Join us as we commemorate and celebrate the extraordinary life of George Spencer-Brown (1923-2016) on the 100th anniversary of his birth!
By GSB SocietyFollow
When and where
Sunday, April 2 · 6 – 8pm BST
Please join us on Sunday, April 2nd 2023 for a live commemoration and celebration of George Spencer-Brown. We will be joined by friends who knew Spencer-Brown and who will share brief recollections of his life. We will also be announcing the formation of our society, news about our recent and forthcoming publications, and information about our upcoming conferences.
This event will be open to audiences interested in the life and the work of George Spencer-Brown, and will be made available to a wider public after the event via YouTube.
Spencer-Brown’s 1969 book Laws of Form was a work of pure mathematics that many recognized as being of tremendous spiritual and scientific importance, giving the text a significant metaphysical aura and its author a legendary status that is quite rare today. The biography of Spencer-Brown lives up to the mythology, and we will hear all about that at this event.
Start: 6.00 pm BST (5.00 pm UTC / 1.00 pm EST / 10.00 am PDT)
In this episode Justin Pearl and Matt Baker speak again to Randy Dible about George Spencer Brown’s hugely influential but not widely-known mathematical grimoire Laws of Form, originally published in 1969.
Randy is a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at St. Joseph’s University in New York, and a doctoral student in the Department of Philosophy, at The New School for Social Research. His work is in ontological phenomenology, history of philosophical ideas, and Ancient Greek philosophy.
[I feel I’ve read – and shared – this before, but it’s only just been posted…]
Pond brains and GPT-4
Gordon Brander
Stafford Beer and Gordon Pask were building a pond that thinks. Their biological computing project set out to build ecosystems with inputs and outputs, that could function as computers…
The four concepts are: (i) interrelationships; (ii) perspectives; (iii) boundaries; and (iv) dynamics.
At 16m36s into the recording, the debate turned to Jackson for a response.
[16m36] Thanks, Barb. I’m concerned with the way in which we use systems thinking in evaluation. I’ll try and pick out some issues that I see with the Systems Concepts approach, which means the use of interrelationships, perspectives, boundaries, and dynamics in evaluation practice.
[17m00s] And to make the case for what I think is the clearer guidance that Critical Systems Practice can give.
[17m09s] A problem with the concepts is that they…
Join IFF’s Competence in Complexity programme to develop your 21st century competencies and to demonstrate them in effective, responsible, transformative action.
Apparently complex problems can have very simple solutions
“The following text explains at great length what it is Systemic Consulting and Organisational Constellations methodology: how they function, for what they are used, its practical application and other information.”
Also a selection of resources at http://cecilioregojo.com/talent_manager_1_000012.htm
The tongue plays a fundamental role in several body functions such as swallowing, breathing, speaking, and chewing. Its action is not confined to the oral cavity, but it affects lower limb muscle strength and posture. The tongue is an organ that has an autocrine/paracrine mechanism of action to synthesize different substances to interact with the whole body; according to a line of thought, it is also an extension of the enteric system. The aim of this study was to review the functions of the tongue and its anatomical association with the body system. According to the authors’ knowledge, this is the first scientific article focusing on the tongue in a systemic context. In a clinical evaluation, connections with the tongue should be considered to optimize the clinical examination of the tongue and therefore enhance rehabilitation programs and therapeutic results.
Unwelcome news via Mark Johnson passed to the CYBCOM mailing list:
I am deeply sorry to write to inform you that Prof. Loet Leydesdorff died on Saturday morning. I’m sure many within the cybernetics community will share a deep sense of loss. .
Others will have better-informed tributes than I – and they are very welcome to post them here, and if I find them, I will share. But his work on knowledge-based economies, innovation, and growth (triple- and n-helix models) was globally recognised, and his work on Luhrmann, constructivism, redundancy and information theory, and application of the latter to music was truly interesting. A true multi-skilled, insight-generating cybernetician.
Here’s a brief introduction – by him – to his 2020 book
Other canonical links (starting with his website):
https://www.leydesdorff.net/
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loet_Leydesdorff
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Loet-Leydesdorff/research
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loet_Leydesdorff
https://cepa.info/author/leydesdorff-l
There are also interesting posts and already one tribute post on his facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/loet.leydesdorff/
https://stream.syscoi.com/2021/01/31/towards-a-calculus-of-redundancy-leyersdorff-2021/
https://stream.syscoi.com/2021/04/27/the-evolutionary-dynamics-of-discursive-knowledge-leyersdorff-2021-open-access-book/
and (very interesting, and just shared because I found a legal download link):
https://stream.syscoi.com/2023/03/13/beers-viable-system-model-and-luhmanns-communication-theory-organizations-from-the-perspective-of-metagames-johnson-and-leydesdorff-2013/
Beer’s Viable System Model and Luhmann’s Communication Theory: ‘Organizations’ from the Perspective of MetagamesSystems Research and Behavioral Science (2013)23 Pages Posted: 16 Jun 2013 Last revised: 2 Aug 2013Mark JohnsonUniversity of BoltonLoet Leydesdorff
March 13 (the second Monday of the month) is the 108th meeting for Systems Thinking Ontario. The registration is on Eventbrite at https://ecological-limits.eventbrite.ca .
Ecological Limits to Development: Living with the Sustainable Development Goals
This session celebrates the open access release of The Ecological Limits to Development!
Katie Kish and Stephen Quilley critique and reimagine the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The existing SDGs are challenged through perspectives of ecological economics and complexity thinking. New goals that align more thoroughly to biophysical limits to growth are suggested.
Ways in which this set of new SDGs could be made usable for Canadian municipalities are also considered.
From the book description …
Drawing on ideas from H.T. Odum, Herman Daly, Zigmunt Bauman, and many others, this book provides guiding research for a convergence between North and South that is bottom-up, household-centred, and predicated on a re-emerging domain of Livelihood.
Systems Changes Learning: Recasting and reifying rhythmic shifts for doing, alongside thinking and making | first Systems Changes article by David Ing in peer reviewed journal JSCI
Join IFF’s Competence in Complexity programme to develop your 21st century competencies and to demonstrate them in effective, responsible, transformative action.
Systems Community of Inquiry 
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