Hosted by the University of Hull Centre for Systems Studies (CSS), Systems and Complexity in Organisation (SCiO) and The OR Society, 24th – 26th March 2026 | University of Hull
Hosted by the University of Hull Centre for Systems Studies (CSS),
Systems and Complexity in Organisation (SCiO) and The OR Society
Overview ⋮ 2026 Conference: Systems Thinking and Systems Practice ⋮ Blackthorn Events
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY STUDIES
Volume 2 Issue 1 – Science & Technology Studies
Williams » Science & Technology Studies » Metamodern Theory and Praxis » Volume 2 Issue 1
Volume 2 Issue 1
Image Credit: Daniel Martin Diaz
Metamodern Theory & Praxis 2 (2025)
THEORY
“Everything” Is in Quotation Marks
Meta-Subjectivity and Ideational Analysis
Constructing (Social) Constructivism
Metamodernism as a Cultural (and Literary) Paradigm
Metamodernism as a Guidepost for Building Transformative Movements
A Metamodern Analysis of the Postcolonial and Marxist Theory Debate
PRAXIS
A Metadisciplinary Approach to Asian Medicine
As I Am, So I See
The Mechanism of the World
Annular Theory & Praxis
Three Poems
*DOI activation pending imminent ISSN assignment
Metamodern Theory and Praxis is a new, peer-reviewed, anti-disciplinary, Open Access journal dedicated to bleeding-edge work in the Human Sciences (Humanities + Social Sciences) and focused on the unfolding paradigm(s) of metamodern theory and praxis. More Info and previous issues.
I’m reflecting on the fantasy of “The Vitamin” – that one missing thing which, once discovered, suddenly explains all the struggle and unlocks brilliance. Individually, we dream of a breakthrough that makes everything easier. In organisational life, I see the same hope: that one change, insight or fix will deliver salvation. The post asks whether such a Vitamin really exists at work – or whether progress is usually messier, harder-won, and less magical. The Vitamin – chosen path
Back by popular demand! Our introductory course for commissioners will run again this February, with the first session on 25 February. This online and interactive learning programme will enable you to grasp the core principles and practices of effective commissioning. You’ll be better placed to help develop public services that make a really positive and lasting difference to local people’s lives. You’ll also be able to act quickly with confidence using a commissioning mindset and call on your network of fellow participants for support and challenge. https://link.redquadrant.com/10StepFeb26
This is wonderful news! I remain very proud of the small but hopefully valuable role RedQuadrant played in supporting this fantastic example ofsystems change or systems convening in moving public services closer to how they ought to be! https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_child-victims-should-never-be-forced-to-repeat-activity-7407439019019485184-Q_Hx?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAADUV_eUBZSxZvFpx70OV050F6K5HM2MhTMo
Local Government Reorganisation is coming fast. By April 2028, every new authority must be safe, legal, and fully operational. That means statutory officers secured, ICT cutovers rehearsed, services live, and residents experiencing seamless continuity. The RedQuadrant LGR Hub is the only model that guarantees readiness while embedding lasting capability. With a single accountable structure, governance at its core, and capability pillars across adults, children’s, SEND, ICT, finance, housing, and place, the Hub ensures no gaps, no surprises. Three outcomes, every time: Safe and legal on day one; Visible assurance and confidence in delivery; Future-ready capacity with transformation built in. Find out more now: https://www.redquadrant.com/lgrhub
Our newly launched tool, the Commissioning Compass, helps you to assess your commissioning system and form an action plan for improvement. It’s available for free via our Teachable site – try it now! link.redquadrant.com/commissioningcompass
We’re building our cohort for the next national commissioning academy – our flagship commissioning programme from the PSTA. Register your interest now: https://link.redquadrant.com/nextacademy25
The SAVVI project, (short for Scalable Approach to Vulnerability via Interoperability) is about helping public services identify, assess, and support people at risk of poor outcomes, whether that’s homelessness, child poverty, or even being unable to evacuate during a flood. By developing open data standards, practical guidance, and innovative tools, SAVVI enables a truly coordinated, multi-agency response. You can read more on Andrew’s role, and on the project, here: https://coda.io/@savvi/welcome/exciting-news-from-the-savvi-team-313
What are the bounds of complexity in living systems? How can synthetic biology and bioengineering be used to interrogate emergent properties or information processing in cells & organisms? Ricard Solé youtube conversation with Dr Michael Levin – the bounds of complexity in living systems (2024) | Systems Community of Inquiry
For decades, the conventional wisdom about Silicon Valley was that it leaned progressive. And by many measures (like donations by Big Tech employees to political candidates), the industry has been aligned with the Democratic politics that dominate the San Francisco Bay Area. The Wide Angle: Understanding TESCREAL — Silicon Valley’s Rightward Turn | Washington Spectator
The Centre for Systems Studies at the University of Hull, The OR Society, SCIO and International Federation for Systems Research (IFSR) warmly invite you to join us for the conference ‘Systems Thinking and Systems Practice’ that is due to take place at the University of Hull from 24th – 26th of March 2026. ⋮ 2026 Conference: Systems Thinking and Systems Practice ⋮ Blackthorn Events
Once upon a time, the vulture was an abundant and ubiquitous bird in India. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c28e2pvzn3lo?utm_content=buffer04bc7&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Closes:
30 Jun 2026
Journal
Guest editor(s)
Submit your paper here from 1 January 2026
Friday, the 13th of November 2026, is Doomsday. According to von Foerster et al. (1960), it is the day when population growth will reach infinity, thus ending the possibilities of humanity to survive. Interestingly enough, it is also the day of Heinz von Foerster’s 115th birthday anniversary, which gives us a good reason to review his contribution to systems research. Heinz von Foerster has been a pioneer in this field, working closely with other leading figures such as John von Neumann, Margaret Mead, Norbert Wiener, Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela, Gregory Bateson, or Niklas Luhmann (Umpleby, 2008). Originally trained as a physicist, he addressed numerous different topics across many disciplines. Von Foerster has shaped our understanding of second-order cybernetics and contributed significantly to the development of radical constructivism (Scott, 2004). To him, we owe the notion of the trivial machine (von Foerster, 1984), the ethical imperative (von Foerster, 2003), and many other thought-provoking concepts and expressions.
The Doomsday Calculation, of course, is also a provocation. While it concerns a serious issue, is also raises questions about the use of simple mathematics to make predictions of future social development. Setting the date on Friday, the 13th associates it with superstition. Setting it on von Foerster’s birthday adds a sense of humour. Nevertheless, this article is not just a tongue-in-cheek comment on the limitations of formal modelling. Knowing that he was a leading figure of second-order cybernetics, von Foerster et al.’s (1960) article can also be read as a reflection on the possibilities to approach grand challenges in society objectively, and the dangers of ideology and self-referentiality. In this sense, Doomsday is significant for today’s scientific discourse on many levels, showing the topicality of von Foerster’s work in different ways.
The aim of this special issue is to collect articles that discuss Heinz von Foerster’s work from different angles. It invites contributions from former students and collaborators who give first-hand evidence of von Foerster’s teaching and research activities, as well as conceptual and empirical works that make use of his concepts and models to study today’s world and society. Furthermore, we warmly welcome articles that look beyond the mere application of formal constructs to observe the observers in contemporary science. What can we learn from second-order cybernetics for tackling grand challenges today? How do we find a balance between enforcing the necessary steps to cope with climate changes, over-population, pollution, etc., while at the same time leaving systemic structures intact? How do we use science and engineering to create new opportunities for development and expand abilities to choose instead of limiting them? And how can we add a little bit of humour help us to fight desperation in view of all the problems haunting us?
During submission, please make sure that you pick the right special issue and the right article category.
Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available at: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/kyb
Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/kyb#jlp_author_guidelines
Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to “Please select the issue you are submitting to”.
Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else while under review for this journal.
Opening date for manuscripts submissions: 1 January 2026
Closing date for manuscripts submission: 30 June 2026
Scott, B. (2004). Second‐order cybernetics: an historical introduction. Kybernetes, 33(9/10), 1365-1378.
Umpleby, S. A. (2008). A short history of cybernetics in the United States: The origin of cybernetics. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften, 19(4), 28-40.
Von Foerster, H., Mora, P. M., & Amiot, L. W. (1960). Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, AD 2026: At this date human population will approach infinity if it grows as it has grown in the last two millenia. Science, 132(3436), 1291-1295.
Von Foerster, H. (1984). Principles of self-organization—in a socio-managerial context. In Ulrich, H. & Probst G.J.B. (ed.) Self-organization and management of social systems: Insights, promises, doubts, and questions (pp. 2-24). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Von Foerster, H. (2003). Understanding understanding: essays on cybernetics and cognition. New York: Springer.
Cecchin, G., Barbetta, P., & Toffanetti, D. (2005). Who was von Foerster, anyway? Kybernetes, 34(3/4), 330-342.
Richards, L. D., & Young, R. K. (1996). Propositions on cybernetics and social transformation: Implications of von Foerster’s non‐trivial machine for knowledge processes. Systems Research, 13(3), 363-370.
Von Foerster, H. (1972). Perception of the future and the future of perception. Instructional Science, 1(1), 31-43.
Von Foerster, H. (2018). On constructing a reality. In Preiser, W. (ed.) Environmental design research (pp. 35-46). Routledge.
December 2025
https://www.patternmaking.org/patternsvol4
“You are not going in circles.
You are growing in them.
Spiraling upward, applying
old lessons to the
unfathomable new.”
- Allena Staples, Cow Parade
A year like 2025 can make us feel like we are in a swirl. What felt important no longer feels quite right. We head in one direction, and then abruptly turn to the next. We want to cover our eyes in horror, only to be softened by kindness. We feel like we’ve climbed a hill to stand on, only to realize it is sand, and there are others.
When it feels like the merry-go-round is going too fast, I’ve found the best thing to do is to focus in, to feel the cold metal in my palms, and to remind myself to just hold on. As David Whyte might say, to start close in. It’s good advice for any day, but when the stakes are high there is no choice but to learn. By focusing in, we find what is ours to do.
Trees have no choice but to start from where they are. Unlike us, they cannot even pretend to start afresh. Their growth is always in circles, and on their edges.
Which leads me to wonder, does the bark of trees ache as it expands, like a young child’s legs?
Might our aches be our becoming? In a world where I cannot determine if I am terrified or excited, I’ve come to accept we may never know.
Our pattern making community calls this fall felt like a rare respite from the swirl, providing space to metabolize our rage with our love. Our joy with our despair. We let ourselves swell with paradox and marvel at the sustenance that comes through connection, all while noticing our respective edges.
Perhaps more than ever, the work in this volume was generated with a fierce determination to stay present, and a tender awareness of how impossible this can feel.
In this volume, you will read about becoming at the cost of belonging, the benefits of rage, the dangers of care, the importance of being in our bodies, and how creativity and reflection can be a reliable if not murky way through. We will share lessons of middle age and long-held grief and honor the sacred act of nurturing spores of magic, love, and tradition. We conclude by sharing how discussions of new technology have helpfully led us to grapple with what we hold most dear.
And, through it all, we hope you will receive a subtler message: loving encouragement to reframe the ache of what can feel like circles as something else entirely.
With grace and in community,
Jessica
— along with the intrepid Dee, Kayla, Jen, Gabi, Anne, Efraín, Denise, Paula, Kevin, Skye, Dana, Laura, Annie, Kelci, Josiane, Nadya, Signe, Amanda, Allena, and Sandra.
[Sound because I was searching (in a lazy internet way) to see if anyone had coined ‘autopoeitic drift’ before me]
Preprints and early-stage research may not have been peer reviewed yet.
This article proposes that Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities anticipates the systemic reflexivity that defines modern social and ecological life. Reading Musil through Maturana and Varela’s concept of autopoiesis, Luhmann’s theory of second-order observation, and Watson and Brezovec’s recent work on autopoietic ecology, the essay argues that the novel functions as a living system 1 : a network that reproduces meaning through continuous self-observation. Musil’s portrayal of Kakania reveals a society that endures through procedural vitality rather than belief, exposing the recursive operations that sustain modern institutions. In this context, Laclau’s notion of the empty signifier and Derrida’s différance illuminate how communication survives the exhaustion of meaning, while the rise of populism and mistrust in institutions mark the global extension of Musil’s crisis of reflexivity. Ulrich and Agathe’s “other condition” represents the counter-movement to this drift-an experiment in relational consciousness that models the ecological coupling absent from bureaucratic systems. Their intimacy, interpreted through Haraway’s situated knowledges and Latour’s actor-network theory, exemplifies an ethics of recursive relation rather than transcendence. The essay concludes that Musil’s unfinished modernism articulates an autopoietic ethics: a mode of responsiveness and adaptation suited to a world in which meaning, communication, and life are co-extensive operations. In translating early modernist reflexivity into contemporary ecological terms, Musil offers a paradigm for rethinking ethics and politics under the conditions of global systemic interdependence. I treat autopoiesis as a structural homology rather than a biological literalism: the novel models how meaning reproduces its own enabling distinctions. This clarifies Musil’s contemporary relevance: under audit cultures and platform governance, communication increasingly survives by reproducing procedures after conviction has waned.
[Other uses of the phrase ‘autopoeitic drift’ appear to be around the maintenance of a specific ‘living’ artowrk or set of artworks:]
https://www.getty.edu/publications/living-matter/keynote/
[And this, which speaks of Assemblages and Plato, Tarski and, um, other things too:]
The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework was designed by Ostrom and her colleagues from the Ostrom Workshop in 2005 to facilitate analysis of institution processes through which individual and collective choices occur.
The IAD framework includes analyzing actors, norms, institutional settings, incentive structures, rules, and more. Social scientists have widely adopted the IAD framework to study institutional arrangements and the emerge and changes of institutions over time.
[Lots of explanations, teaching tools, useful materials]
https://ostromworkshop.indiana.edu/courses-teaching/teaching-tools/iad-framework/index.html
I learned about this from Imaginary Worlds podcast Episode 288: Music of a Forbidden Planet from Eric Molinsky
https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/episodes/music-of-a-forbidden-planet
by Jane Brockman
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bebe_and_Louis_Barron
From ChatGPT:
Forbidden Planet (1956) is one of the cleanest, most literal intersections of film music and cybernetics.
The connection in one line
Louis and Bebe Barron built and ‘performed’ cybernetic electronic circuits, inspired directly by Norbert Wiener’s cybernetics, and used the circuits’ feedback-driven behaviours to generate the entire electronic score for Forbidden Planet. Effectrode+1
Who the musicians were, and why they matter
The film’s ‘music’ (credited on-screen as ‘electronic tonalities’) was created by the composer-engineer couple Bebe Barron and Louis Barron. It is widely recognised as the first entirely electronic score for a major feature film. Wikipedia+1
They were not working like later synth composers who play stable instruments. They were building unstable systems and harvesting the sonic traces of those systems behaving, failing, and sometimes ‘dying’.
What ‘cybernetics’ meant in their studio (not metaphorically, but technically)
Cybernetics, in Wiener’s 1948 sense, is about control and communication in animals and machines, especially via feedback. JSTOR+1
The Barrons took that seriously, and operationalised it:
This is a cybernetic method: you set up a system with internal feedback loops, perturb it, observe how it responds, and then select results. It is composition via controlled emergence.
Why this is cybernetics rather than ‘just electronic music’
A lot of electronic music uses electronics as instruments.
The Barrons used electronics as systems with autonomous behaviour.
That distinction matters:
Their process looks like an early form of what we would now call generative or procedural sound design, except fully analogue, and with real physical failure modes.
How it shaped film music history (and why the credit matters)
The Musicians’ Union pushed MGM to avoid calling it ‘music’, so the Barrons were credited with ‘electronic tonalities’. This labour/definition conflict had real consequences: it helped block them from further Hollywood scoring work. Wikipedia+1
This is an important cybernetics-adjacent point: institutions defend existing categories to preserve stability. The Barrons produced a disturbance in the system (a new form of scoring), and the system compensated by relabelling it and excluding them.
The deeper connection: cybernetics inside the film’s story-world
Forbidden Planet is already a cybernetics-saturated film: control rooms, automation, feedback, and the ‘monster from the Id’ as an emergent product of a man-machine system.
The score is not just accompaniment. It is structurally aligned with the film’s themes because it is produced by the same conceptual machinery: humans interacting with autonomous systems that respond in ways you cannot fully predict. A scholarly analysis of the score explicitly reads its sound world through organism-machine hybrids and ecology, which is very much in the cybernetics lineage. JSTOR
A useful way to think about it (very Wiener, very Barron)
If you want the cybernetic punchline:
The Barrons composed by designing a feedback system, letting it behave, and then selecting the behaviours that best regulated the audience’s emotional state in the film.
That is control and communication, via sound, using actual cybernetic artefacts.
Bai Li1*Steven Allender2Boyd Swinburn3Mohammed Alharbi1
Charlie Foster1
Share by Michele Battle-Fisher, PhD on LinkedIn:
A systems approach to obesity prevention is increasingly urged (1, 2). However, confusion exists on what a systems approach entails in practice, and the empirical evidence on this new approach is unclear. Several reviews (3–6) have tried to synthesize available evidence on a systems approach targeting obesity and other public health areas, but found that authentic, comprehensive application of this approach is scarce. We believe this is largely due to the uncertainty around the exact meaning of “a systems approach,” and sub-optimal reporting.
Fully and transparently reported evidence can improve our understanding of how a systems approach is applied practically in different cultures and settings, support methodological development, and improve synthesis of emerging evidence on the effectiveness of this new approach.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.892931/full
They say:
Anyone who’s tried to unravel and address problems in the agri-food system will know how complex it is: Agri-food researchers, stakeholders and professionals working towards net zero also have to account for other economic, health, social and environmental issues, which are often multiple, interlinked and overlapping. If this sounds familiar, so will the below characteristics of highly complex problems (sometimes called ‘wicked problems’ by policy makers): · Interlinked issues, where trying to address one in isolation worsens the others. · Multiple perspectives and conflict on which issues matter most, and therefore what action should be taken. · Power relations making change difficult, and · Pervasive uncertainty While traditional scientific, policy and management approaches can make useful contributions, we need something in addition if we want to address more of the complexity and conflict associated with these kinds of complex problems. Systems thinking can help. In this talk, Prof Gerald Midgley will introduce a framework of systems thinking skills, plus a variety of systems ideas and methods, that can help people put these skills into practice. He will illustrate the use of the methods with examples from food system, natural resource management, social policy and community development projects undertaken over the last thirty years in the UK, New Zealand and Nigeria. Some of these projects involved working with agri-food companies and their stakeholders, while others focused on intransigent social issues. Through these examples, Gerald will show how we can begin to get a better handle on highly complex problems. About Gerald: Prof Gerald Midgley is a foremost authority on the theory and practice of systems thinking and systemic leadership, and has been researching it for 40 years. His work is transdisciplinary and he has worked across public health, health and social service design, natural resource management, community development, public sector management and technology foresight. He is currently researching how to integrate neuroscience and cognitive psychology into systemic leadership and systems thinking, to address some of the most challenging local-to-global issues of our time. He is an emeritus professor at the University of Hull, and a visiting professor at the Birmingham Leadership Institute at the University of Birmingham. To download Gerald’s presentation slides, go here https://www.agrifood4netzero.net/uplo…. These should obviously be credited appropriately to him if used in any way. About the webinar series: The webinar is chaired by Jez Fredenburgh, Knowledge Exchange Fellow for the AFN Network+, and agri-food journalist. Jez is based at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia. This webinar is part of a series run by AFN Network+ which explores net zero in the UK agri-food system with leading movers and shakers. Expect deep and varied insight from across the sector, including farmers, scientists, policy analysts, community leaders, retailers, politicians, businesses and health professionals. The series is put together by Jez and Prof Neil Ward, also based at the University of East Anglia, and a co-lead of AFN Network+. Watch past webinars here – / @afn-network-plus Follow AFN Network+ on Twitter/X https://x.com/AFNnetwork and LinkedIn / agrifood4netzero Join our growing network of 1,600+ people across UK agri-food working on food system transformation, from academics to farmers, food companies, NGOs, policy makers and citizens https://www.agrifood4netzero.net/join The AFN Network+ is funded by UKRI https://www.ukri.org/
Every now and again I look at the stats for this site. It’s a useful little reality check for what people actually look for when they land here.’ (The stats I think only pick up web visitors; my suspicion is that a bunch of people look just at the emails).
If you’re new: this site is a public commonplace book, or what used to be called a ‘weblog’ – ostensibly an attempt to share all the systems | complexity |cybernetics links I come across, partly an Electric Monk, resource-based, a compost heap towards a curriculum.
The top clicks tell a clear story. People keep coming for foundations, for sources, and for practical bridges between ‘systems’ as an idea and systems as work.
McLuhan consistently sits at the top. That always makes me smile, because his point is basically what this site is for. Tools are extensions, and therefore amputations. If you extend your memory into a notebook, you also stop rehearsing. If you extend your judgement into a dashboard, you also numb your situational sense. Pretending otherwise is how we end up surprised by our own inventions.
Then comes the pragmatic end of the field, if we squint: poka-yoke, homeostasis, STAMP, promise-based management. The appeal here is not ‘be cleverer’, it’s ‘design so normal humans can succeed without heroics’. A cybernetic idea: shift the work from willpower to feedback.
Reading lists feature heavily too, which is both flattering and slightly alarming. A reading list is an honest artefact: it admits you don’t have the map. It also changes you as you build it. You notice what you keep omitting. You start to see the field as much as being a set of disagreements as a set of answers. Which is why debates like ‘systems thinking and complexity’ keep drawing attention. We want a tidy resolution, rarely get one, but sometimes get better questions.
And people really do care about attribution. The Kurt Lewin quote post keeps getting read. Good. There is far too much ‘systems’ talk built on lines no-one can trace. A misattributed quote can still be helpful, but it’s a different kind of helpful – dodgy authority rather than lineage.
A few other regular visitors show up in the stats: Bateson, Menzies Lyth, Joanna Macy. That’s the moral and emotional dimension of systems work. Organisations are not just information processing. They are also anxiety processing. If you don’t deal with that, you get defences that pretend to be structure.
And there’s a pleasing concentration of systems practice in the mix – SysPrac25, the upcoming Hull conference, and the OR Society: events, newsletters, debates. Systems | complexity | cybernetics stays alive when people meet, argue, teach, and keep the conversation going in actual places, not just on platforms. And this is in a year where I have substantially failed the core task and lost track of brilliant events from ISSS, CybSoc, ASC, Metaphorum, even SCiO. But I think that the field also stays alive when someone bothers to ask ‘who are our fellow travellers?’.
Anyway, for what it’s worth, here’s the current ‘most read’ list. If it looks like a slightly eccentric syllabus, well, there y’go!
Media, attention, and extensions
Cybernetics, quality, and the craft of organising
How we know, what we can cite, and what we should read next
People, communities, and places where the field stays alive
See also
Not available except behind paywall from main link, but fully readable if not downloadable on Scribd:
The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science Volume 26, Issue 2
https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886390262014
William M. Fox interviews Eric Trist, eminent scholar and social scientist, who was a founder and chairman of the Tavistock Institute in London. Trist recounts the foundation of the institute as an outpatient clinic and its evolution into a leading center of action research and applied behavioral science. He discusses his work in the British coal mining industry, from which he developed the concept of the sociotechnical system. Descriptions of his work and experiences with the British Army during World War II and of the various projects he undertook with multinational firms and smaller companies illustrate the resistance, suspicion, and other obstacles that he and his colleagues often encountered while working to implement new systems. Finally, Trist describes his sociotechnical systems work in the ailing industrial town of Jamestown, New York, and on the Ten recommendations.
Systems Community of Inquiry 
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