Although complexity surrounds us, its inherent uncertainty, ambiguity, and contradiction can at first make complex systems appear inscrutable. Ecosystems, for instance, are nonlinear, self-organizing, seemingly chaotic structures in which individuals interact both with each other and with the myriad biotic and abiotic components of their surroundings across geographies as well as spatial and temporal scales. In the face of such complexity, ecologists have long sought tools to streamline and aggregate information. Among them, in the 1980s, T. F. H. Allen and Thomas B. Starr implemented a burgeoning concept from business administration: hierarchy theory. Cutting-edge when Hierarchy was first published, their approach to unraveling complexity is now integrated into mainstream ecological thought.
This thoroughly revised and expanded second edition of Hierarchy reflects the assimilation of hierarchy theory into ecological research, its successful application to the understanding of complex systems, and the many developments in thought since. Because hierarchies and levels are habitual parts of human thinking, hierarchy theory has proven to be the most intuitive and tractable vehicle for addressing complexity. By allowing researchers to look explicitly at only the entities and interconnections that are relevant to a specific research question, hierarchically informed data analysis has enabled a revolution in ecological understanding. With this new edition of Hierarchy, that revolution continues.
JOHN HENRY HOLLAND is a professor of psychology and a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His main research interests are complex adaptive systems (natural and artificial), computer-based models of cognitive processes, and the construction of models for computer-based thought experiments. Known widely as the “father of genetic algorithms,” he is a board member of the International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Santa Fe Institute. He has been named a MacArthur Fellow and is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum. His two most recent books are Emergence: From Chaos to Order and Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity.
more at https://www.edge.org/memberbio/john_h_holland
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Holland frequently lectured around the world on his own research, and on research and open questions in complex adaptive systems (CAS) studies. In 1975 he wrote the ground-breaking book on genetic algorithms, “Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems”. He also developed Holland’s schema theorem.
Publications
Holland is the author of a number of books about complex adaptive systems, including:
Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems (1975, MIT Press)
Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity (1995, Basic Books)
Emergence: From Chaos to Order (1998, Basic Books)
Signals and Boundaries: Building Blocks for Complex Adaptive Systems (2012, MIT Press)
Complexity: A Very Short Introduction (2014, Oxford University Press)
For decades, scientists and urban experts alike have stated that cities are — borrowing a term from ecology — ecosystems, hybrid ecosystems consisting of both natural and human-made elements. Like natural ecosystems, cities evolve through a combination of chaos and order. The late urban writer and activist, Jane Jacobs, once said, “cities happen to be problems in organized complexity” and warned against predicting city’s futures. “People who try to predict the future by extrapolating in a line of more of what exists [today]…are always wrong.”
Undoubtedly, the future of our global cities will be emergent in ways we may or may not predict — from social uprisings like new populism, new technologies like blockchain, or climate events like Hurricane Sandy. Yet, we are not powerless in our city ecosystems. Chaos is paired with order, and we have power — with the right leadership, knowledge, and tools — to reimagine a new, 21st-century order for our cities and our world to thrive.
I first used the term “Warm Data” in a meeting in January 2012, as a concept it is still emerging, slowly and with a depth that continues to surprise me. Tomorrow I am going to host a Warm Data lab…
I’ll be in Australia in February, as Chief Exec of the Public Service Transformation Academy (www.publicservicetransformation.org), speaking at the launch events for the new Australasian Transformation Academy – public service reimagined (powered by PPB Advisory), at breakfast sessions 20 February in Sydney and 21 February in Melbourne.
I’m taking the opportunity to help great folk over there – principally Robert Lamb in Melbourne (the instigator!) and Stefan Norrvall in Sydney – with our shared ambition to launch Australian chapters of SCiO (www.scio.org.uk – the systems practitioners’ network). These events take place in Sydney on 19 February (evening – thanks to the Leading in Complex Adaptive Systems Meetup Group) and in Melbourne on 21 February (pm – thanks to Club Blac and probably evening – thanks to the Agility Collective).
If you’re interested in attending, or would just like to grab a coffee or a chat about these or related subjects (I’m also talking about RedQuadrant’s ground-breaking Leading Transformation blended learning), just give me a shout – benjamin.taylor@redquadrant.com
And if you’d like to refer someone who would be interested, just let me know!
links below – a bit about me first by way of introduction – this is a one-off
Way, way back on 27/7/2014, I got an invitation to join a site with the unprepossessing name of model.report. The brainchild of Scott Fortmann-Roe (http://scott.fortmann-roe.com) and Gene Bellinger (https://www.linkedin.com/in/systemswiki/ and all over the place), the site was a simple discussion and link sharing forum which owed something to Stack Exchange, based on the Lobsters platform.
‘Great!’ I thought – a place to build a repository of the whole of systems thinking. I’ll start with what I know (my first post was an open day for www.scio.org.uk, and I did Beer’s Viable Systems Model and Barry Oshry’s power+systems approach in short order), and go on from there. I set myself a nice aspirational target of getting 100 ‘upvotes’ in the first six months. Model.report began with much active discussion and settled down over the years to about twelve active contributors, pretty much following the 1% rule (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)).
A few things happened over the years:
somehow, I stayed /hyper/active – partly because there’s just quite a lot of systems thinking out there, and partly because, every time I thought I had got a rough sketch of the known universe in hand, I turned a corner… and there was a whole unexplored galaxy! And my jobs relates at least more than a bit, so I can kid myself I’m doing something really valuable 🙂
it turned out there was an active – and much larger – community of readers. And some of them were really appreciative and nice, and doing great things in the world
Gene, as is his wont, decided it wasn’t working for him and left (in the process deleting all his posts and comments – sad)
And, eventually, Scott (now doing great things with Google), realised he couldn’t commit to maintaining the site.
So, we moved over here – thanks to David Ing’s kind offices – to an open-licence, wordpress-based site, which is now a kind of partnership effort between me and him, thanks to going splitsies on a miniscule annual server fee (he’s the technical expert, I’m certainly not). But, while the originally will, slowly or abruptly, fork itself, degrade, and fall out of graveyard orbit, a full archive of model.report (all content available, functions mostly not) is preserved ‘forever’ at https://syscoi.com/model.report/model.report/newest.html
I resolved to continue collecting systems thinking links, events, an’ ting – how could I not? – but also to experiment with not posting *every single* link as a new item.
So, and so. Here is a MEGA, rather overstuffed, link digest for January 2018 (and some time before). It leans quite a bit on the wonderful Rachel Sinha’s wonderful Systems Studio newsletter (http://rachelsinha.com/ and http://thesystemstudio.com/), which you can broadly see because their link tagging is in many of the links clipped from there.
Rest of content, model’s own – I source from google alerts, nuzzel.com, twitter, the LinkedIn systems thinking network (30,000+ members – https://www.linkedin.com/groups/2639211), the systems thinking facebook groups at https://www.facebook.com/groups/774241602654986 (4,500+ members) and https://www.facebook.com/groups/2391509563 (2,000+ members), and also quite often from podcasts https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vRh25RO40r8LK4psqqGWfMAJOAFh5nyc3-UOx34-8GQ/edit and other newsletters. Basically, I’m Johnny Five 🙂
Ooh, and Rachel allowed me to do this very self-flattering blog about ‘me and systems thinking’:
http://thesystemstudio.com/new-blog/2017/7/26/interview-systems-change-network-builders-ctpjw
I can see several advantages of this ‘compendium’ format: one email not a spam email with every post (as was before), more to chew on, easier to scan and see what you like. And several disadvantages: no automatic fetching of canonical links, no automatic identification of duplicates (which will be many), no automatic grabbing of page headlines (so more work to edit), and much harder to start a discussion on an individual link (I suggest that, if something piques, your interest, you start a discussion in a separate posting here). And, definitely, this one is too long. I can’t promise what I’ll do in future but I do welcome feedback, and will definitely aim for shorter compendia and, where time allows, a little more structure/commentary.
Cheers
Benjamin
about me:
www.bentaylor.com
SCiO – non-exec director – www.scio.org.uk
RedQuadrant – network consultancy UK, Aus and NZ public sector – www.redquadrant.com
Quadrant Resourcing – excellent interim change people – www.quadrantresourcing.com
The Public Service Transformation Academy – Chief Executive – www.publicservicetransformation.org
Other online stuff I am involved in: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19ji4L38JVVJiWj9EiSglY–q_rn_fr6a7G4MjnuDYK0
I tweet at www.twitter.com/antlerboy
Sign up for our newsletter www.redquadrant.com/newsletter
Please connect to me at www.linkedin.com/in/antlerboy
Tools for Systems Thinkers: 7 Steps to Move from Insights to Interventions – Medium View at Medium.com
Chaire Edgar Morin de la Complexité – key links:
https://sites.google.com/a/essec.edu/chaire-complexite/recherche-enseignement
https://sites.google.com/a/essec.edu/chaire-complexite/activites
https://sites.google.com/a/essec.edu/chaire-complexite/contacts
https://sites.google.com/a/essec.edu/chaire-complexite/home
Audio file of Churchman at 1975 conference: https://soundcloud.com/portland-state-library/pdx-lsta-hs-1547-access
“Cognition as computing a reality” – a few notes from this Heinz von Forster talk:
Using systems thinking to return city streets to the community – Arab News
http://www.arabnews.com/node/1226591/corporate-news
Systems Thinking for Safety [HUM-SYS]
http://trainingzone.eurocontrol.int/ilp/pages/coursedescription.jsf%3Bilp_JSESSIONID=EC62BF173F3D7B8DD3696F1771186257?courseId=5083310
Systems thinking is the Defining Feature of Sustainable Design
http://newdeal.blog/systems-thinking-is-the-defining-feature-of-sustainable-design-68bb7ccf8772
Continuous Improvement as seen through the lens of Systems Thinking – Bram.us
Systems thinking: Why it is important
http://www.ejinsight.com/20180119-systems-thinking-why-it-is-important/
Toronto Museum Educators For Climate Justice Workshop – How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Systems Thinking
http://coalitionofmuseumsforclimatejustice.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/toronto-museum-educators-for-climate-justice-workshop-how-we-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-systems-thinking/
From systems building to systems thinking – McGee’s Musings
Seeing and Sensing Wholeness in Nature and Organisations https://transitionconsciousness.wordpress.com/2018/01/28/seeing-and-sensing-wholeness-in-nature-and-organisations/
Systems Thinking, Critical Realism and Philosophy
https://newbooksnetwork.com/john-mingers-systems-thinking-critical-realism-and-philosophy-a-confluence-of-ideas-routledge-2014/
From an isolated laboratory to a world where “context is everything”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-isolated-laboratory-world-where-context-marco-valente/
Advances in Cybernetics Provide a Foundation for the Future
Making Systems Thinking More Than a Slogan
https://nbs.net/p/making-systems-thinking-more-than-a-slogan-ad50eb4b-7a55-48c9-bb10-4e71d69b38ff
The challenge of systems leadership
https://blog.kumu.io/the-challenge-of-systems-leadership-d98cc9b9a114
Why embrace complexity to create systemic change?
http://mailchi.mp/ccba5675d1db/2018-complex-system-leadership-program-expression-of-interest-now-open-377969
The NCP Fantasy Systems Thinking Team – Forrester and Meadows
https://newcommunityparadigms.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/the-ncp-fantasy-systems-thinking-team.html
Learning how to understand complexity and deal with sustainability challenges – A framework for a comprehensive approach and its application in university education
Autopsy of a Failed Holacracy: Lessons in Justice, Equity, and Self-Management
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2018/01/09/autopsy-failed-holacracy-lessons-justice-equity-self-management/
She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics and Innovation
https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/vol/3/issue/3
Capitalizing on Paradox: The Role of Language in Transforming Organizational Identities
https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/orsc.13.6.653.502
Langton’s ant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langton%27s_ant
Bouricius, Terry and Schecter, David. (2013). An Idealized Design for the Legislative Branch of government. Systems Thinking World Journal: Reflection in Action. [Online Journal]. 2(1). [Referred 2013-01-22]. Available: http://stwj.systemswiki.org . ISSN-L 2242-8577 ISSN 2242-8577
Bouricius, Terry and Schecter, David. (2014). An Idealized Design for Government. Part 2: Executive Branch Accountability. Systems Thinking World Journal: Reflection in Action. [Online Journal]. 2. [Referred 2014-11-5]. Available: http://stwj.systemswiki.org . ISSN-L 2242-8577 ISSN 2242-8577
Read the story of SiG ( Social Innovation Generation) in Canada in this new book:
https://www.thesigstory.ca/?ct=t(The_Systems_Studio_Newsletter_7_11_2017)
useful resources on systems practice, shared by Lorna Prescott, curator of CoLab Dudley: View at Medium.com
a useful video describing system change using love as an example:
a blog from Jen Morgan on aging and system change:
an article on the challenges of integrating startups into parent organizations.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/beyond-innovation-labs-integrating-startups-parent-eric-ries/?ct=t(The_Systems_Studio_Newsletter_7_11_2017)
MaFi, the community for systems changers working in international development, announce a shift to focus on the art of facilitation:
an insightful overview of systems change in 2017 from Otto Scharmer, including Big Tech Turned Evil:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/2018-moving-beyond-trumprebuilding-our-civilizations_us_5a480ba1e4b0d86c803c7735?ncid=engmodushpmg00000003&ct=t(The_Systems_Studio_Newsletter_7_11_2017)
some useful Maps of Frameworks on the field of system change:
systems failure and the four reasons Philanthropy keeps losing the battle against equality:
https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2018/1/10/systemic-failure-four-reasons-philanthropy-keeps-losing-the-battle-against-inequality?ct=t(The_Systems_Studio_Newsletter_7_11_2017)
Six steps to circular systems design from Leyla Acaroglu: https://medium.com/disruptive-design/six-steps-to-circular-systems-design-1b0c8ae9f60e?ct=t(The_Systems_Studio_Newsletter_7_11_2017)
useful resources on teachers trying to build systems thinking into their syllabus systems literacy: https://ca.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/systemsliteracy/?ct=t(The_Systems_Studio_Newsletter_7_11_2017)#.WnHq4Khl_IW
a report from Newcastle University and Collaborate a whole new world funding and commissioning in complexity: https://collaboratecic.com/a-whole-new-world-funding-and-commissioning-in-complexity-12b6bdc2abd8?ct=t(The_Systems_Studio_Newsletter_7_11_2017)&gi=709be6a9f011
Toolkit from Ashoka on forming innovative alliances: https://www.ashokachangemakeralliances.org/toolkit?ct=t(The_Systems_Studio_Newsletter_7_11_2017)
Interesting article delving into what role you were born to play in social media change:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/george-lakey/what-role-were-you-born-to-play-in-social-change?ct=t(The_Systems_Studio_Newsletter_7_11_2017)
Events/training
Read all about the launch of Rachel Sinha’s new program for system entrepreneurs https://medium.com/@RachelmSinha/launching-a-new-program-for-system-entrepreneurs-who-are-halfway-through-7d6e5c534689?ct=t(The_Systems_Studio_Newsletter_7_11_2017)
Capra Course Masterclass: How to Engage Organisations with Systems Thinking
http://transitionconsciousness.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/capra-course-masterclass-how-to-engage-organisations-with-systems-thinking/
The brilliant school of system change kicks off on February 20 in New York City and later on the West Coast – Applications are open now. https://www.forumforthefuture.org/school-system-change-basecamp-2?ct=t(The_Systems_Studio_Newsletter_7_11_2017)
Online courses – self-taught and instructor-led https://strategydynamics.com/courses/
Training on the Art of Participatory leadership in Athens – apply by February 15: https://mailchi.mp/108598068856/art-of-hosting-athens-training-23-25-february-374387?e=69430fe607&ct=t(The_Systems_Studio_Newsletter_7_11_2017)
Marketing Systems Symposium 2018 is taking place from April 24 – 26 in Cape Town, South Africa:
https://www.marketsystemssymposium.org/?ct=t(The_Systems_Studio_Newsletter_7_11_2017)
CDRA is organizing a training on how to design and facilitate Writeshops in Johannesburg:
http://www.cdra.org.za/facilitating-writeshops.html?ct=t(The_Systems_Studio_Newsletter_7_11_2017)
If you have read Adam Kahane’s newest book collaborating with the enemy join this free online webinar on March 28th and ask Adam everything you want to know on the link below:
https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ieLsULV0S9GD5V0kRkKXcQ?ct=t(The_Systems_Studio_Newsletter_7_11_2017)
Skoll Centre at Oxford launch a competition to encourage University/College students to think systematically about social problems through map the system:
http://mapthesystem.sbs.ox.ac.uk/?ct=t(The_Systems_Studio_Newsletter_7_11_2017)
Calls for papers
Call for Papers – Reconceiving Cognition – Antwerp June 27-29
Systems Community of Inquiry 