source:
APM Systems Thinking SIG virtual meet up
The next #systemsthinking SIG workshop is on the 4th of Feb at 7pm.
Book at https://lnkd.in/dfiiTtH
Themes, as highlighted last session, are:
1. Stakeholder engagement to avoid “rushing to fail”
2. Blending Systems Thinking and Agile
book at source:
APM Systems Thinking SIG virtual meet up
Pig on the tracks – Pig on the Tracks
| Luke CravenJan 5 |
Welcome to Pig on the Tracks, a newsletter about systems, complexity and how things can be done differently.
This newsletter is an attempt to form a weekly writing habit, capturing momentum from the articles I have been sharing on LinkedIn over the past eighteen months.
It will dive deeper into how systems thinking and complexity to drive real, transformative change in the public sector and beyond. I hope to share my own thinking and reflection, those of others, war stories, case studies, and other glimmers of hope and possibility.
You are probably—deservedly—curious about the unconventional choice of name. It is undeniably niche and I will be impressed if anyone knew the reference off the bat.
Those that are more familiar with my work will know that I believe deeply in the power of speculative fiction in illuminating how things can be done differently. Ursula Le Guin, arguably one of the greatest speculative authors—and one of my favourites—was also a prolific writer of nonfiction work, often deeply critical but strangely hopeful assessments of the world around her.
In her essay, A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be she took aim at environmental discourses of green growth that promise the impossible goal of perpetuating economic growth without harming the environment, noting:
My intent is not reactionary, nor even conservative, but simply subversive. It seems that the utopian imagination is trapped, like capitalism and industrialism and the human population, in a one-way future consisting only of growth. All I’m trying to do is figure out how to put a pig on the tracks.
Her broader point is well made. So much of what we might consider utopian or transformational in the world of systems change is too blinkered in its focus, too shallow in its attack, or unwilling to expand its imagination to truly transformational frontiers.
As I’ve previously argued, in the excitement of pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in the public sector, the addition of “systems” tends to be applied as a loose metaphor—a systems gloss—that adopts the language but not the fundamental logic or principles of systems thinking. The risk of this trend is similar to the one Le Guin identified: the transformational imagination of systems work remains trapped inside an environment that, ultimately, does not want to see it succeed.
This newsletter is my humble contribution to how we might imagine a different outcome—one where things can be done differently. All I’m trying to do is figure out how to put a pig on the tracks.
subscribe at:
Pig on the tracks – Pig on the Tracks
source:
Understanding Society: A rapid tour of actor-centered social ontology
Innovative thinking about a global world
Ontological individualism holds the fairly humdrum view that the social world is entirely constituted by the activities, thoughts, and social relationships of individual actors. This short presentation provides one way of thinking about how to think about higher-level social entities from an actor-centered point of view. It provides a “mental map” for social entities such as organizations, institutions, ideologies, cultures, power, and social structures, within the overall framework of an actor-centered social ontology. The video spells out some of the implications of the idea of “methodological localism” developed elsewhere in the blog (link, link, link, link).
Here is a brief summary of the idea of methodological localism:
I offer a social ontology that I refer to as methodological localism (ML). This theory of social entities affirms that there are large social structures and facts that influence social outcomes. But it insists that these structures are only possible insofar as they are embodied in the actions and states of socially constructed individuals. The “molecule” of all social life is the socially constructed and socially situated individual, who lives, acts, and develops within a set of local social relationships, institutions, norms, and rules. (link)
The presentation sketches a view of how to think about higher-level features of social life — institutions, organizations, ideologies, normative frameworks, systems of power, and large-scale social structures. Each of these aspects of the social world is recognized as “real”; but it is emphasized that we need to understand the workings of these “higher-level” social entities in terms of the beliefs, ideas, and situations of the individual actors who play roles within them. Institutions are indeed a kind of mutually supporting “house of cards” (in James Coleman’s phrase; link), in which the causal power of institutions to shape and motivate future individuals depends upon the corresponding features of agency and motivation possessed by current individuals.
This simple ontology implies a broad orientation for research in sociology: to uncover the concrete and specific characteristics of social arrangements at all levels. This includes such things as the specifics of the arrangements through which individuals acquire their ways of thinking and acting in the world, and the arrangements that constitute the fields of incentives, opportunities, rules, and resources through which they live their lives. Turning attention to the higher-level “assemblages” of actors (organizations, institutions, ideologies, normative frameworks, systems of power), the actor-centered approach requires that we pay attention to the ways in which high-level causal powers disaggregate across networks and systems of socially related individual actors.
source:
Understanding Society: A rapid tour of actor-centered social ontology
This is a very nice obituary
Mary Catherine Bateson: Systems Thinker | Edge.org
Mary Catherine Bateson [1.18.21]
Mary Catherine Bateson
1939–2021
Introduction
by John Brockman
From the early days of Edge, Catherine Bateson was the gift that kept giving. Beginning in 1998, with her response to “What Questions Are You Asking Yourself?” through “The Last Question” in 2018, she exemplified the role of the Third Culture intellectual: “those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are.”
Her Edge essays over the years focused on subjects as varied as “ecology and culture,” systems thinking, cybernetics, metaphor, gender, climate, schismogenesis (i.e., positive feedback), the nature of side-effects, among others, and are evidence of a keen and fearless intellect determined to advance science-based thinking as well as her own controversial ideas.
She once told me that “It turns out that the Greek religious system is a way of translating what you know about your sisters, and your cousins, and your aunts into knowledge about what’s happening to the weather, the climate, the crops, and international relations, all sorts of things. A metaphor is always a framework for thinking, using knowledge of this to think about that. Religion is an adaptive tool, among other things. It is a form of analogic thinking.”
“We carry an analog machine around with us all the time called our body,” she said. “It’s got all these different organs that interact; they’re interdependent. If one of them goes out of kilter, the others go out of kilter, eventually. This is true in society. This is how disease spreads through a community, because everything is connected.”
She used methods from systems theory to explore “how people think about complex wholes like the ecology of the planet, or the climate, or large populations of human beings that have evolved for many years in separate locations and are now re-integrating.”
continues in source:
Mary Catherine Bateson: Systems Thinker | Edge.org
source:
Reordering Our Priorities Through Systems Changes Learning (RSD9, 2020/10/14) – Coevolving Innovations
January 25, 2021 daviding 0 Comments
For the first of three workshop by the Systems Changes Learning Circlein October 2020, Zaid Khan led a session for the Relating Systems Thinking and Design RSD9 Symposium. Our team had developed a set of reference slides for the three workshops, from which content that would most resonate with the audience could be selected. RSD attracts designers across practitioner and academic communities, with leadership formalized in 2018 as the Systemic Design Association.
continues in source:
Reordering Our Priorities Through Systems Changes Learning (RSD9, 2020/10/14) – Coevolving Innovations
excellent and growing connection of videos
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfLv2TkCEuImlILElKBOH6w
www.systemspractice.org/events
Further details of the events are available by clicking on the event titles and you can also book each event directly from the Book now text. Click on the flags or group titles below to go to the events that interest you…
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A SCiO member is now setting up a SCiO Espana group and we will be letting you know more as this progresses – the first meeting is 26th January. SCiO DACH now has a monthly meeting for members and guests – book now with them for further information.
Steve
SCiO – Systems & Complexity in Organisation
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SCiO UK Virtual Development Event – February 2021
Mon 1 February 2021 19:00–21:00 GMT
SCiO’s Development Days offer an opportunity to draw upon the collective expertise of SCiO members in a friendly and supportive atmosphere. By taking Development Events online, using the Zoom meeting platform, we aim to make them accessible to more SCiO members Development Events are both for members who are just starting out on a journey to explore Systems Thinking approaches, and for those who have many years of exploration and practice…. Read more
Members only; FREE to members; Online event (Zoom); English; Book now
SCiO UK Virtual Open Meeting – March 2021
Mon 22 March 2021 18:30–20:30 GMT
Virtual Open Meeting: A series of presentations of general interest to Systems and Complexity in Organisation’s members and others. SCiO organises Open Meetings to provide opportunities for practitioners to learn and develop new practice, to build relationships, networks hear about skills, tools, practice and experiences. This virtual session will be held on Zoom, the details of which will be confirmed nearer the time…. Read more
· The Variety Calculus – concepts and methodologies to address increasing complexity – Gordon Niven
· Rewilding Public Services: taking a design turn with 7 Starlings CIC – Lesley Rowan
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SCiO Belgium – digitale meeting editie februari 2021
Wed 10 February 2021 18:00–20:30 CET
Virtuele meeting (Zoom) waar we telkens inzoomen op één topic gebracht door een inspirerende spreker, waarna we een mind-openende én verdiepende dialoog houden. 19:00 Welkom & introductie 19:20 Netwerk moment SCiO-stijl 19:30 ‘Essential Balances for Organizational Diagnose and Design’ – Ivo Velitchkov – European commission & Independant Consultant (Eng) 20:30 Verdiepende dialoog 21:15 Conclusies & dankwoord
Het Belgische netwerk is een Nederlandstalig netwerk, deze meeting zal gezien de spreker in het Engels doorgaan. Het Belgische netwerk is een Nederlandstalig netwerk. SC… Read more
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SCiO DACH (Deutschland, Österreich, Schweiz)
SCiO DACH Buch Club mit Dr. Martin Pfiffner
Thu 28 January 2021 16:00–17:30 CET
SCiO DACH Buch Club mit Dr. Martin Pfiffner und seinem fantastischen Buch „Die dritte Dimension des Organisierens“ erschienen 2020 bei Springer/ Gabler mit 348 Seiten für 34.99 € als Taschenbuch. eBook ISBN: 978-3-658-29247-8, Softcover ISBN: 978-3-658-29246-1 Donnerstag den 28.01.2021 von 16:00 bis 17:30 Uhr GMT virtuell Die 1. Dimension; die Aufbauorganisation Die 2. Dimension; die Ablauforganisation Die 3. Dimension des Organisierens; das Viable System Model mit seiner vollständigen Beschreibung von Steuerung und Kommunikation in einer Organisation. Martin Pfiffner nimmt uns mit dem Bu… Read more
All welcome; KOSTENLOS; Online event (Zoom); German; Book now
One System – One Hour: System 3
Fri 5 February 2021 18:00–19:00 CET
Moderiertes Diskussionsforum über die Eigenschaften und Aufgaben des Systems 3 im VSM. Basis der Diskussion sins die Bücher “Viabilitiy of Organizations Vol. 1-3” von Wolfgang Lassl.
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VSM Praxis – Anwendung des VSM im Rahmen der RoBau-Methode
Fri 19 March 2021 18:00–19:30 CET
VSM-Anwendungsbericht durch Carola Roll im Rahmen der bei JELBA GmbH & Co. KG entwickelten RoBau-Methode. Inhalt des Berichts sind Vorstellung der Rahmenbedingungen und Zielsetzung, Beschreibung der Vorgehensweise und Aufzeigen der Entwicklungsschritte bis zum aktuellen Status sowie Ausblick auf zukünftige Arbeitspakete. Im Anschluss allgemeine Diskussion der präsentierten Inhalte…. Read more
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Tue 26 January 2021 19:00–21:00 GMT
Presentación de SCiO Qué es SCiO Qué pretende ser SCiO España Introducción de los asistentes. (Breve presentación de 1 min) Quiénes somos y cuál es nuestra relación con los sistemas Corrientes de Systems Thinking y sus ideas principales Propuestas para la segunda reunión: Apéndice. Bibliografía y referencias Despedida y cierre… Read more
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Fri 12 February 2021 14:00–16:00 CET
In de Nederlandse vereniging hebben we eerder vanuit een systemisch perspectief gekeken naar de (politieke) situatie van huisvesting in Nederland. Zo ook in januari: toen hebben we in een aantal deelgroepen verschillende perspectieven bekeken: Hoe zijn we in deze situatie beland? (Deming methode) Welke organisaties/samenwerkingsvormen kunnen we herkennen in de bestaande situatie? (VSM, systeemgrenzen, hierarchien) Welke organisaties/samenwerkingsvormen missen we (VSM, interventies Donella Meadows) In deze bijeenkomst brengen we de uitkomsten van de vorige sessie bij elkaar. Hoogstwaarschij… Read more
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SCiO-NL March 2021 meeting – Text strategy – a holistic approach to practical communication
Tue 9 March 2021 18:00–20:00 CET
This month SCIO-NL will be hosting a presentation on Text Strategy, a very practical and useful approach to communication. The presenter is Marian van Stoppelenburg, who has developed this holistic strategy for developing great texts. The presentation will be in English, so international members are more than welcome…. Read more
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source:
Economic complexity theory and applications | Nature Reviews Physics
Nature Reviews Physics (2021)Cite this article
Economic complexity methods have become popular tools in economic geography, international development and innovation studies. Here, I review economic complexity theory and applications, with a particular focus on two streams of literature: the literature on relatedness, which focuses on the evolution of specialization patterns, and the literature on metrics of economic complexity, which uses dimensionality reduction techniques to create metrics of economic sophistication that are predictive of variations in income, economic growth, emissions and income inequality.
continues in source:
Economic complexity theory and applications | Nature Reviews Physics
This is very much a ‘research notes before the research’ post, inspired by discussions (https://groups.google.com/g/cybcom/c/mEzg6WT3EII/m/PrbiwDysAgAJ) on the Cybcom google grops mailing list https://groups.google.com/g/cybcom
All I’ll say to try to frame this is that:
(NB some other incidental insights that arise when you even think about diving deep into this old rich stuff:)
(Some interesting explanation of the core concept in ‘The Sense of Dissonance: Accounts of Worth in Economic Life by David Stark – https://books.google.rs/books?id=mBuOA5QylGsC&pg=PA28&lpg=PA28&dq=mcculloch+heterarchy&source=bl&ots=5TyNn0wD8-&sig=ACfU3U1Mo0HCczbl252kgWFsmRB4A4DAIg&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=mcculloch%20heterarchy&f=false)
(Here footnote 69 refers to McCulloch’s involvement in the design of (graphical) triadic logic and his interest in Pierce’s experiments with the same and argument that all cognition is irreducibly triadic, which reminds me of Lee’s contextual dyadic thinking https://stream.syscoi.com/2019/03/02/contextual-dyadic-thinking-lee-2017/ )
Core concept: heterarchy
Origins
The bulletin of mathematical biophysics volume 7, pages89–93(1945)
Because of the dromic character of purposive activities, the closed circuits sustaining them and their interaction can be treated topologically. It is found that to the value anomaly, when A is preferred to B, B to C, but C to A, there corresponds a diadrome, or circularity in the net which is not the path of any drome and which cannot be mapped without a diallel on a surface sufficient to map the dromes. Thus the apparent inconsistency of preference is shown to indicate consistency of an order too high to permit construction of a scale of values, but submitting to finite topological analysis based on the finite number of nervous cells and their possible connections.
reference link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02478457
pdf: https://vordenker.de/ggphilosophy/mcculloch_heterarchy.pdf
Also explored in
Heterarchy (May 2015) DOI: 10.1002/9781118900772.etrds0158 In book: Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Carole Crumley – https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299904233_Heterarchy (Crumley writes about archeology but this is much broader)
And wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterarchy
The concept has been explored and championed by Jay Ogilvy of Stratfor – see https://www.forbes.com/sites/stratfor/2016/02/04/heterarchy-an-idea-finally-ripe-for-its-time/?sh=519b737547a7 (From this piece you can clearly see that Ogilvy’s view of heterarchical thinking is only one step away from the mutual interrelations of the Five Elements theory, that the rock-scissors-paper-stone metaphor is so reminiscent of)
Applied to ‘rule’ in social science
WRITTEN BYSatoshi MiuraAssistant Professor, Department of International Economics, Faculty of Economics, Toyo University. He contributed an article on “Hierarchy” to SAGE Publications’ Encyclopedia of Governance (2007),…See Article History
Heterarchy, form of management or rule in which any unit can govern or be governed by others, depending on circumstances, and, hence, no one unit dominates the rest. Authority within a heterarchy is distributed. A heterarchy possesses a flexible structure made up of interdependent units, and the relationships between those units are characterized by multiple intricate linkages that create circular paths rather than hierarchical ones. Heterarchies are best described as networks of actors—each of which may be made up of one or more hierarchies—that are variously ranked according to different metrics. Etymologically speaking, the term is made up of the Greek words heteros, meaning “the other,” and archein, meaning “to rule.”
The earliest academic discussion of the concept of heterarchy is attributed to American psychiatrist and neurophysiologist Warren S. McCulloch, a pioneer in cybernetics, who in the mid-1940s regarded a neural network that propagated in a circle as an archetype of heterarchy. The value of the concept was rediscovered decades later by social scientists in disciplines as diverse as archaeology, management, sociology, political science, and law.
American philosopher James A. Ogilvy presented one of the simplest illustrations of heterarchy in the mid-1980s as a game of rock paper scissors—in which rock beats scissors, which beats paper, which in turn beats rock. A similar circular logic, though far more complex and dynamic, can apply to the checks and balances among three branches of a government as well as to the relationship between sovereign states and international institutions such as the European Union (EU) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
At their core, heterarchical networks are considered both flexible and dynamic; authorities therein are not institutionally fixed but rather change places as situations evolve. Swedish politician Gunnar Hedlund remarked in 1986 that nested hierarchies and even markets could be observed in some multinational corporations. In such organizations, heterarchy could be conceived as a metagovernance mechanism of flexible coordination among transactions organized by different actors. In The Sense of Dissonance: Accounts of Worth in Economic Life (2009), American sociologist David Stark observed that a heterarchy’s linkages between one unit and another—usually across such conventional divides as levels, departments, and sectors—form a multicentric network of heterogeneous actors with distinctive resources and capabilities. That structure, he argued, makes an organization more productive and gives it the ability to adapt to rapid changes.
Heterarchy is emerging as an important concept with respect to globalization and national and international governance. Heterarchies have existed in the past, such as within parts of the Mayan civilization in Central America, and some international-relations experts argue that the world political order is moving toward a heterarchical structure rather than a hierarchical one, since some present-day global issues require organizations of actors that cut across public, private, and civic sectors ranging from local to global scales. Evidence for present-day heterarchy in global governance can be seen in the rise of a number of transnational networks (such as NATO, the United Nations, the WTO, and the EU) to facilitate trade, security, and international cooperation.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/heterarchy
In psychology
Awareness as observational heterarchy – Sonoda, Kodama, and Gunji (2013)
Libet et al. (1983) revealed that brain activity precedes conscious intention. For convenience in this study, we divide brain activity into two parts: a conscious field (CF) and an unconscious field (UF). Most studies have assumed a comparator mechanism or an illusion of CF and discuss the difference of prediction and postdiction. We propose that problems to be discussed here are a twisted sense of agency between CF and UF, and another definitions of prediction and postdiction in a mediation process for the twist. This study specifically examines the definitions throughout an observational heterarchy model based on internal measurement. The nature of agency must be emergence that involves observational heterarchy. Consequently, awareness involves processes having duality in the sense that it is always open to the world (postdiction) and that it also maintains self robustly (prediction).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3787395/
[This really interesting paper talks about emergence in heterarchical terms, and links to many other interesting papers!
In ecological theory
Published:May 24, 2016
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2016.04.009
Hierarchy theory has been an important component of ecological theory for >20 years. It has also been widely applied in social and economic analyses. It is particularly useful for questions of constraints, system controls, and scaling problems.Social network analysis has seen extensive recent growth and development as an analytical tool in ecology, social science, and economics. It is particularly relevant to questions of connectivity, configuration, and self-organisation.Despite their complementary goals, an uneasy tension exists between hierarchy theory and network analysis. For example, published studies may treat food webs as unidirectional networks or as hierarchies.The heterarchy concept is not new, but its full potential has not yet been realised. It promises to unify hierarchy theory and network analysis by bringing together top-down, bottom-up, and peer-to-peer dynamics.Social–ecological systems research suffers from a disconnect between hierarchical (top-down or bottom-up) and network (peer-to-peer) analyses. The concept of the heterarchy unifies these perspectives in a single framework. Here, I review the history and application of ‘heterarchy’ in neuroscience, ecology, archaeology, multiagent control systems, business and organisational studies, and politics. Recognising complex system architecture as a continuum along vertical and lateral axes (‘flat versus hierarchical’ and ‘individual versus networked’) suggests four basic types of heterarchy: reticulated, polycentric, pyramidal, and individualistic. Each has different implications for system functioning and resilience. Systems can also shift predictably and abruptly between architectures. Heterarchies suggest new ways of contextualising and generalising from case studies and new methods for analysing complex structure–function relations.
https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/comments/S0169-5347(16)30043-X
In human value and motivational systems
ALLAN L. COMBSPages 464-472 | Published online: 23 Nov 2006
The implications of Warren McCulloch’s 1945 concept of heterarchy are analyzed in terms of human value and motivational systems. The results demonstrate the near-impossibility of predicting behavior on the basis of any hierarchical scheme, or even which among a set of hierarchical schemes will be selected as the basis of a behavioral choice. Thus, for example, people regularly say one thing and do another.
1. This is apparent in any web search that cross-lists “heterarchy” with “management” or “business.”
2. In 1943 McCulloch had published a groundbreaking paper titled it A Logical Calculus Immanent in Nervous Activity with the young mathematician Walter Pitts.
3. Though some prominent figures of the day, such as Norbert Wiener, were skeptical of conceptual schemes not grounded in actual physiological investigations of the brain. John von Neumann was supportive of the general notion of nerve cells as computer components, but believed they contributed to a computational process that was at least partially analogue.
4. This and several other lists given this article are not intended to follow any particular theoretical scheme, but simply are examples of behaviors that we all engage in.
5. One is reminded of the proverbial “Harvard Law of Behavior” which states if a rat is placed in an operant box and all the relevant conditions are diligently controlled, it will go off and do what it pleases¡
6. During the 1940s and 1950s, many theoretical problems in neurology were “solved” by postulating closed-loop circuits in which neural activity folded back upon itself, creating continuous loops of activity. Such circuits were said, for example, to be at the root of brain motivational centers as well as certain motor control operations. By the mid 1960s, however, it was becoming all too apparent that what had been a good idea on paper was not to be found in meaningful numbers—or evidently at all—in real living organisms.
7. An alternative but equivalent conceptualization would be to imagine one large attractor with many basins.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02604020600826071
Other links and papers
Metaphysics of an Experimental Episemologist (von Foerster), 1996 – a tribute to McCulloch, 1996 (via the CybCom google group)
https://14918290955878769505.googlegroups.com/attach/7702e09f9f75e/HvF%20Metaphysics%20of%20an%20experimental%20epistemologist.pdf?part=0.2&view=1&vt=ANaJVrFejUYPGhTS1dMh_u5SgAEG91ekmhNpEoZ4WJXopMDfm26Dts63aO_qHPqtftk3flNn9yDKhdrSrBA9Udl18d4CwayDlDPAdeVSLkKWuC42xT_p0AU
Heterachy-Hierarchy: Two complementary categories of description (von Goldammer, Paul, and Newbury)2003 – http://www.vordenker.de/heterarchy/a_heterarchy-e.pdf
Towards a heterarchical approach to biology and cognition Brunia and Giorgi, 2016
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0079610715001017
Also applied to International Development (a dissertation I couldn’t quite get to grips with – https://mro.massey.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10179/12696/02_whole.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y)
In law- Dekker, E. , & Kuchař, P. (2017). Heterarchy. In A. Marciano, & G. B.
Ramello (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Law and Economics Springer, New
York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7883-6_640-1
Abstract: Whenever agents choose A instead of B, B instead of C, and C instead of A, a logical
contradiction arises. This contradiction – also known as a value anomaly – characterizes genuine
choices. Some organizations and firms, but also legal systems, markets, or even the human brain
can be regarded as complex systems that manage the value anomaly by operating with multiple
mutually incompatible ordering principles. Such a management – as opposed to a mere
elimination – of these mutually incompatible values allows these systems to better cope with
uncertainty, and to benefit from the recognition of complexity. One of the central implications of
these heterarchical systems is that there is no single scale on which unequals can be compared
and, consequently, that commensuration is an active process which involves friction and
opportunities for entrepreneurship. We argue that in a world that naturally seems to be
characterized by these value anomalies, heterarchical organizations and, in particular, heterarchy
as a complex system of valuation might well be a good response.
Definition: Heterarchy is a complex adaptive system of governance, an order with more than one
governing principle. Heterarchies include elements of hierarchies and networks, but in a number
of important ways, heterarchies are different from both of these systems of governance. The
model of heterarchical governance is like plate tectonics: mutually self-contained orders with
unclear hierarchies among them.
This paper:
Is heterarchy the answer to the crisis of hierarchy? (Wagner, 2018) take us right back to ‘heterarchy is not hierarchy’, and right now seems a lot less exciting by comparison: https://www.ipma.world/heterarchy-answer-crisis-hierarchy/
source:
CybSights: The Cybernetics Difference, Jenkinson and Kawalek – YouTube
1 view•Premiered 7 hours ago20SHARESAVECybernetics Society47 subscribersSUBSCRIBED#purpose # causality #wicked_problems #ecological design #cybernetics The Cybernetics Society hosts two talks by and a conversation with two of its fellows on future science and society. Angus Jenkinson FCybS and Peter Kawalek FCybS propose 1) a revised logic of causality‚ i.e. active and passive causality — wicked problem dissolving — and the moral order of nature, including purpose, and 2) sympoiesis as a feature of (Donna Haraway’s conception of) the Chthulucene age – a higher variety, multi-species, ecologically conducive era of diverse relationships. It leads to conversation about competition and cooperation, the nature of life, and what we humans want to do with our purposefulness in the making of the world. Angus Jenkinson is the Secretary of the Cybernetics Society, with career as business professor, tech entrepreneur and CEO/company chair, designer, and consultant to many organisations internationally. He is an organisational philosopher developing a scientific theory of organisations, called propriopoiesis. In the talk, he uses various film images to discuss active and passive causality; His thesis is: 1— When science rejected goal-driven behaviour in the 1600s it lost the ability to explain the behaviour of every living creature and every social institution. When cybernetics brought it back in the 20th century it provided the foundation for understanding and resolving the most difficult challenges of our time and times to come. Cybernetics proved that there was active causality. All living creatures actively produce what they do. And do their best to make sure that nothing prevents it. That turns our understanding of the world inside out. And restores common sense. 2 — It turns wicked problems into tame problems with designs that produce the desired outcome with exquisite precision. 3 — Cybernetics is founded on the join between people and their world, living creatures and their world. That’s why it can help with ecological, social, and design challenges, from AI to saving butterflies and forests. 4 — The world of the 21st-century therefore has two great orders of nature. The first is the world of passive causality, mechanical objects and technologies, things. Scientific technology has been mostly brilliant at this. (But they can do harm to the living.) The second is the world of active causality, the living, and the technologies that reflect this. Scientific technology has varied from the so-so to the awful at this. This century we need to solve the problems of the past for the sake of the future. The problems and ways to deal with them are social, technical, and eminently practical. Professor Peter Kawalek FCybS is Director of the Centre for Information Management at the School of Business & Economics in Loughborough University. He has additional visiting positions and has wide experience working with organizations including Siemens AG., SAP, IBM, Office an Taoiseach (Prime Minister) in Dublin, the Department of Communities and Local Government, and more. He reviews and comments on Donna Haraway’s reconceptualization of autopoiesis as sympoiesis. She sees the Chthulucene – a higher variety, multi-species, ecologically conducive era of diverse relationships to replace the Anthropocene – as a desirable evolution. Peter follows Stafford Beer’s critique of the failures of thought, curricula and teaching, which impoverish thinking and so impoverish the world. With Donna Haraway’s work, like Stafford’s, he felt a surge of excitement at its rich potential to consider ‘what worlds world worlds’. Look out for the variety expressed in kin, plantations and string figures.
Welcome to The Complexity & Artificial Life Research Concept for Self-Organizing Systems This site is dedicated to modern systems thinking in all its various forms an on-line educational activity of CALResCo, for scientist, artist and humanist, young and old
The Complexity and Artificial Life Research Concept for Self-Organizing Systems
A final *very* special websie for tonight…
…talking of interestingly styled web pages, though this one is less extreme and run by the eminent Alexander Riegler, as is the journal Radical Constructivism, there’s a lot here…
source:
The Key to Radical Constructivism
From W. Ross Ashby comes the famous Law of Requisite Variety which states that the variety of actions available to a control system must be at least as large as the variety of actions in the system to be controlled. Now, constructivism certainly comes in a huge variety of forms and versions. I felt challenged to get some grip on its sumptuousness — especially because people regularly ask me to provide some sort of overview. In fact they sometimes express their astonishment that what they considered a monolithic epistemology turns out to be a dappled one. I have to admit that also for me it took some time to recognize the jungle as such and some more time to find my way through it. Please find below a (certainly still crude) version of the requested guide. Suggestions and corrections are welcome.Refer to this pages as: Riegler, A. (2003) The Key to Radical Constructivism. http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/key.html |
main page:
https://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/index.html
COGNITION Humberto R. Maturana A paper originally published in: Hejl, Peter M., Wolfram K. Köck, and Gerhard Roth (Eds.) Wahrnehmung und Kommunikation Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1978, pp. 29-49.
Maturana (1978b): Cognition
This from http://www.enolagaia.com/index.html
And I *must* stop and observe how this website (apparently 2001-2011) from Randall Whitaker is *such* a classic of it’s time that either he just embraced it fully, or he was aiming for pastiche. I don’t know but he appears to be on LinkedIn so I will ask. Many things about this site will make your eyes widen but I believe that ‘a perfect specimine of its kind’ does apply.
Here (amongst perhaps the web’s largest collection of ‘I’m the guy’ ‘pinbacks’) is ‘the observer web: autopoeisis and enaction’:
http://www.enolagaia.com/AT.html#ReadingRoom
And ‘encyclopedia autopoeitica’:
http://www.enolagaia.com/EAIntro.html
In today’s post, I will be following the thoughts from my previous post, Consistency over Completeness. We were looking at each one of us being informationally closed, and computing a stable reality. The stability comes from the recursive computations of what is being observed. I hope to expand the idea of stability from an individual to a society in today’s post.
Humberto Maturana, the cybernetician biologist (or biologist cybernetician) said – anything said is said by an observer. Heinz von Foerster, one of my heroes in cybernetics, expanded this and said – everything said is said to an observer. Von Foerster’s thinking was that language is not monologic but always dialogic. He noted:
The observer as a strange singularity in the universe does not attract me… I am fascinated by images of duality, by binary metaphors like dance and dialogue where only a duality creates a unity. Therefore, the statement…
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Soo much rich stuff linked from this blog post from @David Ing:
Learning about teaching: systems thinking and sustainability course in Finland
The two that caught my eye were:
http://coevolving.com/aalto/201010-cs0004/201010-cs0004-map05-ecosystems.html
Ecological complexity and scale
http://coevolving.com/aalto/201102-cs0005/201102-cs0005-map04-ecological-complexity.html
Systems Community of Inquiry 
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