Ever want to understand 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘅 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀, emergence, and reductionism? Here’s a chapter part of my book 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 coming out next year with MIT Press!
Ever want to understand 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘅 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀, emergence, and reductionism? Here's a chapter part of my book 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 coming out next year with MIT Press!https://t.co/SZd3TasBqTpic.twitter.com/1jT0AvX09H
Chapter 8: Complex systems: the science of interacting parts
What kind of object is the brain? The central premise of this book is that it cannot be neatly decomposed into a set of parts, so that each one can be understood on its own. Instead, it’s a highly networked system that needs to be understood differently. The language that is required is the one of complex systems, which we now describe in intuitive terms. Whereas mathematics is needed to formalize it, illustration of its central concepts provides the reader with “intuition pumps”. Thinking in terms of complex systems frees us from the shackles of linear thinking, enabling explanations built with “collective computations” that elude simplistic narratives.
ISSS 2021 Annual Conference was online using the cvent platform, July 7-14 2021.
Select video recordings from essions are here for public viewing. For these videos all participants have agreed for the video recordings from sessions to be shared publicly.
Many other video recordings are reserved for members only on a different page
ISSS 2021 Presidential Welcome – Delia MacNamara
Keynote: Imagination, Science and the Art of Systems Thinking: Christopher Chase
Systems Literacy Presentation Peter Tuddenham
Systems Science – An Atlas – Lynn Rasmussen
Using Systems Science to Articulate, Model, and Transcend That Which Divides Us
Presentation to the Special Session: Future of Human Social Systems – Lynn Rasmussen
Kerry Turner
Kerry Turner
E-Syn – Report on Online Syntegration January 2021 – Allenna Leonard and Peter Tuddenham
Systems Theory of Marginalization and its Implications for Systemic Intervention
Sunday, July 11, 11:00 AM-12:00 PM EDT Gerald Midgley
Systems Convening (Wenger – Trayner) Systems Changes
daviding
Given that Etienne Wenger’s original research coming out of the Institute for Research on Learning at Xerox popularized Communities of Practice (mind the subtitle of Learning, Meaning and Identity), I can’t say that I’m surprised at the continuing development of their work. The focus is on the leadership of the community, the convenors
After “Jane-Jacobs-Thought”| Doug Saunders | 2021
Systems Changes
cities
urbanism
Aug 8
1 / 2
Aug 9
1m ago
daviding
14h
When Jane Jacobs passed in 2006, she was said to have been studying suburbs. Her work had been famous in urban cores. As a systems thinker, however, part of her curiosity about suburbs was that, given a choice, many people chose to live there. This study might have been next book, if she had continued to live.
Doug Saunders writes that while “Jane-Jacobs-Thought” (as it’s known in China) would seem to be conventional wisdom for most urbanists, they’ve missed an important point: urban planning (conducted by professionals centrally) is counter to the general idea of self-organization.
In today’s post, I am continuing from the last post, mainly using the ideas of Dirk Baecker. We noted that every observation is an operation of distinction, where an observer crosses a line, entering a marked state. This is shown in the schematic below. Here “a” refers to the marked state that the observer is interested in. The solid corner of a square is the distinction that was used by the observer, and “n” refers to the unmarked state. The entire schematic with the two sides and the three values (“a”, “n” and the distinction) are notated as a “form”. The first order observer is observing only the marked state “a”, and is not aware of or paying attention to the distinction(s) utilized. They are also not aware of the unmarked state “n”. When a second order observer enters the picture, they are able to…
Interest in cybernetics declined in North America from the mid 1970s to 2010, as measured by the number of journal articles by North American authors, but increased in Europe and Asia. Since 2010 the number of books on cybernetics in English has increased significantly. Whereas the social science disciplines create descriptions based on either ideas, groups, events or variables, cybernetics provides a multi-disciplinary theory of social change that uses all four types of descriptions. Cyberneticians use models with three structures – regulation, selforganization and reflexivity. These models can be used to describe any systemic problem. Furthermore, cybernetics adds a third approach to philosophy of science. In addition to a normative or a sociological approach to knowledge, cybernetics adds a biological approach. One implication of the biological approach is additional emphasis on ethics.
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