An example of the use of ‘systems thinking’ – and actually, I think, real systems thinking – in the wild.

Experts: Congress must treat poor nutrition, climate change, and biodiversity loss as interconnected | Successful Farming

EXPERTS: CONGRESS MUST TREAT POOR NUTRITION, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS AS INTERCONNECTED

By Chuck Abbott1/27/2022

Addressing the interlinked crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and diet-related disease will require coordinated action, systems thinking, and much more public funding, a panel of scientists, farmers, and advocates told Congress on Wednesday.

EXPERTS: CONGRESS MUST TREAT POOR NUTRITION, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS AS INTERCONNECTED

Experts: Congress must treat poor nutrition, climate change, and biodiversity loss as interconnected | Successful Farming

Social Enterprise, Complexity and Systems Change 1 day free conference program released and registrations now open – Tuesday 15th March 2022 ONLINE https://mailchi.mp/0e20c8d86438/systemchangeevents2022-20149836…

Wicked Lab on Twitter: “Social Enterprise, Complexity and Systems Change 1 day free conference program released and registrations now open – Tuesday 15th March 2022 ONLINE https://t.co/UMf8qMsokO https://t.co/8rxNn3qTL1” / Twitter

https://mailchi.mp/0e20c8d86438/systemchangeevents2022-20149836

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hdclk08wytzp7hk/Program%20-Social%20Enterprise%20Complexity%20and%20Systems%20Change%20Day%20v3.pdf?dl=0

just started a collection of First Nations people sharing their ‘thinking in systems’ and thought others might be interested. https://bit.ly/34A9vRG happy to add other examples if you have to share!

(1) seanna davidson on Twitter: “just started a collection of First Nations people sharing their ‘thinking in systems’ and thought others might be interested. https://t.co/qHd7mgY10m happy to add other examples if you have to share!” / Twitter

Our systems approach, the power behind our sustainable solutions Chiara Rusconi 27/01/2021

Our systems approach, the power behind our sustainable solutions

Six Variations of the VSM

Six Variations of the VSM – Intelligente-Organisationen

The Dialogical, The Ecological and Beyond Authors Jon Goodbun Royal College of Art Ben Sweeting University of Brighton

The Dialogical, The Ecological and Beyond | FOOTPRINT

FEB 22 Systems diagramming: art or craft? by The Open University, Faculty of STEM

Systems diagramming: art or craft? Tickets, Tue 22 Feb 2022 at 12:00 | Eventbrite

Expanding Science and Advancing Reflexive Government: Two Current Projects in Cybernetics

[PDF] Expanding Science and Advancing Reflexive Government: Two Current Projects in Cybernetics | Semantic Scholar

Expanding Science and Advancing Reflexive Government: Two Current Projects in Cybernetics

• S. Umpleby
• Published 2018
• Political Science

Systems Science, cybernetics and complexity are closely related fields. To illustrate, this article describes two projects in contemporary cybernetics that may be of interest to those concerned with complexity and policy studies. The first project is an effort to expand the conception of science so that it more successfully encompasses the social sciences. The intent is to aid communication among disciplines and improve our ability to manage social systems. The second project is an effort to develop reflexivity theory into a general theory of purposeful, self-directed systems, thus improving our understanding and management of social systems. The article ends with some comparisons of complexity and cybernetics. 

An edition of The basic outline of universology (1872) The basic outline of universology. An introduction to the newly discovered science of the universe; its elementary principles; and the first stages of their development in the special sciences. Together with preliminary notices of alwato (ahl-wah-to), the newly discovered scientific universal language, resulting from the principles of universology. by Stephen Pearl Andrews

The basic outline of universology. (1872 edition) | Open Library

(link above includes a downloadable pdf)

In The Ecology of Systems Thinking Group on facebook, Matthew Shapiro posted this book https://www.facebook.com/groups/ecologyofsystemsthinking/posts/4816990621713377/

And said:

The evolutionary awakening in the mid-1800’s gave rise to a lot of interesting thoughts. Could this one be a first example of a call for “systems science” in the modern era?

I could upload this boook and his 1871 book to this site if anyone wants to spend a few weeks exploring it. (Interesting side note: he was one of the first to use the neologism “scientology”). Below is an intro.

If nothing else, I love his word “betweenity”.

In response, Örsan Şenalp said: this is an original approach to unified science (perhaps a first attempt) from the subject matter point of view. It is an integrative proposal that sounds very similar to systems line of thinking.

Welcome to our lab,

The ICREA-Complex Systems Lab, lead by Ricard Solé, is part of the Biology Department of Universitat Pompeu Fabra/PRBB and member of the Institut de Biologia Evolutiva. We are an interdisciplinary team exploring the evolution of complex systems, both natural and artificial, searching for their common laws of organization. We do both theoretical and experimental work, closely working in collaboration with the Santa Fe Institute. We study the origins and evolution of complex systems and the boundaries of such complexity (and how to break them) using methods from statistical physics, synthetic/systems biology and network theory.

http://complex.upf.edu/

Bateson, Double Description, Todes, and Embodiment: Preparing Activities and Their Relation to Abduction JOHN SHOTTER First published: 29 May 2009 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5914.2009.00399.xCitations: 21 John Shotter

Bateson, Double Description, Todes, and Embodiment: Preparing Activities and Their Relation to Abduction – SHOTTER – 2009 – Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour – Wiley Online Library

and at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.sci-hub.se/doi/10.1111/j.1468-5914.2009.00399.x

In a reply on LinkedIn, Patrick Hoverstadt says:

the new ISO standard on governance is heavily influenced by VSM and the UK government’s initiative on managing complex projects – ‘Project X’ has VSM at the core of its governance model: https://www.apm.org.uk/media/42426/developing-the-practice-of-governance-report_final.pdf You don’t really get more mainstream acceptance than an ISO standard.

Post | Feed | LinkedIn

ISO 37000:2021
GOVERNANCE OF ORGANIZATIONS

https://www.iso.org/news/ref2717.html

APM Developing the practice of governance final report December 2019 https://www.apm.org.uk/media/42426/developing-the-practice-of-governance-report_final.pdf

Project X https://www.bettergovprojects.com/

Reductionist metaphysics resembles the medieval ‘Great Chain of Being’, stepping from leptons and quarks (or perhaps superstrings?) through atoms, molecules, cells, organisms, populations and finally ecologies/economies.

(1) Yohan John on Twitter: “Reductionist metaphysics resembles the medieval ‘Great Chain of Being’, stepping from leptons and quarks (or perhaps superstrings?) through atoms, molecules, cells, organisms, populations and finally ecologies/economies. (…) https://t.co/iBPD9I8qWR” / Twitter

https://doexplain.buzzsprout.com/1260167/9954747-36-the-chapman-series-pt-1-cognitivism-representationalism-and-rationalism

This is part 1 of a series where Christofer investigates the ideas of David Chapman with his friend Jake Orthwein. The material covered is mainly from Chapman’s two books: ‘Meaningness’ (meaningness.com) and ‘In the Cells of the Eggplant’ (metarationality.com).

In the first episode they focus on problematic cognitivist assumptions that undergird much of Deutsch’s critical rationalism. They talk about Heidegger’s idea of coping with the world, the relationship between cognition, perception and action, how representations get their meaning, and how Wittgenstein got some shit right.

Jake Orthwein is a writer and filmmaker based in Santa Monica, CA. He studied film and cognitive science at the University of Southern California and currently works as Director of Media for the Psychology of Technology Institute, an academic non-profit focused on improving research on the human-technology relationship. He is also a long term meditator.