While I continue with my effort to raise a young boy to be a good human being, lot of new learnings in my life are taking place. I will share some of these experiences, for the time being enjoy this poem by Umberto Maturana.
20 APRIL 2016
The Thinking Machine: W Ross Ashby and the Homeostat
The British Library holds the personal archive of W. Ross Ashby – psychiatrist and expert in cybernetics (the study of the control of systems using technology). In this guest post Hallvard Haug, postdoctoral fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, examines the figure of W. Ross Ashby and his key invention the homeostat – a machine capable of adapting itself to the environment. A shorter article on W. Ross Ashby is featured on the British Library Untold Lives blog.
The Work That Reconnects Network The Work that Reconnects helps people discover and experience their innate connections with each other and the self-healing powers of the web of life, transforming despair and overwhelm into inspired, collaborative action. ~ Joanna Macy
“Active Hope is waking up to the beauty of life on whose behalf we can act. We belong to this world.”
JOANNA MACY PH.D, AUTHOR & TEACHER, IS A SCHOLAR OF BUDDHISM, SYSTEMS THINKING AND DEEP ECOLOGY. A RESPECTED VOICE IN MOVEMENTS FOR PEACE, JUSTICE, AND ECOLOGY, SHE INTERWEAVES HER SCHOLARSHIP WITH LEARNINGS FROM SIX DECADES OF ACTIVISM.
Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and postmodern science. The many dimensions of this work are explored in her thirteen books, which include three volumes of poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke with translation and commentary.
As the root teacher of The Work That Reconnects, Joanna has created a ground-breaking framework for personal and social change, as well as a powerful workshop methodology for its application.
Based in Berkeley, California, close to her children and grandchildren, Joanna has spent many years in other lands and cultures, viewing movements for social change and exploring their roots in religious thought and practice.
Since the early 1980’s her travel was governed by invitations to teach the group work that she and a growing number of colleagues were developing. Many thousands of people around the world have participated in Joanna’s workshops and trainings. These methods, incorporated in the Work That Reconnects, have been adopted and adapted yet more widely in classrooms, community centers, and grassroots organizing.
In the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises, this work helps people transform despair and apathy into constructive, collaborative action. It brings a new way of seeing the world as our larger living body. This perspective frees us from the assumptions and attitudes that now threaten the continuity of life on Earth.
“Of all the dangers we face, from climate chaos to nuclear war, none is so great as the deadening of our response.”
Work
Over the course of her life, Joanna has given much thought to the moral and psychological challenges presented by nuclear weapons and energy production. Some of her writings regarding Nuclear Guardianship and Guardianship Ethic will be shown on this site in the near future.
The Work That Reconnects
THE WORK THAT RECONNECTS IS A FORM OF GROUP WORK DESIGNED TO FOSTER THE DESIRE AND ABILITY TO TAKE PART IN THE HEALING OF OUR WORLD.
Since its inception in the late 1970’s, it has helped countless thousands of people around the globe find solidarity and courage to act despite rapidly worsening social and ecological conditions.
This work is also known as Deep Ecology Work (as in Germany, Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan), Active Hope (as in Japan) and Despair and Empowerment Work (as it was known in its first years).
This work can be done alone and has enriched many individual lives, but it is designed for groups. Its effect is deeper and more enduring when experienced interactively with others, for its approach is improvisational and its impact is synergistic.
Workshops have varied in length from an evening to a full lunar cycle.
From the first public workshop in 1978 it has been the aim of the Work to help people trust their raw experience and give voice to what they see and feel is happening to their world. Its interactive exercises frequently involve role-play and a shift in assumed identity; the Work aims to engage and expand people’s moral imagination, bringing wider perspectives on our world, while fostering both compassion and creativity.
CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATION
The Work That Reconnects is informed by Deep Ecology, systems thinking, Gaia theory, and spiritual traditions (especially Buddhist and indigenous teachings), as well as group wisdom from earlier workshops. Common to all of these is a non-linear view of reality. It illuminates the mutuality at play in self-organizing systems, and unleashes the power of reciprocity.
Furthermore, central to our use of systems thinking and the Buddha Dharma is the recognition that self-reflexive consciousness is a function of choice-making. Whatever the limitations of our life, we are still free to choose which version of reality –or story about our world– we value and want to serve.We can choose to align with business as usual , the unraveling of living systems, or the creation of a life-sustaining society.
STRUCTURE OF THE WORK
The experiential work follows a spiral sequence flowing through four stages beginning with gratitude, then, honoring our pain for the world, seeing with fresh eyes, and finally, going forth.
These consecutive stages reflect a natural sequence common to psychological growth and spiritual transformation. The Spiral is like a fractal, governing the overall structure of the workshop while also arising in its component parts. Within a given workshop, we can move through the Spiral more than once, and become aware that with every cycling through, each stage can yield new and deeper meanings.
The critical passage or hinge of the workshop happens when, instead of privatizing, repressing and pathologizing our pain for the world (be it fear, grief, outrage or despair), we honor it. We learn to re-frame it as suffering-with or compassion. This brings us back to life.
In today’s post, I am carrying on some of the ideas from Heidegger. See the last post for more details. I have written about Hermeneutics before here. Heidegger was a student of the great German philosopher, Edmund Husserl. Husserl pioneered the school of phenomenology. Phenomenology is the study of how things appear to us experientially. The objects we experience are the phenomena. As Susan Laverty notes:
Phenomenology is essentially the study of lived experience or the life world (van Manen, 1997). Its emphasis is on the world as lived by a person, not the world or reality as something separate from the person (Valle et al., 1989). This inquiry asks “What is this experience like?” as it attempts to unfold meanings as they are lived in everyday existence. Polkinghorne (1983) identified this focus as trying to understand or comprehend meanings of human experience as it is lived. The ‘life…
I tracked down this concept which Bernard Scott (https://stream.syscoi.com/2021/05/23/in-defence-of-pure-cybernetics-scott-2019/ ) considers seminal. It’s exciting.
Guenther is a theorist of law follow Luhmann and (with others) is exploring what is the basis of law when there are multiple loci of legal authority (national, transnational, common law, labour law, human rights etc – all interplaying with each other), which cannot be hierarchically ordered (hence the link to MuCulloch’s Heterarchy – https://stream.syscoi.com/2021/01/24/heterarchy-a-big-concept-with-lots-of-connections-mcculloch-and-onwards/ ). Each is closed in its own system, open to its context, and yet they interact and interrelate, so any ‘trans’ legal contest has to be polycontextural. So finding a way to deal with polycontextural legal dynamics speaks to complexity, ‘warm data’, multi-contextuality and complexity, as well as to the deep roots of cybernetics – many of which were raised in response to my appeal a few weeks ago on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6793051142520762368/ and facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2391509563/permalink/10158912991209564 )
(This always reminds me of Alexander’s ‘beautiful things have many centres’, and our yearning to recreate the beauty, circularity, and flows of nature).
And, as we inescapably propagate more and more contexts (https://stream.syscoi.com/2021/04/24/the-universe-is-greebling/), this becomes all the more important.
The final paper links to other areas beyond international law, worth a look if you don’t read it all!
I have pulled out enough quotes from the pieces I have found, below, to give a flavour. Another one of those big
Strangely, what looks like the ‘classic’ piece – Gunther, Gerhard (1980): “Life as Polycontexturality” – appears not to be available or directly referenced anywhere on the web – even in what I think is the original German.
However another seminal-looking paper is: Regulatory Law, Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1992) at
And the book:
Transnational Governance and Constitutionalism (International Studies in the Theory of Private Law) – Joerges, Sand, and Teubner (2004)
Seems to legitimately be available online:
https://ug1lib.org/book/907634/b9a3c1 and http://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/13584/1/16.pdf
Complementary Institutions and Reflexive Governance in Autonomous Social Law – Weiner (2008)
https://digitalcommons.ric.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1243&context=facultypublications
Teubner (1999) – following Luhmann, [McCulloch] and Gunther–refers to this complementarity of fragmented rationales/perspectives as polycontexturality
….
Amidst the increasing collaborative institutional ecologies in the parallel development of global capitalism, there is a vital undercurrent and sophisticated strategy of labor law. This is an unfolding the Philip Selznick (1969) saw as rooted in the ways contract and association have moving away from the traditional contract of individual prerogative as organizations. This is an unfolding pattern of institutionalized interactions would become central to economic and legal sociology, as John R, Commons, Harold Laski and the Weimar era critical sociologists had noted earlier in the twentieth century. This is an unfolding of self-organizing forms of reflexive law and reflexive governance separate from the logics of market nor hierarchy, and what is referred to as heterarchy — a cybernetic term sociologized over the last two decades by Guenther Teubner and David Stark. (See for example, Stark, 2000 and Teubner, 2003/04).
We are witnessing in our epoch of globalized capitalism the emergence, formulation, codification and monitoring of transnational conventions, standards and rules that come to function as constituted supervening norms. This is a norm elaboration increasingly negotiated by non-state actors. Again, this is a legal subjectivity of codes and protocols linked to a mutuality of being in an on-going concern, and extended by a pluralism of standard-setting procedures that develop conditional relations of trust beyond the traditional two person relationship of contract. Our understanding of contract is extended – from its original transactional sense into a relational sense, metamorphosed into a network of relational contracts intermeshed and operating recursively with its plural contextures and colliding discourses. With the proliferation of normatizing networks, there comes a need for effective interfaces, interoperability and complementarity. These autonomous non-statist associational networks multi-laterally regulate both intra-organizational and inter-organizational conflicts that emerge both within national bounds and which increasingly cross national borders.
We are challenged to represent a polycontextuaral sense of institutional complementarity in the reflexive self-organization of civil society associations. (See for example,Teubner ). This is an institutional framework within which seemingly incommensurable and colliding discourses can be regulated, if not reconciled. ( See also Robert Boyer, ) This is an unfolding institutional assemblage of negotiating social partners in a complex and heterogeneous network, rather than an ordering of holders of sovereign authority within hierarchy
…
Polycontexturality combines heterarchy with a need for coordinating the resolution of the colliding autonomous subsystemic regime logics of each network/heterarchy (or sector). (Teubner 2002; 2003/04a.) Teubner uses the concept of polycontexturality to account for the necessary recognition of each organizational node of a network of the related autonomous regimes that affects it or could affect it; as well as to build on the concept of ―institutional guarantees‖ for the autonomy of the complementary institutional nodes of networks. Guenther Teubner poses polycontexturality as the response to the fragmentation of our modern society into a plurality of self-constituting contextures of conflict regulation and self-limitation. Society exists only in the mutual recognition of the blindspot that comes from one‟s own contexture, and that a unified noncontextural perspective (pace Schmittian homogeneity)is unavailable. There are plural modes of discourse, and frames of reference. These contextures emerge as codes and programs of internal governance beyond representative state apparata, transcending the traditional binaries of State/civil society and public law/private law. Polycontexturality enables the overburdened private law subsystem reflecting social differentiation/fragmentation to respond to the particularities of institutional contextures within civil society as well as to the colliding discursive regimes they engender. How can private law regimes calibrate their conflict regulation procedures to the plurality of discourse regimes? Beyond the affirmation of diversity, there is the need to protect the complexity/differentiation of the global network society Manual Castells describes as being constituted by the space of capital and information flows.
Teubner‘s polycontexturality approach conceptualizes an emergent ―heterarchical‖ yet institutionally complementary and interconnected network –type linkage at the level of organizations and professions. Teubner looks to a multiplicity of subsystemic subconstitutions, where private law is constitutionally constrained to take of its diverse social systemic context (hence polycontexturality). Danielo Zolo (1992), adds a new level of social rights–the rights of complexity, the right to preserve practices/processes necessary for social systems to retain pattern maintenance. These can be ethnic of linguistic, community or neighborhood based, craftsman or expert based.
…
Teubner describes reflexive law as a new evolutionary stage wherein the law of a particular subsystem realizes its limits with respect to the legal culture and bench-marking by another subsystem. Reflexivity is understood as subsystemic self-referentiality. Each subsystem is autonomous in its being operatively closed, but is polycontextural in its being cognitively open
Review of Christian Joerges, Inger-Johanne Sand, and Gunther Teubner, eds., Transnational Governance and Constitutionalism: International Studies in the Theory of Private Law (and others) in International Journal of Constitutional Law – Sajó (2005)
https://academic.oup.com/icon/article/3/4/697/792058
“As Oren Perez argues (p. 234), there is no single constitutional narrative in the debate. Thus, as he sees it, the globalization–legitimacy–democratization triad is based on indeterminate concepts; hence the need for polycentric solutions.”
…
Gunther Teubner argues that the needs of rationalization in an increasingly compartmentalized, polycentric world justify the “overthrowing of the model of an exclusively political constitution” (“Societal Constitutionalism: Alternatives to State-Centred Constitutional Theory?” p. 10).
Between Law and Social Movement Organizations: The Cycle of General Norms in World Society – Hanna (2015, PhD thesis)
https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/12844/Hanna_Mark_PhD_Final_130516.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=1
“In developing a very bold concept of law and constitutionalism at the global level, Teubner is commonly acknowledged as a ‘leading exponent’,14 presenting ‘one of the most highly evolved positions’ in the field,15 and as someone ‘at the forefront’ in developing an inspiring sociological theory of law that engages the enormous complexity and fragmentation of world society.16 However, what really makes Teubner’s work particularly relevant to the present study is the way in which he has, for decades now, developed a concept of law which has consistently engaged with the ‘dark side’ of functional differentiation and the destructive side-effects of such systemic autonomy which generate highly generalized norms in world society.17 In a sense Teubner is consumed with- and driven by questions about the ‘implacable compulsion for growth’ of self-reproducing social systems,18 the destructive tendencies which result from this, and how law can address these issues in a heterogeneous and polycentric society. Arguably it is his prolonged engagement with these fundamental questions, and the sophisticated theory of law he has built up in answer to them, which makes Teubner such a controversial and exemplary figure in this field. Teubner’s contribution is specifically located in his explicit recognition that the contemporary significance of human rights issues lie, not in the traditional concern for the protection of individuals against the misuse of political power, but in the ‘broader problem of protecting global societal differentiation and offsetting the external, negative consequences of globalised function systems for society at large, the environment and individual persons.’19
Tracking Global Corporate Citizenship: Some Reflections on ‘Lovesick’ Companies. (Thompson), 2006
“For the likes of Gunter Teubner (1997a, 1997b, 2002) these developments are a key indicator of a wider radical transformation of the international system wrought by the forces of ‘globalization’. In Teubner’s new world globalization finally breaks the link connecting the law to democratically constituted political discourses and practices. It produces a double fragmentation; cultural polycentrism and functional differentiation. New ‘linkage institutions’, like those mentioned immediately above, create a new law directly by transjurisdictional operations without being translated into formal political issues. They escape and evade regulatory claims of both national and international law and practice, and form a legal sovereignty of their own. This global law has no legislation, no political constitution, no politically ordered hierarchy of norms. It is a ‘polycontextual’ law; law with multiple sources displaying no unifying perspective, produced by different mutually exclusive discourses of society. Such a system of recursive legal operations works in terms of more than one code, combining conjunctural and disjunctural operations, connected through transjurisdictional operational networks. It displays a heterarchical multitude of legal orders rather than a clear and traditional differentiation into legislation and adjudication; a plurality of law production comprising a patchwork of ethnic and religious minority laws, rules of standardization, variable professional disciplines, contracting, intra- and intergovernmental rule making, etc. Curbing the abuses of power – by the rule of law in the traditional sense – will not help in civilizing this many headed hydra. Indeed, we must face the impossibility of constitutionalizing this legal multiplicity in the language of legal restraint or the arbitrariness of the sovereign. In the final analysis, there is no sovereign power left.”
The Emerging Normative Structures of Transnational Law: Non-State Enterprises in Polycentric Asymmetric Global Orders (Backer), 2016
https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1527&context=jpl
“Gunther Teubner once asked: “after deconstruction, what is left of law as a hierarchy of rules, founded on a political constitution, endowed with an institutional identity, based on the distinction between legislation and adjudication and legitimated through democratic representation and constitutional rights?”34 He suggested that “should we search for it in the direction of a ‘polycontextual’ law that would not be hierarchical, but heterarchical, a law with multiple sources, a law without a unifying perspective, a law that is produced by different mutually exclusive discourses in society?”35 Yet that poly-contextualism remains hidden under the veils of the presumptions of the ideologies that support the state system of political organization. But more important than the presumptions of state ideology are the methodological techniques used to support them in a way that hides both their presence and the organizational priorities they represent. One of the great perversions of the 21st century is the merger of ideology and social scientism.36 This perversion arises in the way in which each hides its effects on the other, and that they together seek to present something that is both neutral and natural.37”
Finally, this looks interesting from the Abstract – but is in Portuguese:
Autopoietic Systems, Transconstitutionalism and Polycontexts: a theoretical look – Souza, (2016)
https://www.academia.edu/38540562/Autopoietic_Systems_Transconstitutionalism_and_Polycontexts_a_theoretical_look
This text aims to contribute to the use of new theories for the observation of post-modern society. It is important to emphasize, this is not the only theory which we have available, but, clearly, in our point of view, the only one that allows a wider and deeper observation of society’s complexity. Starting from this observation, is is assumed society is highly complex as it has multiple ways of showing itself. Because of the supercomplexity of nowadays societies and of the large possibilities, it is brought a way to handle complexity, the systems. These systems sort this complexity from a certain kind of perspective on the kind of functional differentiation. This way, because of the wide range of situations that can be observed, imagined, and that can happen, we seek aid in theories of Policontexturality, from Gunther Teubner and Transconstitucionalism from Marcelo Neves, in order to understand the supercomplex postmodern panorama, taking us to a somehow clearer understanding of the society we live on.
Toward Polycontextually Sensitive Research Methods – Shapiro, Von Glinow, Xiao (2007)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1740-8784.2007.00058.x
“In this paper we introduce the concept of ‘polycontextuality,’ which refers to multiple and qualitatively different contexts embedded within one another. We distinguish polycontextuality from the singularly contextual types of description typically provided by social scientists, and use the case of China to elucidate polycontextual phenomena. Polycontextuality can include verbal- and non-verbal nuances whose understanding is rooted in local, cognitive, emotional and even spiritual references – most of which cannot be easily observed or historically studied. For this reason we recommend the polycontexual sensitive research method to supplement the scientific deductive research typically designed to study observable phenomena based on a singular context (e.g. verbal) that are controllable by the researcher’s stimuli and/or measures. Actions for increasing scholars’ polycontextual sensitivity are suggested, and guidelines for the scholar interested in doing high quality indigenous research are offered, using the case of China for illustrative purposes.”
This also suggested a link to Keekok Lee’s contextual dyadic thinking: https://stream.syscoi.com/2019/03/02/contextual-dyadic-thinking-lee-2017/
It’s done. The new book is ready for you to read. It has an Amazon page with print and Kindle versions, plus a web site (at cfkurtz.com/confluence) with downloadable exercise materials. You should also be able to order the book at your local book store (ISBN: 978-0-9913694-1-6). Confluence is about the ways in which organized plans (like roads) and self-organized patterns (like traffic) intermingle and interact in our lives, families, communities, and organizations. It’s about complexity, but it’s not just about complexity. It’s about how the structures and procedures we design and the spontaneous patterns that emerge as we interact co-occur, intersect, and press on each other. The book revolves around the use of seven “thinking spaces,” blank canvases you can use to explore organization and self-organization in situations and from perspectives that matter to you. Each space explores a different aspect of confluence. A group exercise helps you use the spaces to make sense of things together. (You can read some of the book by clicking “Look Inside” on the Amazon page.)
Aside from the first chapter (which introduces the book) and the third chapter (which explains the group exercise), most of the book uses the seven thinking spaces to explore a variety of situations, from ghost towns to factories to folk tales to mirages. I wrote these explorations for two reasons. First, I wrote them to use the spaces in front of you, so you can see how you can use the spaces yourself. And second, I wrote the examples to help you practiceusing the spaces as you read and think about my explorations.
Systematics is the name given by John Godolphin Bennett (1897–1974) to a branch of systems science that he developed in the mid-twentieth century. Also referred to as the theory of Multi-Term Systems or Bennettian Systematics, it focuses on types, levels, and degrees of complexity in systems, the qualities emergent at these levels, and the ability to represent and practically deal with (“understand”) complexity using abstract models. Thus to understand the notions of sameness and difference requires a system or universe of discourse with a minimum of two terms or elements. To understand the concept of relatedness requires three, and so on.
Bennettian Systematics evolved through various stages of formulation as described in his major, four-volume work The Dramatic Universe (initially published 1955-1966) and in various articles in Systematics: The Journal of the Institute for the Comparative Study of History, Philosophy and the Sciences, published from 1963 to 1974. Bennettian Systematics has been further refined and advanced by students such as A. G. E. Blake, Anthony Hodgson, Kenneth Pledge, Henri Bortoft, Richard Heath and others.
Bennett has described his discipline of Systematics in quite general terms as “the study of systems and their application to the problem of understanding ourselves and the world.”[1] He notes in this general context 4 branches of Systematics:
Pure Systematics – seeks “to identify and describe the universal properties or attributes common to all systems”.[1]
Formal Systematics – studies “the properties of systems without reference to the nature of the terms. It consists mainly of the investigation of possible modes of connectedness which evidently can be very complex for systems with more than three or four terms”.[1]
Applied Systematics – “the study of systems occurring in our experience and is chiefly directed to the identification of the terms and their characteristics”.[1]
Practical Systematics – focuses on “the application of the understanding gained through the study of systems to the problems that arise in all departments of life”.[1]
Bennett’s use of the term “Systematics” is basically synonymous with what today falls under the terms “systemics“, “systemology“, “systems science“, and “systems theory“. However, his own specific work under the name “Systematics” takes approaches that are still unfamiliar to many current systems specialists, making his work a specialty in a much broader field. In addition, the use of the term “systematics” in biology to refer to the classification of types and forms of organisms creates ambiguity and rather overwhelms the term’s current viability within general systemology. Thus reference can be made simply to “Bennettian Systems” (or Systemics or Systematics), or to “Multi-Term Systems” to describe his work and its continuations.
Formal Bennettian systems are defined around and focus on the idea of logical or qualitative complexity rather than quantitative complexity. There is thus a possible analogy to the philosophical program of logical atomism. (“Quantitative complexity”, as contrasted with “qualitative”, results from the presence in a practical setting of two or more actual components of the same qualitative type. However, in practical Systematics, the quantity or amount of a component also has concrete qualitative effects, and the two categories cannot always be separated.)
Thus in formal Systematics, Bennettian systems are abstract, and each system represents a qualitative or logical “type” or level analogous to the logical levels used by Bertrand Russell in his Theory of Types.
Each formal level consists of qualitatively independent but mutually relevant “terms” that constitute a “universe of discourse” specific to that level, and terminology suitable at one level can cause category confusion when used in other contexts.
Every multi-term system so-defined has its special system-level attribute or characteristic emergent quality, such as “dynamism” for the triad, or “significance” for the pentad. The emergence of these qualities, according to the work of Anthony Blake in what he calls Lattice Systematics, is mysterious but not random and occurs within a process involving both increasing “spiritualization” of will and increasing specification or “materialization” of function.
The logical level of the system depends on the number of the qualitatively different but mutually relevant terms in the system. Bennettian systems thus increase in qualitative complexity, and display new emergent qualities, in a quantized, progressive series as the number of qualitatively distinct terms within the system increases.
Conversely, the “terms” of a given formal system correlate in a general way with the specific degree, type, or level of the system they occur in, so that the terms of a dyad are characterized as “poles”, those of a triad as “impulses”, those of a tetrad as “sources”, those of a pentad as “limits,” and so on.
Each system beyond the first contains subsystems and all systems, theoretically, are embedded in supersystems with a higher number of terms.
In practical Systematics, Bennett carried this process of elaboration up to the 12-term system as best he could within the constraints of the very limited technical vocabulary currently available to make such distinctions. Beyond the 12-term system he spoke of “societies”.
Bennett correlates the logical levels or leaps of qualitative complexity with what he calls the “concrete” or “qualitative” significance of number, perhaps again analogous to what Russell calls “relation number” in Principia Mathematica and in looser reference to Pythagorean traditions, although Bennett was at pains to distinguish what he was doing from various kinds of mere “numerology”.
The series of Bennettian systems includes the monad, dyad, triad, tetrad, and so on, open-endedly. Systems progress in complexity from the monad up, and from vague wholeness to increasingly articulate structure that reaches into society, history and the ontological fabric of the cosmos.
The series of Multi-Term Systems can serve in applications as simplified but progressively complex outer checklists to ascertain the objective diagnostic completeness of a survey and analysis of a system or situation. Conversely, the system models can be used “inwardly” as an aid to subjectively assessing one’s own impartiality, wisdom and adequacy of comprehension. They thus can point toward real structures and processes in the outer world of fact as well as, logically, those structures and processes in the inner world of values and human capacities.
Bennettian Systematics has an integrative programme. Throughout all cultures and throughout all disciplines there are discernible threads of meaning associated with multi-term systems that might otherwise be missed. Bennettian Systematics links with understanding which is connected with structural unity and how insight from one area of experience can be transferred to another without distortion. A journal called Systematics was launched by Bennett’s Institute for the Comparative Study of History, Philosophy and the Sciences in 1963 to publish a diversity of articles relating to this programme. Systematics also led into the development of a new learning system called structural communication, which later became a broad methodology called logovisual thinking (LVT).
Culture is powerful precisely because it is so present and at the same time so very difficult to name or identify.- Tema Okun Dear friends, It’s not too late to reserve your space in our upcoming webinar, “White Supremacy Culture and Systems Change.” The 90-minute session will take place on June 1, 2021 at 10:00 am Pacific/1:00 pm Eastern time.
20 years ago, Tema Okun wrote the article, “White Supremacy Culture Characteristics,” an article deeply informed by her relationships with many genius teachers and colleagues. Please join Tema, CoCreative, the Academy for Systems Change, Illuminate and special guests from around the country to learn more about white supremacy culture, discuss how it’s shifted in the last 20 years, and explore implications for our work in complex systems change.PLEASE NOTE: This is a ticketed event for which all donations will benefit the work of EarthSeed Land Collective whose mission is to remember and reimagine our relationship to ourselves, each other, and the land in pursuit and practice of collective liberation. Everyone is welcome, regardless of ability to pay.Sign me up!
Epistemic status: uncertain yet bold (working things out), and part of my thesis that there are no distinguishing fractures in the systems/cybernetics/complexity field, only many relevant and interesting dimensions of difference which cut across the supposed big distinctions.
Claims are made such as ‘complexity entails a scientific revolution, hence a radical shift in science’.
I believe that what is called complexity science is a continued working-through of ancient insights going back decades and centuries, and claiming a decisive shift leads us down dangerous paths and to miss out on powerful, valuable thinking.
It’s a Rorschach blot
That the world is fundamentally nebulous should not be denied.
It is true that a lot of work in the field (characterised as ‘systems thinking’) is used, naively and with the assumption of systematicity (or by ‘enforcing’ systematicity; reversing science and forcing the world to conform to the model) to sustain top-down, reductive, centralised…
where are our thoughts… caught in reality… or lost in fantasy
RESEARCH & PUBLICATIONS
Blogs:
2021, Feb. How to Organise in Order to Manage Complexity. 19th Feb., 2021. Link 2021, Jan. The Multiple Views of Cybernetics. 30th Jan., 2021. Link
2021, Jan. Making sense of complex situations. 10th Jan., 2021. Link
2020, Jul. View of tourism in Scotland & Edinburgh – insights from nearly two decades of research. 20th July, 2020. Link
2020, Jun. Transforming my university course for a COVID world – but how? 10th June, 2020. Link
2020, May To be tracked or not to be tracked, that is the question. 19th May 2020. Link
2020, Mar. A life beyond Singularity – artificial general intelligence. robots & the rest? 16th March, 2020. Link
Books:
2002 ERP: the implementation cycle. (2003) [formerly Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann]. NOW Routledge (imprint of Taylor and Francis) [Turkish edition (Bilesim: summer 2005) Chinese edition (Tsinghua University Press: Dec. 2005)
2018 The emergence of makerspaces, hackerspaces and fab labs: Dewey’s democratic communities of the 21st Century? [Eaves, S. & Harwood, S.] In: Ruth Heilbronn, Christine Doddington, Rupert Higham, (Eds), Dewey and Education in the 21st Century: fighting back. London, Emerald Publishing
Journals:
2020 Introducing the VIPLAN Methodology (with VSM) for handling messy situations – nine lessons. Systemic Practice and Action Research. [ABS2] [accepted 10th Sept. 2020; online 27th Oct. 2020 ]
2020 Conceptualising technology, its development and future: The six genres of technology (co-authored with Eaves, S.). Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 160, 1-15[ABS3], [received 25th January 2020, revised 1st May 2020, accepted 19th June 2020, online 30th August 2020.]
2019 VIEWPOINT: Whither is Problem Structuring Methods (PSMs)?Journal of the Operational Research Society, (submitted 16th Jan. 2018,accepted 12th July 2018, online 19th Jan, 2019). [ABS3]
2018 A SHORT COMMUNICATION: A Question of Interpretation: the Viable System Model? European Journal of Operational Research(submitted 19th July 2018,accepted 29th October 2018). [ABS4]
2018 In Search of a (WEF) Nexus Approach. Environmental Science and Policy, 83, 79-85. (submitted 19th Oct. 2017; revise and resubmit, 22nd Jan. 2018; resubmitted 28th Jan. 2017; accepted 29th Jan. 2018; online 26thFeb. 2018) [ABS3]
2012 The Management of Change and the Viplan Methodology in Practice. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 63, 748-761. (submitted 3rd May 2010; revise and resubmit, 24th Aug 2010; resubmitted 13th Feb. 2011; revise and resubmit 18th Apr. 1011; resubmitted 25th Apr. 2011; accepted subject to clarifications 9th Jun, 2011; resubmitted 9th Jun, 2011; accepted 13th June 2011; online 17th Aug. 2011) [ABS3]
2011 The Domestication of Online Technologies by Smaller Businesses and the ‘busy day’. Information and Organization, 21(2), 84-106. (submitted 25th Jan. 2011; ‘conditional’ acceptance by editor ‘subject to some directed revision’, 11th Feb. 2011; accepted 14th Mar.2011; online 22nd Apr. 2011) [ABS3] EDITOR’S CHOICE, June 2015
2011 Can a Cybernetics Lens Contribute to the Business Strategy Domain? Kybernetes, (special issue: Progress in Organisational Cybernetics) 40(3/4), 507-527 (submitted 18th September 2010, accepted 14th December 2010)
2009 The changing structural dynamics of the Scottish tourism industry examined using Stafford Beer’s VSM. Systemic Practice and Action Research, (special issue: Action Research in Organisational Cybernetics), 22(4) 313-334. [ABS2]
1996 Re-thinking the Business. Business Change and Re-engineering, 3(3), 37-46.
1995 A View of Business Process Re-engineering. Systemist, 17(3), 129-132.
1995 Thoughts about the Business. Systemist, 17(4), 201-218.
2019, Apr. The Six Genres of Technology [Harwood, S. & Eaves, S.] 24th UKAIS Annual Conference, St Catherine’s College Oxford, UK, 9th-10th April 2019
2018, Jul. Mind the Gap: But does the gap matter in social science research? [Harwood, S. & Eaves, S.] 17th European Research Methods Conference, ECRM2018. The University of Roma, Rome, Italy, 12-13th July 2018. link
2018, Jul. A Refreshed Pedagogical Agenda for PSMs. [Harwood, S.A.,Tomasella , M.] EURO2018 (Association of European Operational Research Societies): EUROXXIX Conferences, Valencia, Spain 8-11th July, 2018.
2017, Jun. In Search for an Autoethnographic Method. [Harwood, S, & Eaves, S.] 16th European Research Methods Conference, ECRM2017. Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin, Ireland, 22nd-23rd June 2017
2017, Apr. Homeostasis: from metaphor to mechanism in the tech – human relationship. [Harwood, S. & Eaves, S.] 22nd UKAIS Annual Conference, St Catherine’s College Oxford, UK, 4th-5th April 2017 HIGHLY COMMENDED link
2017, Apr. ‘Affordance’ – what does this mean? [Harwood, S. & Hafezieh. N.] 22nd UKAIS Annual Conference, St Catherine’s College Oxford, UK, 4th-5th April 2017 link
2016, Sep. The emergence of makerspaces, hackerspaces and fab labs: Dewey’s democratic communities of the 21st Century? [Eaves, S. & Harwood, S.] John Dewey’s “Democracy And Education” 100 Years On: Past, Present, And Future Relevance, A conference celebrating the centenary of the publication of John Dewey’s Democracy and Education, University of Cambridge, 28thSep. to 1st Oct. 2016
2016, Jul. VSM and the Quest for Resilience. [Harwood, S.A.,Tomasella , M. & Vancova, Z.] EURO2016 (Association of European Operational Research Societies): EUROXXVIII Conferences, Poznan, Poland 3rd-6th July.
2016, Jun. The VIPLAN Methodology In Management Research. European Research Methods Conference, ECRM2016, Kingston University London, UK, 9th-10th June. In Benson, V. & Filippaios, F. (Eds). Proceedings of the 15th European Conference on Research Methodology for Business and Management Studies.
2016, Apr. The Co-Development of Organisation and Online Technology – ‘Tailoring’ The Local Destination Marketing Organisation (DMO). 21st UKAIS Annual Conference, St Catherine’s College Oxford, UK. 12th-13th April 2016. Proceedings
2015, Sep. Information artefacts in practice: institutional context and self-awareness in enactment of collective affordances. [Hafezieh, N., Eshraghian, F. & Harwood, S.A.]. British Academy of Management (BAM) Conference. University of Portsmouth, England. 8th to 10th Sept. 2015. link
2015, Jul. Information Product: How Information Consumers’ Perception Of ‘Fitness For Use’ Can Be Affected. [Eshraghian, F. & Harwood, S.A.]. The 20th International Conference on Information Quality (ICIQ), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. 24th July, 2015. link
2015, Jul. Configuring professionalisation: Exploring socio-material arrangements in a voluntary-based sport association. [Eshraghi, A. & Harwood, S.A.]. 31st EGOS Colloquium, Athens, Greece 2nd – 4th July 2015.
2014, Aug. Biography Of Data: A societal level perspective on data quality. [Eshraghian, F., Llyod, A.D., & Harwood, S.A.] The 19th International Conference on Information Quality (ICIQ), Xi’An, China. 1st – 3rd August 2014. link
2013, Jul. Rethinking Affordances: Three Stories about the (Non-)Adoption of Digital Technologies. [Eshraghi, A. & Harwood, S.]Proceedings of the 6th Communities and Technologies Conference 2013, Munich Germany. Wolfgang Prinz, Christine Satchell, Michael Koch, Johann Schlichter (eds). Published by ACM and the European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies (EUSSET). link
2013, Mar. Framing authenticity in Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. na:wh [0728] Conference on World Heritage, 15th Mar, 2013 University of Edinburgh. link
2012, Sep. Is there still life in Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model (VSM)? 54th Conference of the UK OR Society, 4-6th September 2012, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland.
Working Papers:
2018, Jan. The Parrot is Not Dead, Just Resting: The UK Universal Credit System – an empirical narrative. Working Paper, Series, Business School, University of Edinburgh [ISBN: 978-1-9999205-5-5].
2016, Mar. Multi-level research into the social: an old wine in an old forgotten bottle?. Working Paper, Series: 16.01, Business School, University of Edinburgh [ISBN: 978-1-906816-10-0].
2013, Aug. An Audit of a UNESCO World Heritage site – the Royal Mile, Edinburgh: a preliminary search for authenticity – Two years later. Working Paper, Series: 13.01, Business School, University of Edinburgh [ISBN: 978-1-906816-09-4].
2012, Oct. The Performativity Turn in Tourism. Co-authored with Dahlia El-Manstrly. Working Paper, Series: 12.05, Business School, University of Edinburgh [ISBN: 978-1-906816-08-7].
2012, Aug. ‘Authenticity’: a familiar word but what are the implications for a destination if it is a popular tourism destination as well as a UNESCO World Heritage site? Co-authored with Dahlia El-Manstrly. Working Paper, Series: 12.04, Business School, University of Edinburgh [ISBN: 978-1-906816-07-0].
2012, Jul. An Audit of a UNESCO World Heritage site – the Royal Mile, Edinburgh: a preliminary search for authenticity – One year later. Co-authored with Dahlia El-Manstrly, Business School, University of Edinburgh. Working Paper, Series: 12.03, Business School, University of Edinburgh [ISBN: 978-1-906816-06-3]
2012, May An Audit of a UNESCO World Heritage site – the Royal Mile, Edinburgh: a preliminary search for authenticity. Co-authored with Dahlia El-Manstrly. Working Paper, Series: 12.02, Business School, University of Edinburgh [ISBN: 978-1-906816-18-6].
2012, May ‘From the spatial to the digital domain’ : a need for hotelier reconfiguration? Co-authored with Dahlia El-Manstrly. Working Paper, Series: 12.01, Business School, University of Edinburgh [ISBN: 978-1-906816-17-9].
2010, Jun. Business Strategy: thinking, discourse and action through a Cybernetics lens. Working Paper, Series: 10.01, Business School, University of Edinburgh.
2009, Jul. Conceptualising Supply Chain Management: The ‘Sourcing Triangle’. Working Paper, Series: 09.03, Business School, University of Edinburgh.
2009, Feb. Governmental Developments To Support The Uptake Of Online Technologies: EU, UK & Scotland from early 1990s to around 2005.Working Paper, Series: 09.02, Business School, University of Edinburgh.
2009, Jan. A Difference Of Interpretation? A content analysis of the ‘Evidence’ of the Scottish Area Tourism Board Review, 2002-2004. Working Paper, Series: 09.01, Business School, University of Edinburgh.
2008, Nov. A Narrative About Institutional Developments In Scottish Tourism 1969-2008. Working Paper, Series: 08.04, Business School, University of Edinburgh.
2007, Sep. A Quantitative Analysis of Serviced Accommodation Providers in Scotland over the Period 2003 to 2007. Working Paper, Series: 07.01, Business School, University of Edinburgh.
PhD Thesis
2010 The Domestication of ICTs – the case of the online practices of Scottish serviced accommodation providers. Business School, University of Edinburgh.
Other:
2010, Oct. Irresponsible or the victim of a witch-hunt? BP and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. Teaching Case-study.
2007, May submission of evidence (by invitation) to Public Petitions Committee, Scottish Parliament (PETITION: National Tourism Website (Public Ownership) (PE1015)
Dr Stephen Harwood’s ‘V-Space’ where are our thoughts… caught in reality… or lost in fantasy RESEARCH & PUBLICATIONS
JUN
07
ECONOMIC AND SOCIETAL RESTRUCTURING IN A POST-COVID WORLD
by Enlightened Enterprise Academy
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A SYSTEMS THINKING PERSPECTIVE
The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on developed economies is likely to be comparable to that of the Great Depression and the Second World War; its global reach possibly far greater. It has exposed systemic weaknesses in many of the critical institutions on which society depends, revealing their lack of preparedness and inability to respond to uncertainty.
Following the Great Depression, the response in the US was the New Deal, designed to provide relief to the poor and unemployed, recovery of the economy to normal levels, and reform of the financial system to prevent a repeat event. The responses to the Second World War included the Bretton Woods Agreement and the Marshall Plan, aimed at achieving monetary order and economic redevelopment in Europe.
It is becoming clear that we need a comparable economic and societal restructuring plan for the post-pandemic world. But it needs to be even more ambitious than previous recovery initiatives. It must prepare us for the future, rather than just seeking to get us back to where we were. The pandemic has revealed how many of our key institutions are unfit for purpose in the modern era. We need to be asking questions about what type of society we want to live in, and how to redesign the critical systems society now needs to better serve our purposes.
In this context, the Enlightened Enterprise Academy and Critical Systems Forum will host a series of conferences on the theme ‘Critical Systems Thinking: Economic and Societal Restructuring in a Post-Covid World’. The audience will include politicians, policymakers and economists – people vital to any recovery program. But we will also invite a much wider range of multi-disciplinary experts, including leading systems thinkers with expertise in a wide range of systemic approaches. The aim is to contribute to the redesign, reform, and recovery efforts of leaders of institutions and organisations in all sectors of the economy and in all parts of the world.
Follow-up events to this one will explore some themes in more depth (details below).
Event Host
This event is hosted by the Enlightened Enterprise Academy and represents the first conference of our Critical Systems Forum. The forum is an initiative supported by Dr Michael C Jackson OBE, Author of Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity, founder and former Dean of Hull University Business School, and today a Professor Emeritus at the school.
The Agenda
2-2.10 Welcome and Introductions
2.10-2.30 Provocation 1 (20 mins)
2.30-2.50 Provocation 2 (20 mins)
2.50-3.10 Provocation 3 (20 mins)
3.10-3.20 Introduction of the panellists (10 mins)
3.20-3.45 Individual panellist responses (5 x 5 mins )
3.45-4.15 Moderated discussion amongst the panellists (30 mins)
4.15-4.30 Provocoteaur reflections on the discussion (3 x 5 mins)
4.30-4.55 Moderated Q&A with questions from the audience
4.55-5.00 Closing remarks and announcements
The Provocateurs are:
Michael Ostrolenk, National Director, Liberty Coalition
Maria Santacatarina, CEO Santacatarina Consulting
Martin Reeves, Chair Boston Consulting Group Henderson Institute
Further details to be added soon
The Panellists are:
To be announced soon.
Follow-Up Events
Follow-up events will explore:
How we go about ‘Bridging the Capabilities Gap’ to ensure leaders and other stakeholders have the systems thinking, critical thinking and decision-making capacities to cope with the complexity they encounter in a VUCA world. This is about changing our ways of thinking.
How we go about ‘Getting the Institutions and Organisations we Need’ – government, local government, business, third sector – to meet the challenges we face in the post-Covid world. This is about changing our ways of organising.
How we go about ‘Rethinking and Strengthening the Social Compact’ between the public and private sectors, civil society, and citizens to enable us to ‘build back better’ post-Covid. This is about changing our ways of relating.
Dates for these events will be announced on June 7th at the end of the first coference.
PLEASE NOTE: This is a ticketed event for which all donations will benefit the work of 
Systems Community of Inquiry 
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