In a return to original Systems Thinking Ontario format, we reviewed an (old) systems thinking paper from 1998. Mohammed Badrah served as reviewer. Kelly Okamura was the discussant. The author, David Hawk, was available during the discussion period for extended knowledge.
Sustainable Technology and the Entropy Argument | Mohammed Badrah, Kelly Okamura, David Hawk | Systems Thinking Ontario 2023-09-11 October 22, 2023 daviding 0 CommentsIn a return to original Systems Thinking Ontario format, we reviewed an (old) systems thinking paper from 1998. Mohammed Badrah served as reviewer. Kelly Okamura was the discussant. The author, David Hawk, was available during the discussion period for extended knowledge.
There is a call for papers for a special issue in the Public Health journal on Climate Resilient Health Systems. The call is open to papers that document the effects of climate change or specific climate hazards on health systems at any system level (from local to global), assess related health system vulnerabilities, and/or explore system changes and their consequences in response to climate hazards
Manuscripts should be submitted by 30th April 2024.
Call for submissions! Illuminate Network is seeking 10 high-quality content pieces exploring the intersections of equity, systems change, and collective leadership, for a blog series to be published online in 2024. An honorarium of $3,000 (US) will be provided to those invited to submit completed pieces. 🦋
To be considered, submit your abstract in English or Spanish by 21 October 2023: https://lnkd.in/e_vdwnjd
On LinkedIn (first links), Jessie Lydia Henshaw says:
I’m very pleased to say my newest paper – “Emergent Growth of System Self-Organization & Self-Control,” – was published yesterday by SRBS (the systems research journal). https://lnkd.in/eHNiCCkv.
Sometimes, it’s the small turns that matter, such as from accelerating to decelerating, reversing the innovation directions from multiplying to coordinating, and giving birth to the biggest changes of all, like relieving growth crises and revealing new visions of naturally healthy futures.
It turns out nearly all people already know a great deal about timing the creative turn from multiplying the expansion of startup designs to perfecting them as they grow up to become well-working and lasting designs. The same strategy applies to any scale, for innovations, relationships, and even ways of life that go from rapid profit growth to peak profit as they mature to reach their full potential.
Our economic world is designed to maximize profit, too, but mainly the fast and immature kind, stuck in maximizing the growth of systems that overshoot their resilience to become disruptive and risk their own collapse. It made the work of our lives fast and sloppy just to please finance, not our futures.
Being out of touch with nature and unable to mature kept our world from reaching its full potential, as most responsive growth systems naturally do, responding to their own cohesion to mature their designs inside and out, like our own bodies and minds did to fulfill our individual potentials.
System Conveners are an emerging group of changemakers whose roles are designed to bring people together across sector, organisational and community boundaries, enabling people to share learning across those boundaries and to create positive change in how systems like public services operate. Rather than concentrating on individual services or organisations, the focus is on changing systems, building connections, and being led by people who use services, as well as those who are currently let down or excluded from them.
The New System Alliance, working with Hackney Borough Council and NHS England/the Health Foundation’s Q Community, surveyed people to find out if the Systems Conveners we are aware of are part of an emerging field. We had over 80 responses, the overwhelming majority identifying themselves as Systems Conveners in some way. We are happy to share our briefing – System Convening – what you told us, summarising what was shared about the role, their learning and what they need to do their jobs well.
What we learned from the 80 Systems Conveners who responded to our survey about what Systems Convening is, what makes it work and not work, and what public service systems should learn from this emerging field
An attempt to define this emerging field, and to bring people together for mutual support and connection – you may be the only person doing system change work in your area or your organisation, but you are not alone!
Deciding whether there is a need and energy behind creating an ongoing community of practice, or action network, for Systems Conveners and if so, what it should focus on and do
This free event is open to people who contributed to the original survey, as well as people who are interested in the topic – it would be great to see you there!
I have just stumbled across 48 messages dating back to 2018 through either one of those forms. They might have been going to David Ing, but not to me (Benjamin Taylor) – I can’t find any easy way to respond so will do a mail-merge email to everyone whose email I can find!
Anticipatory Systems, Evolution, and Extinction Cascades (Online)
At the announcement of the August 2023 Systems Thinking Ontario session with Judith Rosen in Toronto for an in-person appearance, there were a lot of requests about whether the session would be recorded. Judith agreed to make that in-person talk less formal, and cover the original content in October in a more structured flow.
To encourage conversation, the session will be run in three parts:
Anticipatory Systems
Evolution
Extinction Cascades
Participants will have the opportunity to reflect and ask questions after each part.
Here is the abstract from the original session,
When we think about evolution — specifically the entailment underlying the process of change in species of living organisms, over eons of time, which we call “evolution” — and as we seek to increase our scientific understanding of it, one glaring omission is that there is no mention of the fact that living organisms manifest patterns of behavior that are radically different from non-living systems. Life does not just react, the way all non-living systems do; life also Anticipates. Therefore, we need to factor in the Anticipatory nature of all life into our models (both our mental models and scientific models) and see where that leads us in our understanding. This peculiar Anticipatory pattern of behavior is, in fact, the “signature” of life. According to Robert Rosen, the Anticipatory pattern is ubiquitous in biological systems, at all scales of organization, and is common to all life forms regardless of species. In higher life forms, such as homo sapiens, it is the very same pattern that characterizes mind as well.
Robert Rosen (1934-1998) developed Anticipatory Systems Theory as part of his work in theoretical biology. He predicted that the Anticipatory pattern of behavior he described will, similarly, be present in extraterrestrial life. It is how we recognize living organisms as being “alive” even if we’ve never seen that species before; how we differentiate living systems from non-living systems (whether we are doing so as scientists or not. But, if we seek to understand the entailment of evolutionary processes, then to leave this out of our models is guaranteed to cause problems. Nowhere is the omission more dangerous than in understanding the entailment of extinction cascades.
As it happens, the Anticipatory nature of life has a dark side. For all the benefits it offers, rapid change in the environment is its Achilles Heel. With human-induced rapid global climate change, we are facing a period of such accelerated change that the only things in the fossil record that bear any resemblance to it are the intermittent cataclysms such as large asteroid strikes — which have caused several mass extinctions throughout Earth’s history. Human activity has now (by 2022) changed the composition of Earth’s atmosphere to such a degree that interactions with solar energy are also changing.
Furthermore, the chemistry of the oceans are measurably changing because of the changes in atmospheric composition — becoming more acidic, for example. Thermodynamic changes are also manifesting themselves because of those initial changes, which impacts weather patterns. Changing weather patterns and oscillation between extremes in weather are driving further changes in ecosystems all over the planet. As the planet warms up, sea levels rise. It would be foolish to think that any of these fundamental changes are going to be without consequences to the biosphere. Extinction cascades are made of this. But why? How?
This talk will describe the fundamentals of Anticipatory Systems Theory, and sketch out how this necessarily must be involved in evolutionary entailment. It will illustrate how rapid change in environments causes difficulties that are peculiar to life, and thereby elucidate the entailment of extinction cascades from an Anticipatory Systems perspective. It is hoped that participants will finish with a much better idea of the need for integration of these ideas into our collective efforts, in science and in government. Intelligent planning for the future requires it.
Bio: Judith Rosen is a writer, and science researcher residing in Rochester, NY. She carries on the work of her father, Robert Rosen, republishing materials previously unavailable. Judith often translates the ideas of Robert Rosen to both experts and novices. She has been a long-time contributor to the International Society for the Systems Sciences, and has served as a Vice-President of Conferences.
Venue:
The link for a Zoom conference will be sent upon preregistration.
Bloggers are encouraged to write about their learning and experiences at the meeting. Links will be added to this page.
2023-10-16October 16 (the third Monday of the month, dodging Thanksgiving) is the 115th meeting for Systems Thinking Ontario. The registration is at https://anticipatory-systems-online.eventbrite.ca .Anticipatory Systems, Evolution, and Extinction Cascades (Online)
Systems Community of Inquiry 
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