source

Three complexity principles for convergence research – Integration and Implementation Insights

Three complexity principles for convergence research

February 4, 2021

By Gemma Jiang

How can principles adapted from complexity thinking be applied to convergence research? How can such principles help integrate knowledge, methods, and expertise from different disciplines to form novel frameworks that catalyze scientific discovery and innovation?

I present three principles from the complexity paradigm that are highly relevant to convergence research. I then describe three types of transformative containers that I have developed to create enabling conditions for applying complexity principles to convergence.

continues in source:

Three complexity principles for convergence research – Integration and Implementation Insights

what do we think of this? Source:

Adrian Bejan – Constructal Law | Duke Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

Adrian Bejan – Constructal Law

The constructal law was stated by Duke’s Adrian Bejan in 1996

The constructal law is the law of physics that accounts for the phenomenon of evolution (configuration, form, design) throughout nature, inanimate flow systems and animate systems together.

The constructal law was stated by Adrian Bejan, the J.A. Jones Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Duke University, in 1996 as follows ^1,2:

“For a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it.”

THE CONSTRUCTAL LAW—ADRIAN BEJAN

The constructal law places the concepts of life, evolution, design and performance in physics, which is in the broadest scientific arena. The constructal law is the law of physics of life and evolution^3-5.

The constructal law accounts for the arrow of time⁶, which is the direction of the evolution of flow organization over time. It is receiving wide acceptance in the scientific literature.

continues in source:

Adrian Bejan – Constructal Law | Duke Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

source:

Learning With Humility: Systems Thinking and Reordering Priorities (Global Change Days, 2020/10/22) – Coevolving Innovations

Learning With Humility: Systems Thinking and Reordering Priorities (Global Change Days, 2020/10/22)

 February 2, 2021  daviding 0 Comments

For the third of three workshops by the Systems Changes Learning Circle in October 2020, Kelly Okamura, Dan Eng and Joanne Dong led a Beacon Event for Global Change Days.

This session was one in a series for global changemakers.  Our expectation was that they would be hands-on practitioners, with relatively low familiarity with systems thinking methods and theory.

The workshop orientations were relatively short, with most of the time dedicated to two breakout periods.   In the web video, the plenary discussions and group readouts are included, with the parallel breakout conversations omitted.

The video file is accessible on the Internet Archive, should viewers want a downloadable version.

The digital audio is available as MP3 for those with mobile players.

Here is the original description for the session.

— begin paste —

This interactive beacon session will engage change makers to think differently, to explore their relationship to learning.

The breakout sessions will provide participants an opportunity to explore the Systems Thinking questions: the urgent vs the important, the local vs. the distant, problem solving vs history-making. Finally the audience will be invited to review their self-reflections and the potential re-ordering of their priorities, to make a difference.

— end paste —

Workshop attendees were quite engaged with the challenge of making distinctions that we’ve been discussing within the Systems Changes Learning Circle.  Mentions of the systems thinking foundations were kept light.  Towards the close of the session, we pointed to the foundational work ahead, and invited the practitioners to contact us if they felt complementary interests.

Slides are available at systemschanges.com .

source:

Learning With Humility: Systems Thinking and Reordering Priorities (Global Change Days, 2020/10/22) – Coevolving Innovations

How To Choose Systems Methods | Barry A Clemson – Academia.edu

How To Choose Systems Methods

Barry A Clemson

This paper builds on David Alman’s (2012) Systems Thinking World LinkedIn discussion “How do I figure out which System thinking method or model is appropriate to the situation I’m trying to figure out how to deal with?” In this paper I restrict myself to social systems, e.g. organizations, tribes, grassroots movements and regions such as communities or nations. The problem is reformulated to reflect some fundamental constraints.

I then discuss five commonly used approaches to selecting methods:

1. Intuitive,

2. Action Research,

3. Heuristics,

4. Developing Viability, and

5. Rational Decision Framework.

source:

How To Choose Systems Methods | Barry A Clemson – Academia.edu

source:

A Great Event Foreshadowed: The Planetization of Mankind – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

A GREAT EVENT FORESHADOWED: THE PLANETIZATION OF MANKINDPierre Teilhard de ChardinDecember 25, 1945
   Click here to see all 15 quotes from this document.
Written in Peking in December 1945. Published in the August-September 1946 edition of Cahiers du Monde Nouveau with the title La planétisation humaine. PREVIOUS IN SERIES

ARGUMENT

Underlying all the surface-changes of present-day history, the reality and paramount importance of a single basic event is becoming daily more manifest: namely, the rise of the masses, with its natural corollary, the socialization of Mankind. The supreme interest and significance of this process lies in the fact that, scientifically analyzed, it may be seen to be irresistible in two ways: in the planetary sense, because it is associated with the closed shape of the earth, the mechanics of generation and the psychic properties of human matter; and in the cosmic sense because it is the expression and prolongation of the primordial process whereby, at the uttermost extreme from the disintegrating atom, psychic force is born into the Universe and continuously grows, fostered by the ever more complicated grouping of matter. Projected forwards, this law of recurrence makes it possible for us to envisage a future state of the Earth in which human consciousness, reaching the climax of its evolution, will have attained a maximum of complexity, and, as a result, of concentration by total ‘reflection’ (or planetization) of itself upon itself.

Although our individualistic instincts may rebel against this drive towards the collective, they do so in vain and wrongly. In vain, because no power in the world can enable us to escape from what is in itself the power of the world. And wrongly because the real nature of this impulse that is sweeping us towards a state of super-organization is such as to make us more completely personalized and human.

The very fact of our becoming aware of this profound ordering of things will enable human collectivization to pass beyond the enforced phase, where it now is, into the free phase: that in which (men having at last understood that they are inseparably joined elements of a converging Whole, and having learnt in consequence to love the preordained forces that unite them) a natural union of affinity and sympathy will supersede the forces of compulsion.

continues in source:

A Great Event Foreshadowed: The Planetization of Mankind – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

c/o Ivo Velitchkov

full chapter in source:

Towards a Calculus of Redundancy | SpringerLink

The Evolutionary Dynamics of Discursive Knowledge pp 67-86| Cite as

Towards a Calculus of Redundancy

• Loet Leydesdorff

First Online: 01 January 2021

• Part of the Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of Scientific and Scholarly Communication book series (QQASSC)

Abstract

In this chapter, I extend Shannon’s linear model of communication into a model in which communication is differentiated both vertically and horizontally (Simon, 1973). Following Weaver (1949), three layers are distinguished operating in relation to one another: (i) at level A, the events are sequenced historically along the arrow of time, generating Shannon-type information (that is, uncertainty); (ii) the incursion of meanings at level B is referential to (iii) horizons of meaning spanned by codes in the communication at level C. In other words, relations at level A are first distinguished from correlations among patterns of relations and non-relations at level B. The correlations span a vector space on top of the network of relations. Relations are positioned in this vector space and can then be provided with meaning. Different positions provide other perspectives and horizons of meaning. Perspectives can overlap, for example, in Triple-Helix relations. Overlapping perspectives can generate redundancies—that is, new options—as a result of synergies.

The chapter is partly based on: Leydesdorff, L., Johnson, M., & Ivanova, I. (2018). Toward a Calculus of Redundancy: Signification, Codification, and Anticipation in Cultural Evolution. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 69(10), 1181–1192. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24052

full chapter in source:

Towards a Calculus of Redundancy | SpringerLink

source

Action Research: Its Foundations in Open Systems Thinking and Relationship to the Scientific Method | Tim Haslett – Academia.edu

Action Research: Its Foundations in Open Systems Thinking and Relationship to the Scientific Method

Tim Haslett2009, Systemic Practice and Action Research329 Views14 Pages2 Files ▾Open systems theory,Fred EmeryShow more ▾This paper considers those interpretations of action research that can be traced to Kurt Lewin at the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the University of Michigan, and the work in social ecology by Emery and Trist at the Tavistock Institute. It locates the logical basis of these interpretations in the philosophy of pragmatism, particularly as it relates to Peirce’s inferential logic and inquiry system. Drawing on this argument, and on the significant developments in approaches to systemic thinking over the past 40–50 years, a normative set of criteria is established for action research. The paper concludes that both positivist science (which relates to closed systems thinking) and action research (which relates to open systems thinking) are essential to any complete scientific approach.

source:

Action Research: Its Foundations in Open Systems Thinking and Relationship to the Scientific Method | Tim Haslett – Academia.edu

book via: https://creative-systemic.eventbrite.ca.

source:

Systems Thinking Ontario – 2021-02-08

February 8 (the second Monday of the month) is the 87th meeting for Systems Thinking Ontario. The registration is on Eventbrite at https://creative-systemic.eventbrite.ca.

Creative Systemic Research

There is variety in schools of thought across the systemic design community. Many approach from a top-down, abstract predisposition of a world that might be. An alternative approach builds from the bottom-up, in a longitudinal appreciation of the learning in which communities develop resilience.

The Creative Systemic Research Platform (CSRP) Institute leads with the bottom-up, longitudinal perspective. It aims to nurture localized scholarly communities, distributed across multiple peri-urban regional geographies. The work of mapping and investigating emerging economies is informed by activities that include creative expression in social complexity that produces communal well-being.

The CSRP Institute incorporated in late 2020 in an Italian Swiss canton. The initial practice base is at a farm in Terre d’Ebre, Spain. These locations provide opportunities to explore practices in smaller communities and terrains, in relation with historic land use and cultural wisdom.

The co-presidents of the CSRP Institute are Susu Nousala and Jelena Sucic.

• Susu Nousala as a professor with the College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University, Shanghai (People’s Republic of China). She has previously had research positions at Aalto University (Finland), University of Melbourne (Australia), and Chiang Mai University (Thailand).
• Jelena Sucic is a researcher in systemic design and sustainable processes based in Switzerland. She previously led as the field specialist and project manager in the nascent research group, as she completed a double degree in the PoliTong project, completing a Master of Fine Arts in Product Service Service Design at Tongi University, simultaneously with a Master of Science in Systemic Design at Politecnico di Torino.

Susu and Jelena will be joining us in conversation via web conference, at significant time disadvantage. (At 6pm ET, they will start at midnight in Finland and Switzerland).

Venue:

• The link for a Zoom conference will be sent upon preregistration.
• Unfortunately, due to the pandemic OCADU, sLab (Strategic Innovation Lab), 205 Richmond Street West, Room 410 is not available!

Suggested pre-reading:

Related to Creative Systemic Research

• Nousala, Susu, Kim Blanca Galindo, David Romero, Xin Feng, and Pedro Aibeo. 2020. “Systemic Preconditions and Ontological Modeling for Peri-Urban Communities.” Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development (ahead-of-print). https://doi.org/10.1108/JCHMSD-05-2020-0074.
• Sucic, Jelena, Susu Nousala, and Pier Paolo Peruccio. 2019. “Introduction to: The Value of Living Systems Beyond a Price.” Art and Design 2 (3): 66. https://doi.org/10.31058/j.ad.2019.22009.

Agenda in source

Post-meeting artifacts

Bloggers are encouraged to write about their learning and experiences at the meeting. Links will be added to this page.

book via https://creative-systemic.eventbrite.ca.

source:

Systems Thinking Ontario – 2021-02-08

full book free at:

Rethinking Causality, Complexity and Evidence for the Unique Patient – A CauseHealth Resource for Healthcare Professionals and the Clinical Encounter | Rani Lill Anjum | Springer

© 2020Open Access

Rethinking Causality, Complexity and Evidence for the Unique Patient

A CauseHealth Resource for Healthcare Professionals and the Clinical Encounter

Editors: Anjum, Rani Lill, Copeland, Samantha, Rocca, Elena (Eds.)

• This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access.

This open access book is a unique resource for health professionals who are interested in understanding the philosophical foundations of their daily practice. It provides tools for untangling the motivations and rationality behind the way medicine and healthcare is studied, evaluated and practiced. In particular, it illustrates the impact that thinking about causation, complexity and evidence has on the clinical encounter. The book shows how medicine is grounded in philosophical assumptions that could at least be challenged. By engaging with ideas that have shaped the medical profession, clinicians are empowered to actively take part in setting the premises for their own practice and knowledge development. Written in an engaging and accessible style, with contributions from experienced clinicians, this book presents a new philosophical framework that takes causal complexity, individual variation and medical uniqueness as default expectations for health and illness.

Table of contents (16 chapters)

• Introduction: Why Is Philosophy Relevant for Clinical Practice?Pages 3-11Anjum, Rani Lill (et al.)Preview
• Dispositions and the Unique PatientPages 13-36Anjum, Rani LillPreview
• Probability for the Clinical EncounterPages 37-54Rocca, ElenaPreview
• When a Cause Cannot Be FoundPages 55-74Anjum, Rani Lill (et al.)Preview
• Complexity, Reductionism and the Biomedical ModelPages 75-94Rocca, Elena (et al.)Preview

• The Guidelines ChallengePages 95-110Copeland, SamanthaPreview
• The Complexity of Persistent Pain – A Patient’s PerspectivePages 113-126Price, ChristinePreview
• Above and Beyond Statistical Evidence. Why Stories Matter for Clinical Decisions and Shared Decision MakingPages 127-136Low, MatthewPreview
• Causality and Dispositionality in Medical PracticePages 137-148Edwards, Ivor RalphPreview
• Lessons on Causality from Clinical Encounters with Severely Obese PatientsPages 149-165Hagen, Kai BrynjarPreview
• Reflections on the Clinician’s Role in the Clinical EncounterPages 167-178Engebretsen, Karin MohnPreview
• The Relevance of Dispositionalism for Psychotherapy and Psychotherapy ResearchPages 179-199Lindstad, Tobias GustumPreview
• Causal Dispositionalism and Evidence Based HealthcarePages 201-213Kerry, RogerPreview
• The Practice of Whole Person-Centred HealthcarePages 215-226Broom, BrianPreview
• A Broken Child – A Diseased WomanPages 227-236Kirkengen, Anna LuisePreview
• Conclusion: CauseHealth Recommendations for Making Causal Evidence Clinically Relevant and InformedPages 237-241Anjum, Rani Lill (et al.)Preview

full book free at:

Rethinking Causality, Complexity and Evidence for the Unique Patient – A CauseHealth Resource for Healthcare Professionals and the Clinical Encounter | Rani Lill Anjum | Springer

free pdf in source

Delegated Causality of Complex Systems | SpringerLink

• Original Paper
• Open Access
• Published: 22 May 2018

Delegated Causality of Complex Systems

• Raimundas Vidunas 

Axiomathes volume 29, pages81–97(2019)Cite this article

• 3388 Accesses
• 1 Citations
• 2 Altmetric
• Metricsdetails

Abstract

A notion of delegated causality is introduced here. This subtle kind of causality is dual to interventional causality. Delegated causality elucidates the causal role of dynamical systems at the “edge of chaos”, explicates evident cases of downward causation, and relates emergent phenomena to Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. Apparently rich implications are noticed in biology and Chinese philosophy. The perspective of delegated causality supports cognitive interpretations of self-organization and evolution.

Introduction

Living organisms, ecosystems, human minds, societies, economic markets are widely recognized as extraordinary complex systems. They are impressively organized and possess properties that are hardly reducible to qualities of physical matter. Thereby they seem to contradict the reductionistic paradigm of fundamental causation from underlying physical processes. As yet, satisfying explanation of emerging coherent organization is a comparable challenge for reductionist and holistic philosophies (Capra and Luisi 2014; Heylighen et al. 2007). Even if the reductionist approach continues to deliver outstanding results in physics, chemistry, molecular biology, neuropsychology, much deeper understanding of living (Schrödinger 1944; Murphy and O’Neil 1995) and conscious (Kim 1998; Varela et al. 1991) agencies may require an uneasy paradigm change, after all.

I introduce a concept that can simplify and unify analysis of intricate causal relations in complex systems to a remarkable extent. This concept of delegated causality should clarify much about emergence of whole new phenomena (Clayton and Davies 2006), spontaneous order (Kauffman 1993), synergy (Corning 2005), functionality (Ariew et al. 2002), purpose and intention (Dennett 1987). If the new conception indeed refines established specialist perspectives, it will be worth revisiting sporadic revivals of Emergentism (Clayton and Davies 2006, pp. 9–26), post-Enlightenment rationalist skepticism (Clayton and Davies 2006, pp. 114), classical Greek teleologies (Ariew et al. 2002, pp. 7–30). The most rigorous contemporary relevance of the new perspective is to physics of emergence (Mainwood 2006), symmetry breaking (Anderson 1972; Moon and LaRock 2017), thermodynamics (Prigogine and Nicolis 1977; England 2013), and to information-theoretic measure of causal influence (Hoel 2017; Tononi and Sporns 2003).

A comprehensive overview of the vast, growing literature on complex systems, self-organization, emergence would not serve the purpose of this article to introduce delegated causality. This simple but subtle, overlooked kind of causality is anticipated or provoked (figuratively speaking) by critical dynamical systems with rich behavior and moderate sensitivity to the environment. The scope of my abstracted terminology will become clear with the introduction of methodology [M1]–[M3] in Sect. 3 of analyzing causal interactions. Evident implications of delegated causality will be demonstrated by a brief account of evolutionary biology (in Sect. 5) and a reference to Chinese philosophy (in Sect. 6).

This spirited article would be presentable to a scientific version of the TV show “The X-Factor” (Hackley et al. 2012). My argumentation is not deep formally, as the chief purpose is to justify the new concept by a few evocative arguments, agreeable examples, and links to existing ideas. This manner of aboutness (Yablo 2014) mirrors the general view of self-organization conveyed here. I start by reassessing contemporary modeling of complex systems in Sect. 2. The fresh kind of causality is introduced formally in Sect. 3. Section 4 examines physical reductionism in the new light, and relates emergence, downward causation to Gödel’s (1931) incompleteness theorem. The later sections deliberate a few compelling (though not entirely comfortable) implications. All together, this article is gradually making a holistic argument for a new comprehensive view by building up the context for the integrating Sect. 7.

source:

Delegated Causality of Complex Systems | SpringerLink

source (full focument at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.sci-hub.se/17955472/)

Causality and complexity: the myth of objectivity in science – PubMed

Chem Biodivers

. 2007 Oct;4(10):2480-91. doi: 10.1002/cbdv.200790202.

Causality and complexity: the myth of objectivity in science

Donald C Mikulecky ¹Affiliations expand

• PMID: 17955472
• DOI: 10.1002/cbdv.200790202

Abstract

Two distinctly different worldviews dominate today’s thinking in science and in the world of ideas outside of science. Using the approach advocated by Robert M. Hutchins, it is possible to see a pattern of interaction between ideas in science and in other spheres such as philosophy, religion, and politics. Instead of compartmentalizing these intellectual activities, it is worthwhile to look for common threads of mutual influence. Robert Rosen has created an approach to scientific epistemology that might seem radical to some. However, it has characteristics that resemble ideas in other fields, in particular in the writings of George Lakoff, Leo Strauss, and George Soros. Historically, the atmosphere at the University of Chicago during Hutchins’ presidency gave rise to Rashevsky’s relational biology, which Rosen carried forward. Strauss was writing his political philosophy there at the same time. One idea is paramount in all this, and it is Lakoff who gives us the most insight into how the worldviews differ using this idea. The central difference has to do with causality, the fundamental concept that we use to build a worldview. Causal entailment has two distinct forms in Lakoff ‘s analysis: direct causality and complex causality. Rosen’s writings on complexity create a picture of complex causality that is extremely useful in its detail, grounding in the ideas of Aristotle. Strauss asks for a return to the ancients to put philosophy back on track. Lakoff sees the weaknesses in Western philosophy in a similar way, and Rosen provides tools for dealing with the problem. This introduction to the relationships between the thinking of these authors is meant to stimulate further discourse on the role of complex causal entailment in all areas of thought, and how it brings them together in a holistic worldview. The worldview built on complex causality is clearly distinct from that built around simple, direct causality. One important difference is that the impoverished causal entailment that accompanies the machine metaphor in science is unable to give us a clear way to distinguish living organisms from machines. Complex causality finds a dichotomy between organisms, which are closed to efficient cause, and machines, which require entailment from outside. An argument can be made that confusing living organisms with machines, as is done in the worldview using direct cause, makes religion a necessity to supply the missing causal entailment.

source:

Causality and complexity: the myth of objectivity in science – PubMed

CICOLAB Provisional Whitepaper 2021-01-24

1. What is CICOLAB?
   The Collective Intelligence Collaboratory — CICOLAB — is a peer-to-peer mutual support community for “exopreneurs”: misfit entrepreneurs who are solving adaptive challenges (which go far beyond “complex problems” that can be solved by technical fixes, to wicked messes that are coupled with a high degree of social complexity) that do not lend themselves to easy solutions. This paper goes into detail about the unique nature of exopreneurs and explains why a network of us working together to bootstrap our efforts could be profoundly transformative, both for ourselves and for the world at large.
   
2. What is an exopreneur, and why do we need different structures of support?
   The following is a chart to show the difference between an entrepreneur and exopreneur. 

Exopreneurs are solution-oriented like entrepreneurs, but far more comprehensive

source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IYuYmcQltlx7YqFETFSd8NpwmRbK_wnNUlY7sqSUPPQ/edit

source: (paywalled)

Dances and Affordances: The Relationship between Dance Training and Conceptual Problem-Solving on JSTOR

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Dances and Affordances: The Relationship between Dance Training and Conceptual Problem-Solving

Christian Kronsted and Shaun GallagherThe Journal of Aesthetic EducationVol. 55, No. 1 (Spring 2021), pp. 35-55 (21 pages)Published By: University of Illinois Presshttps://doi.org/10.5406/jaesteduc.55.1.0035https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/jaesteduc.55.1.0035

JOURNAL ARTICLE Dances and Affordances: The Relationship between Dance Training and Conceptual Problem-Solving Christian Kronsted and Shaun Gallagher The Journal of Aesthetic Education Vol. 55, No. 1 (Spring 2021), pp. 35-55 (21 pages) Published By: University of Illinois Press https://doi.org/10.5406/jaesteduc.55.1.0035 https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/jaesteduc.55.1.0035

Dances and Affordances: The Relationship between Dance Training and Conceptual Problem-Solving on JSTOR

Book Review: Seeing Like A State | Slate Star Codex

Slate Star Codex

Book Review: Seeing Like A State

I.

Seeing Like A State is the book G.K. Chesterton would have written if he had gone into economic history instead of literature. Since he didn’t, James Scott had to write it a century later. The wait was worth it.

Scott starts with the story of “scientific forestry” in 18th century Prussia. Enlightenment rationalists noticed that peasants were just cutting down whatever trees happened to grow in the forests, like a chump. They came up with a better idea: clear all the forests and replace them by planting identical copies of Norway spruce (the highest-lumber-yield-per-unit-time tree) in an evenly-spaced rectangular grid. Then you could just walk in with an axe one day and chop down like a zillion trees an hour and have more timber than you could possibly ever want.

continues in source:

Book Review: Seeing Like A State | Slate Star Codex