[Confusing to me I haven’t covered this before!]
Prompted by a conversation, and link from
https://x.com/impactology/status/1814724109617799391
Deeply connected to childhood development and child and family support services.
https://www.structural-learning.com/post/bronfenbrenners-ecological-model
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_ecological_model
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-38762-3_4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_systems_theory
On LinkedIn, David Ing writes:
On Thursday, June 12, 6:30pm, we’ll host the 132th monthly meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario, in person.
The topic is “A Taxonomy of Systems Changes”, a manuscript submitted to hashtag#RSD14, organized by Systemic Design Association. This manuscript not yet been accepted! Discussant for the session is Roberto Pires . Moderator is Zaid Khan .
See more at https://lnkd.in/g5xMK-xT
Come for the session. Join us for after-meeting discussions over dinner.
More details in link
[I think this is kind of a big deal – an inspiring, practical, grounded story of one person’s journey to something like metarationality from the (world-wide) frustrations of the conflict between the rigidity of code and the messiness and changingness of the world, and an artisan felt understanding of the pragmatism of software architecture. Via philosophy, tested in an evidence-based way]
May 18, 2025 • Beyond Dichotomy | Andrea Hiott • Episode 59
Videos of Barry’s conference talks:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_sysprac25-systemsthinkingpractice-scio-activity-7333980490942570497-O5kW
Three powerhouse keynote speakers. One systems thinking event you can’t miss. #SysPrac25 🔥
We’ve just announced the keynote lineup for this year’s Systems Practice Conference – and it’s serious:
➡️[🔗](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAAFDFAoBxDF1qCGdwaFTzSlFaum3Vybd7_w)[Ray Ison](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ray-ison-0621117/), Emeritus Professor of Systems at the Open University and President of the [International Federation for Systems Research (IFSR)](https://www.linkedin.com/company/international-federation-for-systems-research/)
➡️[🔗](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAAW-1CQB7cBPQUMDtOXScjGX2AF69EO_0h4)[Alison Guthrie-Wrenn MSc FRSA, Chartered FCIPD](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisonguthrie-wrenn/), HR Deputy Director (Organisational Capability) at the UK Government’s Department of Business and Trade
➡️[🔗](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAAAaX_4BafvVZoRutRok1cnY94QE-apDRTE)[Patrick Hoverstadt](https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-hoverstadt-3666b4/), Chair of [SCiO – Systems and Complexity in Organisation](https://www.linkedin.com/company/scio—systems-and-cybernetics-in-organisation/) and Director of Fractal Consulting Ltd
Together they bring decades of deep systems thinking expertise across academia, policy, and real-world #systemsthinkingpractice
This year’s event promises to be our most impactful yet. The full programme is shaping up fast! You can expect:
💡Inspiring talks
💡Hands-on workshops on the approaches that matter to you
💡Interactive jam sessions
💡Fireside chats
You can vote for the workshops that you’d like included here:
https://lnkd.in/edmbV3Xv
🔜 Book your place | Propose a session (a few slots still available!) | Explore more here: http://www.sysprac25.org/
Conference from #SCiO #OU #ifsr
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_sysprac25-systemsthinkingpractice-scio-activity-7333980490942570497-O5kW
[Several from me]
Here you can find out about how to progress your learning and practice of systems thinking. If you are ready to begin your journey of learning and practice, please continue on this page. However, if you are new to systems please visit the ‘Why Systems?’ page first, where we outline benefits and key features of core systems thinking approaches.
First published: Summer ‐ Autumn (Fall) 1994
https://doi.org/10.1002/sdr.4260100214
Change is accelerating, and as the complexity of the systems in which we live grows, so do the unanticipated side effects of human actions, further increasing complexity. Many scholars call for the development of systems thinking to improve our ability to manage wisely. But how do people learn in and about complex dynamic systems? Learning is a feedback process in which our decisions alter the real world, we receive information feedback about the world and revise the decisions we make and the mental models that motivate those decisions. Unfortunately, in the world of social action various impediments slow or prevent these learning feedbacks from functioning, allowing erroneous and harmful behaviors and beliefs to persist. The barriers to learning include the dynamic complexity of the systems themselves; inadequate and ambiguous outcome feedback; systematic mispercep-tions of feedback; inability to simulate mentally the dynamics of our cognitive maps; poor interpersonal and organizational inquiry skills; and poor scientific reasoning skills. To be successful, methods to enhance learning about complex systems must address all these impediments. Effective methods for learning in and about complex dynamic systems must include (1) tools to elicit participant knowledge, articulate and reframe perceptions, and create maps of the feedback structure of a problem from those perceptions; (2) simulation tools and management flight simulators to assess the dynamics of those maps and test new policies; and (3) methods to improve scientific reasoning skills, strengthen group process, and overcome defensive routines for individuals and teams.
Learning in and about complex systems – Sterman – 1994 – System Dynamics Review – Wiley Online Library
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/sdr.4260100214?utm_source=chatgpt.com
pdf link:
TLDR
This book is about language and the author shall use language, notwithstanding that this use of language to speak about language is within the core of the problem I wish to consider.
Abstract
[PDF] Biology of Language: The Epistemology of Reality | Semantic Scholar
2. What processes take place in a linguistic interaction that permit an organism (us) to describe and to predict events that it may experience? This is my way of honoring the memory of Eric H. Lenneberg, if one honors the memory of another scientist by speaking about one’s own work Whatever the case, I wish to honor his memory not only because of his great accomplishments, but also because he was capable of inspiring his students, as the symposium on which this book is based revealed. The only way I can do this is to accept the honor of presenting my views about biology, language, and reality. I shall, accordingly, speak about language as a biologist. In doing so, I shall use language, notwithstanding that this use of language to speak about language is within the core of the problem I wish to consider.
[A very interesting contribution from John – which leads (to my mind) further to the need for untangling of the ‘mental models’ conversations. See comments on this blog for cross-links]
John Evans – Liberating & Democratizing Systems Thinking from the clutches of the Standardizers, Specializers Professionalizers. Very Critical of Systems Heuristics (what an anti-systemic concept). 40yrs Systems Analysis & DesignLiberating & Democratizing Systems Thinking from the clutches of the Standardizers, Specializers Professionalizers. Very Critical of Systems Heuristics (what an anti-systemic concept). 40yrs Systems Analysis & Design
“I think I may have found the origin of the widely quoted ‘mental models don’t exist’ trope.”
Post | Feed | LinkedIn
[The excellent ‘this wek in Systemic Design newsletter’ regularly draws items from The Systems Community of Inquiry (here), so there’s a bit of (cybernetic) circulatiry in citing all their newsletters – however they always have interesting and relevant stuff, many items of which I don’t catch here – and some with a stronger design bent than I would feature. Case in point, interesting item below on ‘case reporting in systems and systemic design’. Anyway, I recommend you subscribe]
ARC25: Inquiry into case reporting in systems and systemic design
The case for cases
BY RYAN MURPHY | MAY 2025 | RSD14, RSD14 PROGRAMME, SDA BLOG
In the lead-up to RSD14, there was a collective sense that now is time to formally recognise and track—where “track” means both “follow and capture” and “include” as in creating a discourse—case reports. Do you agree? RSD14–RSDX is planning an exploratory inquiry into case reporting, held online on October 21. Join the ARC25 conversations.
[Leads on to quite a few other interesting life stories – h/t the Brain Inspired Complexity Group – https://stream.syscoi.com/2025/05/25/want-to-join-the-complexity-group-email-list-from-the-brain-inspired-podcast-by-paul-middlebrooks-reading-through-the-essays-in-david-krakauers-collection-of-classic-complexity-papers/]
Web of Stories – Life Stories of Remarkable People
31 Oct 2016
To hear more of Marvin Minsky’s stories, go to the playlist: • Marvin Minsky – The amazing videophon… The scientist, Marvin Minsky (1927-2016) was one of the pioneers of the field of Artificial Intelligence, having founded the MIT AI Lab in 1970. Since the 1950s, his work involved trying to uncover human thinking processes and replicate them in machines. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2011] TRANSCRIPT: That strange period around the beginning of the artificial intelligence laboratory when I spent a lot of time… sometimes I went on trips with this wonderful man and Warren McCulloch had – at that time – he was already… he was one of the great pioneers of cybernetics. So, in fact before Norbert Wiener did… wrote his famous book called Cybernetics, which I think came out in 1949, McCulloch had been working on neural networks – maybe the first – and he had a little group of… he had a 14 year old prodigy named Walter Pitts in Chicago and they worked out this paper that was published in 1943, so, that’s many years before Norbert Wiener came on the scene. And he had been a psychiatrist, a physician… neurologist really, and started the neuroscience laboratory at MIT and was a very dramatic world class actor figure. And I went on trips with him and… and it gave me a new view of the world because… when McCulloch… I remember one day he said: ‘I’m going to explain something to the psychologists.’ And he had a sort of grand view of… of this… the importance of cybernetics, which was correct. Otherwise, you would have said he was delusional. And so, I went with him and it was a little meeting with about six or seven people. But he was on the stage and I realized that he was talking to the whole world. Normally, people are talking to their audience, but he would have very elaborate constructions and beautiful ways of saying things. But I had never met anyone for whom all the world was a stage; I think some… as someone put it. And from that, I got some sense that you shouldn’t waste people’s time with things that aren’t very important. Of course, nobody… nobody could live out such a commandment but, I must have spent most of a year just hanging around him and trying to understand how he could… see such importance in ordinary things. So in a way, it’s like Feynman, who would look at a little wave on the water and understand how the universe works. And McCulloch was very much like that for psychological things. He hated Freud because – in retrospect I think – because Freud was the best psychologist before him. And, you know Freud actually invented various forms of artificial intelligence and unlike the behaviorists, Freud thought of the mind as really a rather complicated thing not… not just a little feedback loop or something and… and imagined that it had many different structures which weren’t all compatible with one another and… so he… in retrospect, he had the first society of mind because it wasn’t just the conscious and unconscious, but he also had these sensors and whatever. Anyway, that was a… about a year when I got attached to this McCulloch and somewhere I wrote, maybe 100 years from now he will be seen as the greatest 20th century philosopher along with Russell and a few people like that.
Marvin Minsky – Warren McCulloch: For whom the world was a stage (100/151)
Marvin Minsky – Warren McCulloch: For whom the world was a stage (100/151) – YouTube
Want to join the complexity group email list?
Complexity Group Email List | Brain Inspired
The complexity group meets periodically to discuss papers in the collection:
Foundational Papers in Complexity Science.
Meetings are open to anyone. They are recorded and shared with patreon supporters.
Systems Community of Inquiry 
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