Network concepts are omnipresent in contemporary diagnoses (network society), management practices (network governance), social science methods (network analysis) and theories (network theory). Instigating a critical analysis of network concepts, this article explores the sources and relevance of networks in Foucault’s social theory. I argue that via Foucault we can trace network concepts back to cybernetics, a research programme that initiated a shift from ‘being’ to ‘doing’ and developed a new theory of regulation based on connectivity and codes, communication and circulation. This insight contributes to two debates: Firstly, it highlights a neglected influence on Foucault’s theory that travelled from cybernetics via structuralism and Canguilhem into his concept of power. Secondly, it suggests that network society and governance are neither a product of neoliberalism nor of technological artefacts, such as the Internet. They rather resulted from a distinct tradition of cybernetically inspired theories and practices.
In this paper we criticize the “Ashbyan interpretation” (Froese & Stewart, 2010) of autopoietic theory by showing that Ashby’s framework and the autopoietic one are based on distinct, often incompatible, assumptions and that they aim at addressing different issues. We also suggest that in order to better understand autopoiesis and its implications, a different and wider set of theoretical contributions, developed previously or at the time autopoiesis was formulated, needs to be taken into consideration: among the others, the works of Rosen, Weiss and Piaget. By analyzing the concepts of organization and closure, the idea of components, and the role of materiality in the theory proposed by Maturana and Varela, we advocate the view that autopoiesis necessarily entails selfproduction and intrinsic instability and can be realized only in domains characterized by the same transformative and processual properties exhibited by the molecular domain. From this theoretical standpoint it can be demonstrated that autopoietic theory neither commits to a sharp dualism between organization and structure nor to a reflexive view of downward causation, thus avoiding the respective strong criticisms.
ALL ISSUES
PUBLISHED APRIL 2021
Service Design and Systems Thinking
There is a transition underway in service design that is challenging traditional ways of working. As the scope of service design projects continues to expand, service designers are increasingly confronted by the immense complexity of overlapping service systems. The articles in this issue offer powerful provocations and hopeful, practical examples on how to integrate systems thinking into service design.
Gallagher, J. M. (1977). Piaget’s Concept of Equilibration: Biological, Logical, and Cybernetic Roots. Topics in Cognitive Development, 21–32. doi:10.1007/978-1-4613-4175-8_3
url to share this paper:
sci-hub.se/10.1007/978-1-4613-4175-8_3
Gallagher, J. M. (1977). Piaget’s Concept of Equilibration: Biological, Logical, and Cybernetic Roots. Topics in Cognitive Development, 21–32. doi:10.1007/978-1-4613-4175-8_3 url to share this paper: sci-hub.se/10.1007/978-1-4613-4175-8_3
Critical Complexity – Paul #Cilliers
Collected Essays Edited by Rika Preiser #amreading
(NB: most of this book’s content was written before Cilliers death in 2011 so please keep this context in mind in light of some of his views esp around the topics of AI, neural nets, etc)
Collected Essays Edited by Rika Preiser #amreading
(NB: most of this book’s content was written before Cilliers death in 2011 so please keep this context in mind in light of some of his views esp around the topics of AI, neural nets, etc) pic.twitter.com/O37g3OUMZd
‘What is going on here?’ This is the question at the heart of Kay and King’s Radical Uncertainty – a question the authors suggest we should all be asking much more often.
In this large and wide-ranging book, John Kay (economist and founding Dean of Oxford University’s Said Business school) and Mervyn King (economist and former Governor of the Bank of England) set out to distinguish between risk and uncertainty. They argue that this distinction once understood by economists on all sides of the political spectrum – they refer in particular to the writings of Keynes and Frank Knight, the father of the Chicago School – has been forgotten to the danger and detriment of good decision making.
‘the world is inherently uncertain and to pretend otherwise is to create risk, not to minimise it.’
Risk is likened by the authors to a puzzle. It can be solved by existing information ordered in the right way. Uncertainty is like a mystery – we are missing information and in particular we are beyond the limits of statistical reasoning. The authors argue that most of the big world decisions we currently face – whether in business, epidemiology or politics – are radically uncertain. We are operating in conditions of mystery where our knowledge is imperfect and variables are constantly changing. Climate, economic and social systems are not linear. They are subject not just to multiple variables and action, but also to what people think. Our failure to understand this context – radical uncertainty – and in particular our attempts to model our way through using data and statistics are at the root of poor decision making and much of our current woe.
These once orthodox economists ruthlessly take apart economic models which they describe as ‘parables’, ‘believing them to represent reality has led macroeconomics astray’. In particular they critique a ‘relatively recent’ over reliance on probability models, when probabilities can in reality seldom be known. Withering critiques are made of ‘futile’ strategy away days, most of behavioural economics, a large swathe of number-based policy making processes, ‘the number is not the policy’ and risk registers, ‘long lists, received in silence and signed off’. They take a swipe at journalists who ‘don’t send the car’ (for the interview) if a nuanced argument to a complex problem is suggested, Treasury mandarins who try to add more complexity to their failing models (as opposed to standing back and asking ‘what is going on here’) and CEOs such as the Goldman Sachs’ executives whose models categorise events as ‘inordinately improbable’ even as they unfold around them.
A reliance on data driven modelling leads large organisations in particular to make decisions ‘on the basis of what is easiest to justify rather than what is the right thing to do’. Whilst Kay and King do not specifically refer to British social institutions this critique sadly brought to mind many large third and public sector organisations whose management and focus on risk has visibly been all too often at the expense of doing the right thing and addressing the causes of our vulnerability. I think in particular of children’s care (where in the case of complex families troubles the context is always one of uncertainty) and care for the elderly.
‘when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right’
The authors argue that we need to turn to story-telling, what they call the ‘Narrative Paradigm’. Story telling helps us to marshal the information we do have and to make sense of a complex and confusing world that continues to change. Too often dismissed by the statisticians as anecdote or ‘bias’ Kay and King argue that in fact stories are a powerful way to work out ‘what is going on here’. The story making process is collaborative – stories are shared, they are a sort of team work – and good decisions are made in a social context, with others who bring diverse experience.
‘the prospect of new experiences – can be a source of joy, rather than despair
Many if not most people I work with experience radical uncertainty in the day to day – something policy makers have only recently become aware of and I have written about here. The traditional response – once this precarity is finally recognised – is to try and make further static adjustments to inflexible systems – add a bit to this benefit, a marginal adjustment to this service – rather than to think differently about flux and uncertainty and what is really needed.
‘uncertainty as delight’
I was drawn therefore to the authors’ discussion of uncertainty as delight: ‘the prospect of new experiences – a source of joy rather than despair’. The authors understand that it is not just nations that need an overarching narrative, communities and individuals need it too. They point as an example to the ‘secure reference narrative’ in Denmark – no fear of crippling medical bills, or dramatic losses of income if a job is lost – enables people to embrace risk, to try new things. Uncertainty becomes like the feeling we have when we discover something new on holiday.
As someone who has spent years trying to convince officials in the Treasury and elsewhere to ask different questions, to listen to stories and to work in new ways, I found this book compelling. I have written in Radical Help – borrowing on the work of Eddie Obeng – of how change requires methods that understand we are working in the fog (the mystery); of the need to constantly adjust our idea of what the problem is (‘what is going on here’) and how a widely shared story – such as the Wigan Deal or Barrow’s New Constellation – is the necessary starting point for any systemic change. I have long argued for the power of stories – for baggy, winding stories – where the differences between us are encompassed not smoothed out – as the starting point for good policy and I believe an embrace of this book would be a critical starting point for any real commitment to a generative economics of place.
There was however one thing about this book that irritated me beyond measure – not a single woman economist is referenced in the stories or the copious index. ‘Not many economists are women’, they note at one point reminding me of an interview with a mandarin I once read in the FT where, as a justification for the absence of women in key appointments, he explained that ‘not many of the chaps we know are women’. This gender bias limits arguments that could have been made and in particular many of the practical applications that the authors could have suggested.
Seven years ago, in the Chessboard and the Web, Anne-Marie Slaughter set out how many of the approaches Kay and King advocate could become new policy tools but no reference is made (although curiously the authors do cite a powerful Princeton commencement address). Carlota Perez’s work on historical narrative and its importance in understanding finance, industry and institutional development and decision making is not mentioned. Kate Raworth’s redrawing of many of the models the authors critique is passed over in silence. The work of Diane Elson and the Women’s Budget Group in the UK and Heather Boushey in the US would deepen the connections between household narratives and policy making, but is not mentioned. The work of Mariana Mazzucato would enable the authors to link their arguments to questions emerging from the current pandemic. I could go on.
But, when two establishment economists such as Kay and King recommend ditching the statistical models in favour of narrative, when they emphasise the role of our humanity in good decision making, it’s definitely a moment. Something is going on here.Leadership, Welfare StateHilary Cottam April 14, 2021
The following is the established format for referencing this article: Holling, C. S. 2004. From complex regions to complex worlds. Ecology and Society 9(1): 11. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss1/art11/ PerspectiveFrom Complex Regions to Complex WorldsC. S. Holling University of Florida AbstractIntroductionA Brief Summary of DiscoveriesFrom the Science of Change to the Politics of Change in a Complex WorldHow to Respond in a “Big Back Loop”Responses to this ArticleLiterature CitedABSTRACTPanarchy focuses on ecological and social systems that change abruptly. Panarchy is the process by which they grow, adapt, transform, and, in the end, collapse. These stages occur at different scales. The back loop of such changes is a critical time and presents critical opportunities for experiment and learning. It is when uncertainties arise and when resilience is tested and established. We now see changes on a global scale that suggest that we are in such a back loop. This article assesses the possibility of using the ideas that are central to panarchy, developed on a regional scale, to help explain the changes that are being brought about on a global scale by the Internet and by climate, economic, and geopolitical changes.KEY WORDS: adaptive cycles, change, complex systems, panarchy, transformation.Published: March 30, 2004
[Reprinting an 18MAR2009 P&P article that came up in conversation today. –HS]
“The back loop is the time of the Long Now,” writes Resilience Alliance founder Buzz Holling. It is a time “when each of us must become aware that he or she is a participant.”
“The trick is to treat the last ten thousand years as if it were last week, and the next ten thousand as if it were next week,” advises Stewart Brand in The Clock of the Long Now. “Such tricks confer advantage.”
Though Brand’s book precedes Holling’s “Complex Worlds” paper, their dialog runs pretty much like that. And the discussion turns on a pair of interrelated metaphors: panarchy and pace layering.
How Maxwell’s Demon Continues to Startle Scientists
The thorny thought experiment has been turned into a real experiment — one that physicists use to probe the physics of information.
I got to this from the wonderful Harish Jose thanks to this one reference to cybernetics:
Heidegger: Not in the sense of philosophy — not any more.30 The role of philosophy in the past has been taken ever today by the sciences. For a satisfactory clarification of the “efficacy” of [philosophical] thinking we would have to analyze in greater depth what in this case “efficacy” and “having an effect” can mean. Here we would need fundamental distinctions bctwen”occasion,” “stimulus,” “challenge,” “assistance,” “hinderancc” and “cooperation,” once we have sufficiently analyzed the “principle of ground [‘sufficient reason’].” Philosophy [today] dissolves into individual sciences: psychology, logic, political science.
SPIEGEL: And what now takes the place of philosophy?
Heidegger: Cybernetics.
…However, it is also a nice introduction (for me, who hasn’t read a lot of Heidegger, but has heard a lot of second-hand discourse) to (apart from the Nazism allegations) ‘technicity’ and a lot of other thinking whereby you can see the connections to AI, (counter)accelerationism, etc.
Martin Heidegger, “Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten,” Der Spiegel 30 (Mai, 1976): 193-219. Trans. by W. Richardson as “Only a God Can Save Us” in Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker (1981), ed. T. Sheehan, pp. 45-67.
“Only a God Can Save Us”: The Spiegel Interview (1966)
Martin Heidegger
Although Heidegger was one of the seminal thinkers of the twentieth century, few such men of his time were criticized more severely or resented more bitterly than he. Much of this criticism arose because of an association with the Nazis while Rector of the University of Freiburg, 1933-34, one that publicly he neither reputhated, justified, nor explained. In 1966 the editors of the German news weekly, Der Spiegel, requested of Heidegger an interview to discuss these issues. In granting the interview, which took place on September 23, 1966, Heidegger insisted that it remain unpublished during his lifetime. (It appeared in Der Spiegel on May 31, 1976, five days after his death.) Its substance goes far beyond the personal issues involved and rephrases his entire philosophical experience. He saw this as an opportunity to meditate upon the meaning of Being, particularly under the guise that most profoundly characterizes contemporary culture — labeled by him “technicity” (die Technik). In these terms the interview takes on the quality of a last will and testament.
In the translation which follows I have inserted the pagination of the German publication, Der Spiegel, Nr. 23 (1976), 193-219, directly into the text in brackets. I was assisted in historical matters by the researches of Dr. Kurt Maier of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York City.
You know that narrative ‘the world is getting faster and more complex and uncertain than ever before’? I’ve always been deeply suspicious of it, not least because it has been being said since *at least* the 1950s, and the pace of complexification in the second world war was something I think it is hard to see even today.
However, I’ve now found my own version of it thanks to a twitter in-joke and Stuart Kauffman – a version I’m happy with, for now.
Wicked problems, reductive tendency, and the formation of (non-)opportunity beliefs
September 2019Journal of Business Venturing 35(3):105966
DOI:10.1016/j.jbusvent.2019.105966
Authors:
David Gras
Michael Conger
Miami University
Anna Jenkins
The University of Queensland
Michael Gras
Systems approach and cybernetics; engaging in the future of mankind.
The significance of systems and cybernetics in the future of societies. Invitation for active participation
Increasingly, people and institutions are recognizing the systemic nature of our world and the relevance of systemic thinking as a foundation to deal with the complexity of technological, social, environmental and economic issues. With the support of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), the World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics (WOSC) is organising its 18 th Congress- WOSC 2021, planned for the 27 th to the 30 th of September 2021, in Moscow, Russia, On-line. In this Congress, we are particularly addressing young and creative researchers who are willing to develop and share cyber-systemic perspectives on how to understand and manage the future of mankind. The Congress mission driven by requisite variety (Ashby) and the notion that transdisciplinary research can only be achieved supporting researchers from all disciplines to integrate their work in an enabling environment. For this purpose, WOSC 2021 is focusing on the following four themes:
Philosophical and methodological foundations for the development of the systems approach and cybernetics
Interactions in society: the cybernetics of society, ecology and governance
On digital technologies and human interactions: the co-development of a hybrid reality
Transdisciplinarity of systems sciences and cybernetics: developing areas of knowledge
WOSC 2021 Congress site 27-29. Sept 2021 in Moscow, Russia WOSC, RAS AUTHORS GUIDELINES In WOSC 2021, we will use a 3 step publishing process will be used, enabling you to share and discuss your research with peers, aiming to improve it. Step 1: Submission intention Please express an intention to submit an abstract before the 1.5.2021 by creating a WOSC 2021 account. Step 2. Abstract submission Researchers, managers, policy-makers, professionals and students across the globe are invited to submit structured abstracts of about 500 to 800 words (see abstract/paper template), addressing the Congress themes by the 10. 6.
Authors should receive a response within 14 days of submission (and no later than the 30. 6. 2021). All accepted abstracts will be published in the Congress book of abstracts. Step 3. Full congress paper submission Registered authors with an accepted abstract may submit a full congress paper by 31. 8. 2021. Full congress papers should not exceed 3500 words (see abstract/paper template). In step 2 peers may suggest to authors ideas about how to deal with the proposed research issues, before their acceptance for presentation to the Congress. At the congress, authors will present their contributions. There will be a best paper award at the Congress, which will include acknowledgments of contributions to final paper’s preparation. Basic submission rules
Authors should make sure that the language of their papers meets the required standards.
Authors can submit one paper per registration. For submission of a second paper, discounted registration rates apply.
Authors are responsible for ensuring that their manuscripts are ethically sound and meet the recognised standards, according to the author publishing ethics guide. Submission For the submission please use the abstract/paper template with detailed author guidelines. You may start the submission process by creating a WOSC 2021 account.
WOSC 2021 Congress site 27-29. Sept 2021 in Moscow, Russia WOSC, RAS Information for Authors who submitted to WOSC 2020: COVID-19 made it impossible to run WOSC 2020 last year, however this year we are running on line the WOSC 2021 event. We apologise to authors who made a submission to WOSC 2020 because we will not be running it as originally planned. Regretfully, global and local situations have altered significantly the circumstances of our research focus and we are running WOSC 2021 with different themes and sessions, something that has significantly affected the Congress´s focus and structure. These changes are providing us the opportunity to discuss fresh research results and generate new ideas. Accordingly, we invite you to send to WOSC 2021 a submission with your more recent research progress. In any case, should you want to receive back your originally submission, please, write to info@WOSC2020.org. Publications Accepted abstracts will be published in the electronic WOSC2021 Congress book of abstracts. A selection of congress full papers will be published in a Springer Nature book. Additionally WOSC congresses are well recognised by the publishers and, accepted and delivered papers to the Congress, will have the option to be submitted either as short papers or as fully developed papers for special issues of a scientific journals. Several international and national, regular or strictly open access scientific journals, indexed in Thomson JCR, Scopus RISC, VAK and others are interested in publishing these papers. More about these possible publications will be discussed on the WOSC2021 web site. Submissions to journals follow their individual editorial policies. Special issues of selected journals and papers are expected to be published during 2022.
WOSC 2021 Congress site 27-29. Sept 2021 in Moscow, Russia WOSC, RAS Participants’ registration to WOSC 2021 will be initiated by their abstract submission to the website and selection of sections of their choice. This will be followed by the preparation of papers and discussions during WOSC 2021 Congress. Registration: Participant early bird regular Regular 125,00 € 150,00 € discounted 50,00 € 80,00 € If you would like to receive a pro forma invoice or would like to apply for a discounted registration fee, please create your account at the WOSC 2021 Congress site and write to info@WOSC2020.org, We shall provide a response with registration details as authors submit their abstracts by the 10.6.2021. Participants will automatically receive regular payment details and an invoice after the acceptance of their abstracts.
VENUE: Due to Covid-19 related circumstances WOSC 2021 Congress will take place on-line. IMPORTANT DATES 10 June 2021: Abstract Submission deadline 30 June 2021: Notification of acceptance 31 August 2021: Congress full papers submission deadline and
Early bird registration deadline
15 September 2021: Congress full papers review deadline 27 September 2021: Revised congress full papers submission deadline and
Registration deadline for authors
27-30 September 2021: WOSC 2021 Congress You may find additional information at WOSC 2021 Congress site Get in contact at info@WOSC2020.org your WOSC 2021 team
Whatever happens we still intend to go ahead with The Complexity and Management Conference 2021 4-6thJune -The Complexity of Practice, withProfessor Hari Tsoukasas our key note speaker. So will the introductory workshop on complex responsive processes of relating on Friday 4thJune.
Previously we have been planning either for a face-to-face event, or to go online. However, it seems most likely that some will be able to make it and others will be prevented from coming. So to allow for both modes of participation simulataneously we are now organising for a hybrid event.
If you would still like to attend the conference in person the University booking site is openhere. You will be asked to pay a deposit and then pay a second time to make up the full fee. In the event of our going online we will refund you…
Systems Community of Inquiry 
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