minds.[3]

Separation and connection

In The Master and his Emissary, McGilchrist makes a magisterial case for the separation of functions between the two hemispheres of our brains. The title holds the key to the true subject of the book. We have two fundamental (and fundamentally different) sets of thinking functions, one much more accessible to conscious thought than the other. McGilchrist makes the case that the conscious, languaging, modelling, classifying left hemisphere functions must remain the servant of the right hemisphere master, though they have not in western culture.

Remember Blake, always remember Blake:

May God us keep from single vision and Newton’s sleep.

Newton erected a model of time that was independent of the observer. It is a common trope that we have become slaves of time in our modern world.[4] I am in the process of freeing myself from that slavery and can feel it very strongly. That whole notion of the clockwork universe is not as separate from Newton and his enslavement to his sponsors as it would need to be if it were as objective as it was made out to be. I think this is the classic case of a whole world of illusion, taken up as rigorous truth by the likes of Michael Gove, who also has an enslaving agenda and is himself in hock.

Rovelli can be our counterpoint here. His presence in his writing is much more human; he explains that time can only be properly talked about as a partial ordering. We can tell, in a particular location, which event came before which other event and we can see local causation looking back and looking forward, but we cannot establish a global scheme.[5] The key equations for quantum gravity do not have time as a parameter and work equally well in either direction.

In this model, the emphasis falls on the observer, and what they can actually observe in terms of ordering. Consider the approach of the pin and the popping of the balloon. Indeed, the model says that the world is made of events, not of things, and the seeming existence of a thing (the pin or the balloon) is merely a drawn-out event. The world is made of events, some of which interact to provide the partial ordering. Think of this alongside Nora Bateson’s concept of warm data — it is all about relationship, and if there is no relationship there is nothing. Precisely not Newton’s objective, external world of things and laws.

Carlo Rovelli’s work is revolutionary but without Newton’s angst. If you follow this line of thought, you will end up with and experience of the world completely different from that which you have now. The work is based both on a mathematical rigour (unimaginable to Michael Gove) and on a deep humanity and respect for our lives (also unimaginable to Michael Gove). I am hammering on poor Michael Gove because I think he illustrates how easily we become dead wood. There but for the grace of God go I.

A world run by algorithms

Yuval Noah Harari in his 21 lessons for the 21st Century says that we have very little ability to escape our lives being subjected to algorithms. Whether or not we get a bank loan, whether or not we get accepted for uni, whatever.[6]An algorithm is just an implementation of a model of course. And in that sense models become objective for us because they are imposed without any control on our part and certainly without our help in making them make sense. They are also objective in the sense that once understood they can and will be gamed, which is a fundamental limitation of models and algorithms based on them.

Harari’s advice is just where we are with this blog post. He says the only chance of not being controlled by someone else’s algorithm, whether Amazon’s or Facebook’s or the government’s, is to know yourself better than the party attempting to manipulate you does. If they know you better than you do yourself, you will be in the position of a small child and will be subject to power plays and manipulations by the “adults” in your life.

So, the algorithms and the models they implement must remain the emissary to you as a master and you do that by knowing yourself, by organising politically, by outsmarting those algorithms in every possible way. You remain master by remaining master and there is no passive way to do that. No way you can do that by spending money. No way you can receive an education that will equip you, because all those masters have already been captured. If this blog can help you move towards freedom, I will be so grateful to the universe!

The fundamental, without-which-nothing move in knowing ourselves is to understand our own architecture a la McGilchrist. If we allow our left-brain emissary to take charge of the right-brain master we can never gain control over our own lives.

We are not thinking machines that are emotional, but emotional machines that think. Antonio Damasio

Models as language

Our language and languaging is not neutral. Our language has built in to its grammar a world of things. It is known to be hard to express our world as events and processes. I think you are supposed to read one of the A.N. Whitehead books several times over so that it can gradually reveal itself. Some people think that things that are hard to express must be themselves muddled and unclear, but it seems that our language has genuinely mistaken the nature of the world and how we experience it.

It is useful therefore to have dynamic models, ones that naturally express change, to share with each other as a communication mechanism. My first serious foray into this as a consultant led to me seeking advice about the consultancy process.[7] The advice I was given was that the model MUST be the clients’ model and if there were more than five elements in the model then the client would probably not understand it. It has to be said (before someone else points it out!) that the modelling consultancy work that Philip and I did together did not follow this advice, not even nearly. That however says as much about the nature of the relationship with the client and the nature of the contract as it does about Philip and me.

The most famous such model is probably still that produced by the Club of Rome in its 1970 report on the possible futures of the world. I quote this here only to shine a light on communication. It seems that most people looking at the dynamic model’s outputs and the text of the report treat it as a set of predictions, and are content 40 and nearly 50 years on to assess the quality of the modelling by how accurate its predictions were. But that is not what the model is for and it is not what the report says. The report is quite explicitly a set of policy scenarios: if the policy followed in practice is such-and-such then the implication in the model looks like this, and if some other policy is followed a different scenario of outcomes is generated. That is, the policy options are what is language so that the model can be used for communication. That the communication ensuing on the report did not really get engaged in policy debate is the point we want to explore here.

For a more recent example in the UK, the Munro report into Children’s Services also used extensive systemic models. Eileen Munro herself says that the government asked for most of the systems diagrams to be taken out of the report before it was published. And again, the debate on the report was not noticeably improved by having the models as a communication vehicle, though the analysis was good. It takes more than a good technical communication medium to have a good conversation!

Architecting-in conversation

Our brain certainly works in two separate hemispheres with a connecting bridge, the corpus callosum. That is its fundamental architecture. The two hemispheres have different functions. We are not used to dealing with functional architecture in this way, but I used to be a software architect in that sense.

Very approximately, our right hemisphere deals with the unpunctuated flow of experience and our left hemisphere deals with sensemaking. The whole schema is ever so plastic and parts of the brain get seriously repurposed when necessary. It should be obvious that the conversation across the connecting bridge is what brings the power of the architecture to life. When we privilege a model over reality as we experience it then we are making the left-brain emissary the master. (This is absolutely what economists do.)

In terms of signals within the brain, this bridge conversation happens several times a second. In terms of our ability to let reality correct our sensemaking, in our culture it can become vanishingly rare. One of the underlying vitally important questions is whether we can communicate with each other without resorting to the dominance of this language and modelling and sense-making. Everything we do that reinforces our cultural tendency to believe that language and models are real keeps us from rebalancing our own minds. Every empathic solidarity, by contrast, lets us know that the way we experience the world in flow is to some extent both shared and reciprocated. Truly when we are in love everything changes.

Truth, a big word indeed, is a process of staying in touch with our own reality, not an external, still less universal state. Carlo Rovelli is the gentlest of guides at arriving at why this must be so!

[1] I feel as though I ought to mention Cathy O’Neil and her criticism of algorithms in Weapons of Math Destruction. They all reflect the biases of the underlying data and the existing prejudices of society. For instance, whatever you think of the education system, it was made worse by the ‘generous’ intervention of the Gates Foundation and the resulting evaluation of teachers. But we get to algorithms later in this post.

[2] Let’s not forget that he was as fascinated by alchemy as he was by optics. The apocryphal falling apple just happens to have survived the scrutiny of history…

[3] Newton himself gave credit to his predecessors: “if I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”

[4] I never fail to chortle/shudder when I see UK corporations making declarations under the Modern Slavery Act. The formal protestations only disguise more subtle, endemic forms of slavery that are generally considered to be normal and natural.

[5] If I dare to cite Wilk and O’Hanlon, there may be an objective underlying reality, but we should not expect it to be consistent and coherent. Coherence is a sign of story-telling and abstraction from reality.

[6] In the US, increasingly, whether or not you get accepted for a job, even a McJob. The biases baked into these algorithms are almost literally incredible. My credit score is never so high as during times of personal financial crisis; what’s the logic of that?

[7] Not always a conversation that can be had. One of my local police was asked for advice by a colleague who’d just caught a 17-year-old with marijuana. The official line was (and so the advice had to be) that he needed to be booked. Ironically, had he been 18, an informal warning is now policy, but that doesn’t apply to minors. Had my local officer been the one on the scene, a quiet confiscating and forgetting would have occurred, but he couldn’t risk advising another officer to do the same…

Source: Are models objective? – Aidan Ward – Medium

Here’s a thing.

WELCOME
to this website of the International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences.

Thank you for visiting us.

The Executive Committee of the IASCYS

The 2016 IASCYS Yearbook (pdf)

Charles François International Prize (English .pdf file)
Premio Internacional Charles François (texto .pdf en español)
Prix international Charles François (texte .pdf en français)
Международный приз Шарля Франсуа (tексt по-русски)

What about systems science and cybernetics? (English .pdf file) 
Sistemas ciencia. Aprehender un mundo globalizado. (texto .pdf en español)
L’approche systémique. Appréhender la globalité. (texte .pdf en français)

Here are the homepages of the Academicians

IASCYS Aims & Intentions

IASCYS 2 years phase report

IASCYS 4 years General Assembly report:

TEXT, SLIDES 
and paper : “The IASCYS: What? What for? How?“

IASCYS Academicians expertise: TOPICS

IASCYS as a bridge (May 2012)

Picture of the First General Assembly of the IASCYS

This website is licensed under a Creative Commons License at the name of IASCYS
All the Online Materials
Communications, Conferences, Seminars, Workshops Activities, Congress works may be reproduced and distributed free of charge,
but only with the notification of their source (URL) and attribution (Authors) and not for commercial use.

your webmaster contact

Source: The International Academy for Systems and Cybernetics Sciences IASCYS

[I mean, your stout curator here always *knew* that to make a link to All The Systems Thinking Things was a task better conceived as Sisyphean rather than Herculean… but f*cking h*ll… there’s a lot more stuff!]

European Systemic Union (SIU) /European Union for systemics (EUS) http://www.ues-eus.eu

 Full-members of the EUS

	French Association of Systems Science (AFSCET)http://www.afscet.asso.fr
	Italian Systems Society website (AIRS)http://www.airs.it/AIRS/indexEN.html
	Hellenic Society for Systemic Studies (HSSS)http://www.hsss.eu
	Sociedad Española de Sistemas Generales (SESGE)http://www.sesge.org
	ASBL Systems & Organizations (S & O)http://www.so.be

Associated member of the EUS

Associazione Italiana di Epistemologia e Metodologia Sistemiche (AIEMS)http://www.aiems.eu

Partners associations

	World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics (WOSC)http://wosc.co
	International Federation for Research Systems (IFSR)http://www.ifsr.org
	European Meetings on Cybernetics and Systems Research (EMCSR)http://emcsr.net
	Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (BCSSS)http://www.bcsss.org
	Website of the FRS-FNRS Contact GroupArchitecture & Complexity (A & C) http://www.architecture-et-complexite.org

sponsors

	Site of the Faculty of Architecture, Architectural Engineering, Urban Planning (LOCI) of the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL)http://www.uclouvain.be/loci.html
	Site of the Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS)http://www.fnrs.be
	The International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences (IASCYS)http://iascys.org

Source: [THIS ORIGINAL LINK NO LONGER WORKS AND HAS BEEN HIJACKED BY A PORN SITE]
Associations and institutions – EUS – UES 2018

source:

EUS – UES 2018

Biocentrism (theory of everything)

Biocentrism (from Greek: βίος, bios, “life”; and κέντρον, kentron, “center”) — also known as the biocentric universe — is a theory proposed in 2007 by American scientist Robert Lanza, which sees biology as the central driving science in the universe, and an understanding of the other sciences as reliant on a deeper understanding of biology. Lanza believes that life and biology are central to being, reality, and the cosmos—consciousness creates the universe rather than the other way around. While physics is considered fundamental to the study of the universe, and chemistry fundamental to the study of life, Lanza claims that scientists will need to place biology before the other sciences to produce a “theory of everything”

Critics have questioned whether the theory is falsifiable. Lanza has argued that future experiments, such as scaled-up quantum superposition, will either support or contradict the theory.

Theory

Biocentrism was first proposed in a 2007 article by Robert Lanza that appeared in “The American Scholar,” where the goal was to show how biology could build upon quantum physics. Two years later, Lanza published a book with astronomer and author Bob Berman entitled “Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe”, which expanded upon the ideas that Lanza wrote about in his essay for the “Scholar”.

Biocentrism argues that the primacy of consciousness features in the work of René Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Gottfried Leibniz, George Berkeley, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Henri Bergson. He sees this as supporting the central claim that what we call space and time are forms of animal sense perception, rather than external physical objects.

Robert Lanza argues that biocentrism offers insight into several major puzzles of science, including Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the double-slit experiment, and the fine tuning of the forces, constants, and laws that shape the universe as we perceive it. According to Robert Lanza and Bob Berman, “biocentrism offers a more promising way to bring together all of physics, as scientists have been trying to do since Einstein’s unsuccessful unified field theories of eight decades ago.”

Seven principles form the core of biocentrism. The first principle of biocentrism is based on the premise that what we observe is dependent on the observer, and says that what we perceive as reality is “a process that involves our consciousness.” The second and third principles state that “our external and internal perceptions are intertwined” and that the behavior of particles “is inextricably linked to the presence of an observer,” respectively. The fourth principle suggests that consciousness must exist and that without it “matter dwells in an undetermined state of probability.” The fifth principle points to the structure of the universe itself, and that the laws, forces, and constants of the universe appear to be fine-tuned for life. Finally, the sixth and seventh principles state that space and time are not objects or things, but rather tools of our animal understanding. Lanza says that we carry space and time around with us “like turtles with shells.”

Robert Lanza claims that biological observers actually create the arrow of time. In his papers on relativity (also published in Annalen der Physik), Einstein showed that time was relative to the observer; in their paper, Podolskiy and Lanza argue that quantum gravitational decoherence is too ineffective to guarantee the emergence of the arrow of time and the “quantum-to-classical” transition to happen at scales of physical interest. They argue that the emergence of the arrow of time is directly related to the way biological observers with memory functions process and remember information. They cite Robert Lanza’s American Scholar paper on biocentrism, stating that the “brainless” observer does not experience time and/or decoherence of any degrees of freedom.

Synopsis of Dr. Robert Lanza’s book “Biocentrism”

According to Lanza’s book, “Biocentrism” suggests that life is not an accidental byproduct of physics, but rather is a key part of our understanding of the universe. Biocentrism states that there is no independent external universe outside of biological existence. Part of what it sees as evidence of this is that there are over 200 physical parameters within the universe so exact that it is seen as more probable that they are that way in order to allow for existence of life and consciousness, rather than coming about at random. Biocentrism claims that allowing the observer into the equation opens new approaches to understanding cognition. Through this, biocentrism purports to offer a way to unify the laws of the universe.

Synopsis of Robert Lanza’s book “Beyond Biocentrism”

In 2016, Robert Lanza wrote a follow-up book on biocentrism with Bob Berman, “Beyond Biocentrism.” The book extends Lanza’s ideas, providing a more through explanation of his theory, including the latest scientific findings in fields ranging from botany and astrophysics to quantum mechanics and neuroscience; it also includes chapters that solely address issues such as whether death is an illusion, whether plants have awareness, and whether machines will ever achieve consciousness. In addition to presenting the scientific evidence, the book presents the philosophical arguments behind biocentrism to explain its implications for society and our individual lives, including the underlying unity of nature and the observer with all its implications ‒ chief among them the unreality of death.

Source: Biocentrism Wiki – Robert Lanza

From https://weilerpsiblog.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/biocentrism-a-consciousness-centric-view-of-the-universe/ :

The 7 Principles of Biocentrism

First Principle of Biocentrism: What we perceive as reality is a process that involves our consciousness.

Second Principle of Biocentrism: Our external and internal perceptions are inextricably intertwined. They are different sides of the same coin and cannot be divorced from one another.

Third Principle of Biocentrism: The behavior of subatomic particles –indeed all particles and objects – is inextricably linked to the presence of an observer. Without the presence of a conscious observer, they at best exist in an undetermined state of probability waves.

Fourth Principle of Biocentrism: Without consciousness, “matter” dwells in an undetermined state of probability. Any universe that could have preceded consciousness only existed in a probability state.

Fifth Principle of Biocentrism:  The structure of the universe is explainable only through biocentrism. The universe is fine-tuned for life, which makes perfect sense as life creates the universe, not the other way around. The “universe” is simply the complete spatiotemporal logic of the self.

Sixth Principle of Biocentrism: Time does not have a real existence outside of animal-sense perception. It is the process by which we perceive changes in the universe.

Seventh Principle of Biocentrism: Space, like time, is not an object or a thing. Space is another form of our animal understanding and does not have an independent reality. We carry space and time around with us like turtles with shells. Thus, there is no absolute self-existing matrix in which physical events occur independent of life.

And on Robert Lanza’s (other?) own site: http://www.robertlanza.com/biocentrism-how-life-and-consciousness-are-the-keys-to-understanding-the-true-nature-of-the-universe/

The work of polymath Gregory Bateson has long been the road to cybernetics travelled by those approaching this trans-disciplinary field from the direction of the social sciences and even the humanities.  Fortunately for devotees of Bateson’s expansive vision, Peter Harries-Jones has continued the expert analysis that gave us 1995’s A Recursive Vision: Ecological Understanding and Gregory Bateson, with his 2016 offering, Upside-Down Gods: Gregory Bateson’s World of Difference (Fordham University Press, 2016). Harries-Jones has clearly thought deeply about the totality of Bateson’s corpus while drawing upon a wide variety of sources including personal correspondence. The result is an illuminating study that, amongst other accomplishments, productively positions Bateson’s work as a foundation of today’s burgeoning field of biosemiotics.  In our wide-ranging conversation, Harries-Jones warns us of the perils of a strictly algorithmic “world without mind,” details Bateson’s intellectual tussle with Bertrand Russell’s Theory of Logical Types, and amplifies Bateson’s bold challenges to the social sciences to let go of the centrality of power and control and replace them with an appreciation of aesthetics and form, to heal the “epistemic cut” between the human and the animal, and even dare to recuperate selected elements of the thought of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in a challenge to Darwinian orthodoxy.  All of this makes for a conversation that is as incisive and articulate as his highly readable monograph asking us to carefully consider the intellectual and ecological benefits of Bateson’s “upside down” ontology with “mind” as foundation rather than emergent phenomenon.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:02:37 — 57.3MB)

Source: Peter Harries-Jones, “Upside-Down Gods: Gregory Bateson’s World of Difference” (Fordham UP, 2016) |

Harries-Jones profile – http://laps-dept.apps01.yorku.ca/anth/faculty/emeriti/harries.html

Harries-Jones on video – Feedback and the Voice of Sanity

[Though I would say I believe there may be another story about Deming’s behaviour – as a typical mid-20th Century male guru figure – which may or may not come out. But that could apply to many heroes.
The point of this comment reproduced here as a post is that there are multiple complex inputs to the ‘Japanese economic miracle’ and all that came from it. See also (April 2026) more on the impact of Homer Sarasohn on Apple:
https://x.com/PatrickMcGee_/status/2039577362602537308?s=20 ]

Source: comments on The Relevance of Giants – 1. Deming On most every occasion when I’m speaking in public – at conferences, workshops, and the like – I tend to mention one or more of my “Giants” of …

The Relevance of Giants – 1. Deming | Think Different

Me:

An interesting post from Bob Marshall, which inspired me to revisit and explore some of the Deming story – and, more intriguingly, the whole ‘Japanese miracle’ story. This is just surface level stuff, in an area that has been well researched (but little actually picked up on), but I think it’s relevance to systems thinking is that Deming is still claimed (despite his own admission) as a part of ‘systems thinking’, and there’s some reason for this, too – and, more importantly, that the commonplace language of ‘gurus’ and giants, while keeping some core headline material alive (and I think everything in Bob’s post and the usual Deming stuff is worthy of some study), can (a) obscure some richer ecosystems of learning and (b) perpetuate some myths which (perhaps originally well-intentioned partial truths) can actually steer people wrong, if taken at face value, or undermine the message, if dug into from that face value perspective.

___ my long comment:
Bob, I don’t know how helpful this is, but for some reason, I’ve always been tempted to question the cult of Deming. I don’t want to detract from the man or from his wisdom, or the enormous value of practicing what he taught. It’s just that the uncritical lines which are the ‘received wisdom’ about his life and approaches do, I admit, bother me a bit. I sure wish I had been to his seminars, but I feel that digging deeper her might be more interesting than the headlines. This has turned into a much longer comment than your post – but perhaps is interesting, particularly on your theme of ‘the relevance of giants’!

So:
– “his pivotal role in the Japanese post-war miracle”. Yes, undoubtedly – we have the evidence of the Japanese recognition of this. And yet, your wiki link intriguingly /doesn’t/ mention Deming – and credits two main reasons: successful economic reform by the government and the outbreak of the Korean War… the former point, however, amongst a lot of intriguing stuff, includes Keiretsu, ‘mirroring wartime conglomerates, or zaibatsu’, which spurred both horizontal and vertical integration – precisely the sort of message Deming preached, as I understand it – but a result, or a happy coincidence? The rest, including ownership and loan measures, would reward richer study.

– his Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle. Yes. But I think he always talked about this as the Shewhart cycle (I have a lovely photo of his original overhead transparency, including this phrase, from one of his interns – who, incidentally, also said – if I heard right – that she slept in his hotel room, at the foot of his bed, on his many teaching tours). I think it’s interesting and valuable to situate him in the context of others he learned from…
Your comment about the link to agile is also interesting – intuitively, it makes great sense, of course – however, is there an explicit, intentional link that you’re aware of?

What’s perhaps interesting as well is the ‘organisation as a system’ diagram (Deming acknowledged that he didn’t know ‘systems thinking’, and was talking about processes – a confusion which has left a bit of a legacy – but I think ‘processes as a system’ are interesting) – https://blog.deming.org/2012/10/appreciation-for-a-system/ – and Deming’s insistence, in his Japanese lecture (translation http://hclectures.blogspot.com/1970/08/demings-1950-lecture-to-japanese.html), that PDSA must be applied not only to the the traditional three steps:
”
1. Product design (shoes, cotton materials, silk materials, magnetic products, electrical appliances)
2. Manufacture
3. Sales
”
(It’s interesting he chooses this instead of Shewart’s “three-step process of specification, production, and inspection” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDCA#About )
But…
“Today, in 1950, we all must design, manufacture, and sell in the same way, but science has expanded. Rather than following the example of these three steps, four stages, including market surveys which I have just highlighted have become necessary.”
I think he designed and sold the ‘market surveys’ – that’s interesting…

– “Deming’s 95/5” – I have it on good authority that the original statistic was based on a study of work in a US prison, published in 1911 from research done much earlier. And the wiki you link to – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming – including the intriguing line “He told Ford that management actions were responsible for 85% of all problems in developing better cars.”
And, anyway, the 95% is partly about the people anyway… so this is intriguing, really, worthy of further exploration…
(The Tripp Babbit quote is nice – I see he picked up the John Seddon phrasing; it seems to imply that they were taught directly, which I am not sure is the case!)
Two downsides of the ’95/5 rule’ – as I’ve seen it cast – are (1) a serious risk of denial of individual responsibility and (2) a tendency to ‘blame’ (a fairly non-systemic concept, I’d say) ‘management’ instead of ‘workers’. Neither very helpful, really…

This looks like a good sourcing of 94/6 from ‘Out of the Crisis’ and 90-95 from Deming’s introduction to Scholtes’ Team Handbook (not Scholtes himself) – https://management.curiouscatblog.net/2013/04/24/94-belongs-to-the-system/

“Red bead experiment” – it’s cool, I’ve participated and facilitated. It makes some very good points. It could be argued that it’s a ‘lie to children’ – a simplification for the purposes of teaching, for rhetorical effect if experiential learning can be considered rhetorical. But it therefore, by exaggerating the conditions, threatens to weaken the real deep long-term learning. According to https://www.spcforexcel.com/knowledge/variation/red-bead-experiment, “Dr. W. Edwards Deming often referred to it as a stupid experiment that you’ll never forget.”
BTW, how and who developed the red bead experiment, I can’t quite be sure. This – http://www.redbead.com/what/ (archived link: https://web.archive.org/web/20200220080702/http://www.redbead.com/what/ ) – says “In 1982, a teaching tool was created with Dr. Deming that he used in his seminars around the world to teach his famous 14 Obligations of Management.” – ‘created with’ sounds really interesting!

Thanks for indulging my exploration here – two more points to make from googling and trawling these links:

1) Christianity – I never knew that he and Scholtes were big Christians, and evidently both wrote devotional music. That’s intriguing!

2) There’s an even bigger issue – what is the *real* history of post-war quality in Japan? Deming was certainly recognised and honoured. But Myron Tribus and Ken Hopper, serious historians and documenters of the quality revolution in Japan and later in the US, report that Sarasohn probably deserves more credit (along perhaps with Protzman… and Shewhart)

“Homer Sarasohn… the mad who made Japan successful”
http://www.firstmetre.co.uk/library/documents/493/
archived link: https://web.archive.org/web/20160114184315/http://www.firstmetre.co.uk/library/documents/493/

“Had Deming and I stayed at home, the Japanese would have achieved world quality leadership all the same.”
(Joseph Juran) in https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057%2F9780230282179_15

Superb article: Quality management and quality practice: Perspectives on their history and their future
https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/61868/756_ftp.pdf?sequence%3D1
(archived link: https://web.archive.org/web/20170817005203/https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/61868/756_ftp.pdf?sequence%3D1 )

“Why haven’t we heard much of poor old Homer? Because of the American quality guru W.Edwards Deming, a master of self-promotion, who was brought to Japan to continue the work of Sarasohn and Protzman. While Sarasohn was MacArthur’s man, Deming was perceived as the Japan Union of Scientists and Engineer’s man, which helped ensure his place in history.”

Homer Sarasohn from Nimal Namboodiripad
The comments on this economist ‘guru’ article on Deming (https://www.economist.com/node/13805735/comments) are enlightening!

Kenneth Hopper himself says:
“In four years this democrat in dictator’s clothing (Homer Sarasohn) may have accomplished more than any economic dictator in history” “A lesson learned and a lesson forgotten”, Robert Wood, FORBES.
“Sarasohn teamed up with Protzman in 1948 to design and teach intensive management training seminars, the Civil Communication Section (CCS) Management Seminar .. After World War II, Japan’s ‘captains of industry’ fortified Sarasohn’s management values with Japanese Bushido values.. , they … produced the postwar ‘miracle’? Yoshio Kondo, Baruch College, City of New York.
“A leader’s main obligation is to secure the faith and respect of those under him”, Charles Protzman and Homer Sarasohn, CCS Manual, GHQ Tokyo, 1950
“I gave over 500 lectures in every part of Japan from Hokkaido in the north to Kyushu in the south” “CCS was the light that illuminated everything” “By the end of the (1950) CCS seminar we all knew we would catch up with the Americans”
Bunzaemon Inoue, co-chair, CCS Seminars. Chairman, Sumitomo Rubber Industries
General MacArthur’s Civil Communications Section was very important for both Deming and Japan’s success. Our ignorance of it is surprising. CCS drilled into Japanese top executives that they were responsible for good management. When one missed a CCS session, CCS was on the phone to remonstrate. “Our slightest wish was their command”, Protzman remembered(1) Deming would be saddened at CCS neglect. I know. When illness struck, he sent me a substantial sum to help me tell the CCS story. When Human Resource Management published my “Creating Japan’s New Industrial Management” Deming wrote me “This is just what I need.”
Late in 1969 Peter Drucker phoned to say he had someone I should meet. I asked no questions and turned up to find a near mythical Japanese Sensei (teacher) Takeo Kato. Kato started to tell me about CCS when the tall Polkinghorn appeared and Kato said, “No man has done more for Japanese industry”. I was hooked. In 1979, my wife and I were treated like royalty in Japan at the invitation of Sumitomo Electric, Sumitomo Rubber and Matsushita Electric. Because we knew the great CCS engineers, dinners, waiting limousines, guides and interpreters were everywhere. The story of CCS is now well known in industry but has not reached business schools who prefer to see Japan’s success as an inexplicable Miracle. Simplistic Shock Treatment was given Russia when the lesson from Japan was rebuilding requires work in depth including improving how factories run. The most let down were non Asian developing nations.
Communications in Japan in 1945 were a disaster. The War Department approached US industry for help and able people responded including a young Homer Sarasohn who had impressed the US Army at MIT’s Rad Lab, Charles Protzman, a 6.ft 4in manufacturing superintendent with decades of experience from Western Electric and Frank Polkinghorn a high engineer in Bell Labs. I came to know all well. Their ability and domain knowledge made it possible for Japan’s unimpressive electrical manufacturers to become its world stunning Consumer Electronics Industry. Influenced by Morgenthau, the US had shackled MacArthur with Secret Order JCS1380/15 to take no responsibility for the Japanese economy. As a result, when Truman announced the Reverse Course in late 1948, CCS was the only Section engaged with manufacturing. CCS proposed that it combine seminars with working with its manufacturers to help them compete in world markets. Sarasohn loved to recount his 1949 confrontation before MacArthur with the large Economic and Scientific Section who argued the US would be giving away too much. MacArthur sat expressionless through both presentations, got up and walked to the door. Sarasohn thought, “I’ve blown it”. MacArthur turned, pointed the stem of his corncob pipe at him and said, “Go do it”. The rest is history. Japan’s electronics industry would have a major influence on management in the rest of Japanese industry and the world.
Japan’s specialists wanted a visit from Shewhart. Sarasohn refused until 1950. When he phoned, Shewhart declined for ill health. Sarasohn confirmed Deming’s ability. At his request, ESS issued the formal invitation. Many have confirmed CCS importance. My brother Will has a selection at http://www.puritangift.com including an abbreviated chapter on CCS and Japan’s extraordinary executives from our book The Puritan Gift, a Financial Times Top Ten Business Book of 2007 Ken Hopper
“A lesson learned and a lesson forgotten”, Robert Wood, FORBES, Feb 6, 1989. “Homer Sarasohn and American Involvement in the Evolution of Quality Management in Japan, 1945–1950”. N. I. Fisher, International Statistical Review (2008). K. Kobayashi, Chairman NEC Corporation, in his 1985 address to Bell Laboratories. “For more about the early development of quality control in postwar Japan, see ‘Quality, Japan and the U.S.: the First Chapter’” Ken Hopper Quality Progress Sept 1985

And, even more intriguing to me, it could be that Elliott Jaques’ Requisite Organization theory might have played a valuable role:
Ken CraddockJun 13th 2009, 19:25
The Japanese also adopted Elliott Jaques’ requisite theory to counter upper-level organizational design, long-term appraisals, and executive selection and development. Deming consulted and taught four days per month for 10 years at GM with little apparent effect. The two theories are robust to each other – but only if both are implemented. Treating either as a short-term fad negates it. Does any US-based Board of Directors know what to do and how to do it?

Excellent downloadable article:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46537675_Homer_Sarasohn_and_American_Involvement_in_the_Evolution_of_Quality_Management_in_Japan_1945-1950

Whole site trying to redress the balance: https://honoringhomer.net/ (archived link https://web.archive.org/web/20220409062443/https://honoringhomer.net/ )

Brilliant overview by Bob Cringely: http://qualiticien.over-blog.com/article-679016.html

More or less the same piece by someone else: http://www.richmore.com/html/protzman.html

Another overview: http://quality-history.blogspot.com/2007/11/how-general-macarthur-allowed-japan-to.html

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

Myron Tribus video interview:
https://blog.deming.org/2017/02/myron-tribus-interview-of-homer-sarasohn/

I hope this illustrates both that the footnotes might be as interesting as the headlines – and that there might be more to the Deming story – and more interesting things there that are *not* Deming.