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. 

[Several from me]

 May 28, 2025  daviding

https://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/pacing-changes-elevating-the-whenwhere-in-living-systems/

John D. Sterman

First published: Summer ‐ Autumn (Fall) 1994

https://doi.org/10.1002/sdr.4260100214

Abstract

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:

• H. Maturana

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
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.

[PDF] Biology of Language: The Epistemology of Reality | Semantic Scholar

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Biology-of-Language%3A-The-Epistemology-of-Reality-Maturana/94097d89173928e11fc20f851cf05c9138cbfbb3

[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
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.

The case for cases

[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

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.

There are over 300 participants thus far.

The group was inspired by my conversation with David Krakauer. David created the foundations collection and wrote an excellent introduction to boot:

The Complex World: An Introduction to the Fundamentals of Complexity Science

Want to join the complexity group email list?

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.

Complexity Group Email List | Brain Inspired

‘[W]e ought to aspire to provide the best theory so far as to what type of theory the best theory so far must be: no more, but no less.’

That was the title of my extremely overwrought undergrad thesis (continued -‘Does Alasdair MacIntyre tell us how to identify a rationally acceptable system of ethics?’) in 1997 (https://www.academia.edu/10016029/1997_Benjamin_Taylor_undergraduate_thesis_does_Alasdair_MacIntyre_tell_us_how_to_identify_a_rationally_acceptable_system_of_ethics), and reflected the deep impact he had on me and my thinking, which has continued in mostly subtle ways.

I appear to have said:l (or this is an automatic AI summary – they were equally dense!):

‘The thesis examines MacIntyre’s view of modern ethics as irresolvable and interminable, highlighting the need for history to replace reification with justification. It introduces the concept of tradition, recasting irresolvability and interminability as incommensurability, and explores the possibility of communication through crisis. The work further discusses MacIntyre’s contextualist epistemology, rationality within a tradition, and the role of narrative in justifying ethical systems. It also addresses challenges such as relativism and perspectivism, and considers MacIntyre’s presentation of Thomism as a form of historicism that is neither relativist nor Hegelian. The thesis concludes by emphasizing the disquieting suggestions in MacIntyre’s work and the difficulty in establishing a tradition-based rationality with ultimately rational justification.’

He probably didn’t deserve my prognostications. But the multiple layers of his thinking – reflecting on the boundaries and origins of thinking itself, the situatedness and dependence and contingency of rationality and ethics – impressed me deeply and align with what I value most in systems |cybernetics |complexity and metarationality.

I was lucky enough to see him ‘live’ once, at a lecture in London that I think was organised by Anthony Grayling, and his mien and delivery spoke – as on the live and YouTube lectures I have seen since – of someone whose way of life was completely and deeply aligned with his thinking. This was reflected in the big shifts of belief and alignment he made during his life. His intellectual journey – from Marxism to Thomism – demonstrates a commitment to rigorous inquiry and openness to transformation.

So his death marks the passing of a philosopher whose work has profoundly influenced my own thinking and practice, and more importantly has been an important voice in the world In After Virtue, MacIntyre diagnosed the fragmentation of moral language in modernity and proposed a return to virtue ethics grounded in historical traditions and communal practices.

His critique of modern moral discourse and revival of Aristotelian virtue ethics have been central to my understanding of ethics within organisations and society. This perspective and his concept of “practices” have l informed my approach to organisational development, emphasising the cultivation of internal goods and the importance of narrative in shaping ethical practices.

His later work highlighted the role of vulnerability and dependence in human life, challenging the notion of the autonomous individual. MacIntyre’s emphasis on the historical and cultural embeddedness of moral reasoning, recognising that moral concepts evolve within traditions has also been of great value.

Alasdair MacIntyre’s legacy is one of profound philosophical insight coupled with a deep concern for the moral fabric of society. His work continues to challenge and inspire those of us committed to ethical practice in complex organisational and societal contexts.

RIP

Posts referencing MacIntyre featured here

Classic paper Epistemological crises, dramatic narrative and the philosophy of science / Alasdair MacIntyre. – The Monist, 1977 https://stream.syscoi.com/2018/09/23/epistemological-crises-dramatic-narrative-and-the-philosophy-of-science-alasdair-mcintyre-the-monist-1977/

Ben Sweeting (a fellow MacIntyre fan) https://stream.syscoi.com/2018/09/22/cybernetics-virtue-ethics-and-design-ben-sweeting-rsd16/

The meaning of the public good – https://stream.syscoi.com/2018/06/03/the-meaning-of-the-public-good-inquirer-opinion/

Psyberton – https://stream.syscoi.com/2023/02/13/whatever-next-psybertron-asks/

His classic lecture ‘the sources of unpredictability in human affairs’ – https://stream.syscoi.com/2021/05/26/alasdair-macintyre-the-sources-of-unpredictability-in-human-affairs-1972-youtube/

As per David Ing’s post on LinkedIn:

Timothy F.H. Allen, president of International Society for the Systems Sciences 2008-2009, passed away peacefully in his home, surrounded by his family, on May 1, 2025.

With his work on ecosystem ecology, I learned more about living systems than anyone else in the systems community. After his retirement, he was proud of putting together a reader, so that other could continue to learn.

Curtin, Charles G., and Timothy F. H. Allen, eds. 2018. Complex Ecology: Foundational Perspectives on Dynamic Approaches to Ecology and Conservation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://lnkd.in/gxj8NKDt .

More details on news forwarded by Tom Brandner is reposted at https://lnkd.in/gN7Csbv2

(1) Post | LinkedIn

Click the link to see Stefan’s pdf in the post

For over 20 years, I’ve been trying to make systems thinking more visible and impactful in German-speaking countries — in organizations, education, and leadership. Honestly, it’s not a job marked by quick wins. It often feels like gardening in a climate not yet suited for this particular plant. The fruit ripens slowly — if at all. But I keep going, because I deeply believe: without systems thinking, any transformation remains superficial.

Two years ago, I started a personal experiment: two smartphones, two numbers, one person. One phone engages only with German-language content, the other with English-language content. (Interestingly, both algorithms now merge into one feed on my desktop — like a digital biotope.) The contrast is striking: there are significant differences in tone, topics, ethical framing, solution-orientation, and how theory translates into practice. And spoiler alert: systems thinking is practically invisible in German discourse. That’s why I’ve collected and condensed a few reflections — short, pointed, and ready for discussion.

💬 What do you think? What does it take for you to think, lead, and act systemically?
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Stefan Knabe https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefan-knabe-79a8361a6/

Post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/stefan-knabe-79a8361a6_thinking-about-stefan-knabe-ugcPost-7330972125631000577-jooE/?rcm=ACoAAACuq-oBecVFDW6PCf3lkoG-peMeuLBeoho

SCiO systems and complexity in organisation

20 May 2025

Viable Service Management – Operational Loops

#Steve looks into the operations space of service management systems where the user interfaces with the organisation. The focus is on three particular ‘services’: IT services, car repairs, and healthcare; and shows the similarities and differences in how they manage the different types of ‘repair’ (cybernetic) loops. Of particular interest is how the user is drawn into the organisation for these processes.