[Some discounted tickets may be available – email benjamin.taylor@redquadrant.com if you are interested]

The map is not the territory, the word is not the thing it describes. Whenever the map is confused with the territory, a ‘semantic disturbance’ is set up in the organism. The disturbance continues until the limitation of the map is recognized.

⏤Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity

Korzybski’s study of language, perception, and consciousness provides us with some of the most essential and least recognized theories and methods to make sense of this era in which communication has become polarizing, and media is stirring the storm of confusion.

General semantics is the name of the tradition of inquiry into language, thought, and abstracting that Korzybski founded. Join the Institute of General Semantics (based in New York City) in London, UK, for three days of theory and practical application, story and experiential learning, via an in-person seminar on general semantics and related non-aristotelian systems. The 3-day intensive course will include lecture, discussion, and exercises designed to provide participants with a thorough grounding in the discipline and its applications.

For those unfamiliar with general semantics, the seminar will provide a comprehensive introduction to the tradition and its 21st century evolution. For those already familiar with the non-aristotelian approach, the course will provide reinforcement, enrichment, and an updating and expansion of the discipline. And for those interested in and/or involved in teaching, the seminar will provide useful guidance on pedagogy related to topics such as language, symbolic communication, thought and behavior, and epistemology and evaluation.

During the seminar, we will explore how unexamined language behaviors perpetuate misperceptions of past and present controversies in professional and personal spaces. And we will determine which language and listening behaviors respect the infinite worth of each person in the interaction.

The seminar leaders will include four trustees of the Institute of General Semantics: 

Lance Strate, Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, President of the Institute of General Semantics, and author of 10 books including Media Ecology: An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition, and Concerning Communication: Epic Quests and Lyric Excursions Within the Human Lifeworld.

Mary P. Lahman, Professor Emerita of Communication Studies at Manchester University, Trustee of the Institute of General Semantics, ECHO Certified Listening Practitioner, and author of Awareness and Action: A Travel Companion.

Nora Bateson, President of the International Bateson Institute, Trustee of the Institute of General Semantics, Creator of Warm Data and the Warm Data labs, complexity/systems teacher, filmmaker, artist, and author of Small Arcs of Larger Circles, and Combining.

Dom Heffer, East Yorkshire-based artist, Trustee of the Institute of General Semantics, Art Editor of the journal ETC: A Review of General Semantics, founding member of Feral Art School, and previously associated with The Estate of Francis Bacon, 2021 Visual Arts Centre, Ferens Art Gallery, Cultural Olympiad 2012, and UK City of Culture 2017.

The seminar will be held over 3 full days (9 AM to 5 PM) on July 25th to 27th in London, UK, at the October Gallery. 

The seminar fee is $500 for IGS members, $600 for non-members, and will cover the cost of course materials. Participants will be responsible for their own transportation, room, and board.

We will try to accommodate everyone interested in attending the seminar, but space will necessarily will be limited, so register early to insure your participation!

Navigating the Now: A Guide to RecognizingWhat Is Going OnA 3-Day In-PersonGeneral Semantics SeminarJuly 25-27LondonThe map is not the territory, the word is not the thing it describes. Whenever the map is confused with the territory, a ‘semantic disturbance’ is set up in the organism. The disturbance continues until the limitation of the map is recognized.⏤Alfred Korzybski, Science and SanityKorzybski’s study of language, perception, and consciousness provides us with some of the most essential and least recognized theories and methods to make sense of this era in which communication has become polarizing, and media is stirring the storm of confusion.General semantics is the name of the tradition of inquiry into language, thought, and abstracting that Korzybski founded. Join the Institute of General Semantics (based in New York City) in London, UK, for three days of theory and practical application, story and experiential learning, via an in-person seminar on general semantics and related non-aristotelian systems. The 3-day intensive course will include lecture, discussion, and exercises designed to provide participants with a thorough grounding in the discipline and its applications.For those unfamiliar with general semantics, the seminar will provide a comprehensive introduction to the tradition and its 21st century evolution. For those already familiar with the non-aristotelian approach, the course will provide reinforcement, enrichment, and an updating and expansion of the discipline. And for those interested in and/or involved in teaching, the seminar will provide useful guidance on pedagogy related to topics such as language, symbolic communication, thought and behavior, and epistemology and evaluation.During the seminar, we will explore how unexamined language behaviors perpetuate misperceptions of past and present controversies in professional and personal spaces. And we will determine which language and listening behaviors respect the infinite worth of each person in the interaction.The seminar leaders will include four trustees of the Institute of General Semantics: Lance Strate, Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, President of the Institute of General Semantics, and author of 10 books including Media Ecology: An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition, and Concerning Communication: Epic Quests and Lyric Excursions Within the Human Lifeworld.Mary P. Lahman, Professor Emerita of Communication Studies at Manchester University, Trustee of the Institute of General Semantics, ECHO Certified Listening Practitioner, and author of Awareness and Action: A Travel Companion.Nora Bateson, President of the International Bateson Institute, Trustee of the Institute of General Semantics, Creator of Warm Data and the Warm Data labs, complexity/systems teacher, filmmaker, artist, and author of Small Arcs of Larger Circles, and Combining.Dom Heffer, East Yorkshire-based artist, Trustee of the Institute of General Semantics, Art Editor of the journal ETC: A Review of General Semantics, founding member of Feral Art School, and previously associated with The Estate of Francis Bacon, 2021 Visual Arts Centre, Ferens Art Gallery, Cultural Olympiad 2012, and UK City of Culture 2017.The seminar will be held over 3 full days (9 AM to 5 PM) on July 25th to 27th in London, UK, at the October Gallery. The seminar fee is $500 for IGS members, $600 for non-members, and will cover the cost of course materials. Participants will be responsible for their own transportation, room, and board.We will try to accommodate everyone interested in attending the seminar, but space will necessarily will be limited, so register early to insure your participation!

Institute of General Semantics – Navigating the Now: A Guide to Recognizing What is Going On? A 3-Day General Semantics Seminar

https://generalsemantics.org/event-5704040?fbclid=IwAR1cMkyZfkh62PRpMLRcWZUyhM6LcGiDvg6GvOkdw7cCmkwn16oPb-FQkmU

[In response to this week’s LinkedIn post, Liz Rykert https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7201116972317581312?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A%28activity%3A7201116972317581312%2C7201912539662749696%29&dashCommentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A%287201912539662749696%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7201116972317581312%29 introduced the work of Scott Kelso (and collaborators) in the book The Complementary Nature. It appears this is another whole ‘chunk’ of stuff in the systems | complexity | cybernetics space – haven’t found one of them for quite a while! So this is by way of being a kind of promissory note for potentially more here – looks like lots of stuff with lots of overlaps]

HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article

Front. Hum. Neurosci., 14 August 2020
Sec. Motor Neuroscience
Volume 14 – 2020 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2020.00317

This article is part of the Research Topic

Sensorimotor Foundations of Social Cognition

View all 22 Articles 

Coordination Dynamics: A Foundation for Understanding Social Behavior

Emmanuelle Tognoli^1,2* Mengsen Zhang^1,3 Armin Fuchs^1,4† Christopher Beetle⁴ J. A. Scott Kelso^1,5*

• ¹Human Brain and Behavior Laboratory, Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, United States
• ²Department of Biological Sciences, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, United States
• ³Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States
• ⁴Department of Physics, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, United States
• ⁵Intelligent Systems Research Centre, Ulster University, Londonderry, United Kingdom

Humans’ interactions with each other or with socially competent machines exhibit lawful coordination patterns at multiple levels of description. According to Coordination Dynamics, such laws specify the flow of coordination states produced by functional synergies of elements (e.g., cells, body parts, brain areas, people…) that are temporarily organized as single, coherent units. These coordinative structures or synergies may be mathematically characterized as informationally coupled self-organizing dynamical systems (Coordination Dynamics). In this paper, we start from a simple foundation, an elemental model system for social interactions, whose behavior has been captured in the Haken-Kelso-Bunz (HKB) model. We follow a tried and tested scientific method that tightly interweaves experimental neurobehavioral studies and mathematical models. We use this method to further develop a body of empirical research that advances the theory toward more generalized forms. In concordance with this interdisciplinary spirit, the present paper is written both as an overview of relevant advances and as an introduction to its mathematical underpinnings. We demonstrate HKB’s evolution in the context of social coordination along several directions, with its applicability growing to increasingly complex scenarios. In particular, we show that accommodating for symmetry breaking in intrinsic dynamics and coupling, multiscale generalization and adaptation are principal evolutions. We conclude that a general framework for social coordination dynamics is on the horizon, in which models support experiments with hypothesis generation and mechanistic insights.

Frontiers | Coordination Dynamics: A Foundation for Understanding Social Behavior

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2020.00317/full

28 May 2024

By Gerrit Van Wyk

Edgar Morin on Systems and Complexity – The Complexity of Health Care

Edgar Morin on Systems and Complexity

Denis Noble

A theory of biological relativity: no privileged level of causation

Denis Noble

• PMID: 23386960
• PMCID: PMC3262309
• DOI: 10.1098/rsfs.2011.0067

Abstract

Must higher level biological processes always be derivable from lower level data and mechanisms, as assumed by the idea that an organism is completely defined by its genome? Or are higher level properties necessarily also causes of lower level behaviour, involving actions and interactions both ways? This article uses modelling of the heart, and its experimental basis, to show that downward causation is necessary and that this form of causation can be represented as the influences of initial and boundary conditions on the solutions of the differential equations used to represent the lower level processes. These insights are then generalized. A priori, there is no privileged level of causation. The relations between this form of ‘biological relativity’ and forms of relativity in physics are discussed. Biological relativity can be seen as an extension of the relativity principle by avoiding the assumption that there is a privileged scale at which biological functions are determined.

Keywords: biological relativity; cardiac cell model; downward causation; scale relativity.

A theory of biological relativity: no privileged level of causation – PubMed

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23386960/

(can’t find pdf other than

https://sci-hub.se/10.1098/rsfs.2011.0067 )

and

REVIEW article

Front. Physiol., 18 July 2019

Sec. Integrative Physiology

Volume 10 – 2019 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2019.00827

This article is part of the Research TopicMultilevel Organization and Functional Integration in OrganismsView all 15 articles

Biological Relativity Requires Circular Causality but Not Symmetry of Causation: So, Where, What and When Are the Boundaries?

Raymond Noble¹Kazuyo Tasaki²Penelope J. Noble²Denis Noble^2*

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.00827/full

@systemicpractice

Welcome to the Systemic Practice Channel hosted by Everything is Connected Press

Systemic Practice – YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/@systemicpractice

In sociology, action theory is the theory of social action presented by the American theorist Talcott Parsons.

Parsons established action theory to integrate the study of social action and social order with the aspects of macro and micro factors. In other words, he was trying to maintain the scientific rigour of positivism, while acknowledging the necessity of the “subjective dimension” of human action incorporated in hermeneutic types of sociological theorizing. Parsons sees motives as part of our actions. Therefore, he thought that social science must consider ends, purposes and ideals when looking at actions. Parsons placed his discussion within a higher epistemological and explanatory context of systems theory and cybernetics.

Action theory (sociology)7 languagesArticleTalkReadEditView historyToolsFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaPart of a series onSociologyHistoryOutlineIndexshowKey themesshowPerspectivesshowBranchesshowMethodsshowSociologistsshowLists Society portalvteIn sociology, action theory is the theory of social action presented by the American theorist Talcott Parsons.Parsons established action theory to integrate the study of social action and social order with the aspects of macro and micro factors. In other words, he was trying to maintain the scientific rigour of positivism, while acknowledging the necessity of the “subjective dimension” of human action incorporated in hermeneutic types of sociological theorizing. Parsons sees motives as part of our actions. Therefore, he thought that social science must consider ends, purposes and ideals when looking at actions. Parsons placed his discussion within a higher epistemological and explanatory context of systems theory and cybernetics.

Action theory (sociology) – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_theory_(sociology)

John Tower*

• Molecular and Computational Biology Section, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, United States

[h/t JP de Vooght on Mastodon https://mastodon.social/deck/@jdevoo/112518348760974121 who says News from the biology front line with “selectively advantageous instability” and implications for evolution and aging that will be of interest to org students]

Frontiers | Selectively advantageous instability in biotic and pre-biotic systems and implications for evolution and aging

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fragi.2024.1376060/full

[As Prof Mike Jackson said in comments on LinkedIn, the article references Ramage and Shipp which is “a very reliable guide”]

• January 8, 2024
• 9 Minutes Read

A Brief History of Systems Thinking

[I was lucky enough to go to the launch of this, a nice event – I might write more about it. It cemented in my mind that ‘local systems change’ or ‘place-based systems change’ as they describe it is very specific – funder-and-charity focus, using entirely middle-of-the road, bourgeois approaches, squarely within the Overton window, and based on assumptions that everyone just needs a lot of exposure to niceness and rationality and things will change for the better. Obviously that’s something like damning with faint praise, but I know this kind of approach can be valuable and impactful when yout experience it. I do think there’s a lot of value in ‘start with self, and with understanding’. But I don’t think this is going to change any ‘systems’]

What does it take to change a system?

What does it take to change a system? – Renaisi

Club of Remy

Download8 views 17 May 2024CoR’s second mini-course, Lou Kauffman, “Self-organization and Knot Theory: A missing Link between Cybernetics and the Evolution of Structure.” May 8, 2024 Speed Dating of Ideas Club Of Remy http://www.clubofremy.org

Lou Kauffman: Self-organization and Knot Theory – YouTube

Biophysical Chemistry

Volume 85, Issues 2–3, 15 July 2000, Pages 101-123

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0301-4622(00)00122-8Get rights and content

Abstract

Information has two aspects: a quantity to be called ‘extent’ and a quality which may be termed ‘content’ since it deals with meaning. The latter originates via selective self-organization, which can be described also in quantitative physical terms. A prerequisite is the reproducibility of the informational substrate forming the basis of selection. This paper focuses on selection being the analogue of a physical phase transition. In Section 1 the criteria for phase transitions are formulated. Section 2 introduces the concept of information space and describes information as selected points or regions in this space. In Section 3 selection is analyzed in terms of the criteria for phase transitions, and in Section 4 the concept is confronted with experimental data. The conclusion is reached that information content is generated via selection, which can be described as a phase transition in information space

Natural selection: a phase transition? – ScienceDirect

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301462200001228

Harold Nelson

nelsongroup@berkeley.edu

Harold Nelson leads the collection with an invited essay, Contexts’ first article, that helps place the footers and foundation into the field that has grown from design for complex scale and generations of systems thinking. The fertile ground of the 1960s consciousness revolution, the University of California at Berkeley, and what Nelson refers to as The Berkeley Bubble are central to the ideas in this essay.

Berkeley Bubble | Contexts—The Journal of Systemic Design

https://systemic-design.org/contexts/vol1/harold-nelson/v1001/

[They say:]

What is systems intelligence?

---

Systems intelligence is the ability to understand the world around you through a systemic lens, and to take intelligent action.

This means being aware of the big picture, noticing how things are related, and understanding the the impact of your actions.

It also means being able to join forces with others in harmonious and productive ways.

Systems intelligence is rooted in the principles of systems thinking, but has less focus on methodologies. It has more to do with everyday habits and actions.

It is a way of thinking, a way of working, a way of being.

THE INSTITUTE FOR SYSTEMS INTELLIGENCE

https://www.ifsi.uk/

• November 2015
• Constructivist Foundations 11(1):42-50

• Gordon Dyer
• Jed Jones
• Gordon Rowland
• Silvia Zweifel

Context: Thirty years ago, members of the systems science community discovered that at their conferences, more was being accomplished in the breaks than in the sessions. Led by Bela H. Banathy, they cancelled the sessions and created a conversation methodology that has proven far more effective. Dozens of conversations have now been held around the world. Problem: At a recent conversation in Linz, Austria, a team devoted its inquiry to the Banathy Conversation Methodology (BCM) itself, asking, in particular, how to develop and spread the methodology further, beyond the systems science community. Method: The team captured key features and benefits of BCM and developed new tools. Results: Described herein are the development of the methodology, its theoretical underpinnings, the methodology itself, heuristics for successful conversations, and an example of how the methodology is spreading. Implications: Ultimately, the hope is to develop the methodology in such ways that communities could apply it to meet significant challenges and co-create their futures.

(PDF) The Banathy Conversation Methodology

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284738114_The_Banathy_Conversation_Methodology

Metcalf G. S. (2015) A constructivist perspective on banathy’s conversation methodology. Constructivist Foundations 11(1): 53–54. http://constructivist.info/11/1/053

Open peer commentary on the article “The Banathy Conversation Methodology” by Gordon Dyer, Jed Jones, Gordon Rowland & Silvia Zweifel. Upshot: This commentary will address the implicit and explicit connections between Banathy’s Conversation Methodology, which is the heart of the process used at the IFSR Conversations held every two years in Austria, and constructivist theories in application.

https://constructivist.info/11/1/053.metcalf

• January 2021

• DOI: 
• 10.33278/SAE-2020.book1.054-057

• Conference: Systems Analysis in Economics – 2020

• Gerald Midgley

A systems theory of marginalization and its implications for systemic interventionJanuary 2021DOI: 10.33278/SAE-2020.book1.054-057Conference: Systems Analysis in Economics – 2020Gerald Midgley

(18) (PDF) A systems theory of marginalization and its implications for systemic intervention

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354980463_A_systems_theory_of_marginalization_and_its_implications_for_systemic_intervention