Cybernetics Society: CybSights Events

Enterprise fractals & hierarchical branching—CybSights: President’s Series

Wed,Feb10,2021,5:00PMRegister

Description

Hosted by our President, Dr. John Beckford FCybS, the CybSights President’s Series is a new programme that will bring interesting people together to explore the relevance and contribution of cybernetics to addressing important challenges.

Each event will consist of contributions by two different speakers. Each will be followed by individual Q&A. These are then brought together by the President in a lively and engaging plenary discussion. Each will seek areas of convergence and divergence between the ideas explored.

Events will be held via Zoom on the 2nd Wednesday of each month from 1700 to 1900.

Meetings are open to members of the Cybernetics Society and also the general public. Non-members are invited to join or give a donation. Booking is required.

The Cybernetics Society has been hosting conversations and lectures since the late 1960s.

#PS5 : February 10 2021: Fractal and branching designs & their relevance to business, society, and ecology

This event continues the exploration of the relevance of cybernetics to the contemporary world with contributions both theoretically practical and practically theoretical. The purpose of this series is not just to provide answers but to test whether the right questions are being asked.

FIRST SPEAKER: Patrick Hoverstadt

Cybernetics in Systems: A practitioner’s perspective

Patrick Hoverstadt will talk about how much easier it has become to use systemic cybernetic approaches with clients over the last 25 years. He’ll talk about some of the tricks and pitfalls of communicating and working with clients who don’t have a background in systems, where to use systems and cybernetics and why it matters now more than ever to make these approaches more accessible. The talk will cover some of the classical stances practitioners take, and the effects our positioning choices have.

Patrick Hoverstadt

Patrick Hoverstadt has been a consultant using systems and cybernetics for 26 years working with around 100 client organisations on over 250 systems projects. Clients range from micro businesses to multi-nationals and projects at whole sector and national levels. He is the chair of SCiO the professional body for systems practitioners and has developed a number of systemic approaches including a systemic/cybernetic approach to strategy development and execution.

Followed by brief Q & A

SECOND SPEAKER: David Dewhurst, FCybS, Vice-President of the Cybernetics Society

Strategies for being a tree and related branching systems (0th order cybernetics?) as more conservative!

David tackles some important questions on the notion of hierarchy, teasing us with these challenges:

• If each reader first ponders why trees are tree shaped for perhaps a day before reading further, we will generate more insights.
• How far will the simplest fractal + randomness get you?
• Why are branching structures ubiquitous – family trees, information processing and so on?
• As trees do not occupy the whole universe what are their downsides?

A concrete outcome of this discussion might be a greater respect and contempt for hierarchies.

David Dewhurst, FCybS

David has worked as a jobbing gardener and advocates his neoliberal gardening system in order to save the planet, and time. His (nuanced) support for Hayek when writing about Occupy’s economic policies in the FT was described by George Osborne as ‘surreal’. His 29 other occupations include teaching from University to Nursery, Headship, Ofsted Inspector, Management Consultant, Cleaner @ Tesco, Management Traineeship, Trainee Clinical Psychologist ten years on the Governing Body of Brunel University and doorstep salesman. In the film ’24 Davids’ released on line last year he comes in at number 13 (56 to 64 minutes) where he is characterised even less accurately than in this summary. He hopes to remain Vice President of the Cybernetics Society until 2022.

Plenary Discussion

The aim of this session, moderated by John Beckford, is to draw out the complementary and competing ideas emerging from the two sessions.

book at source:

Cybernetics Society: CybSights Events

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Systemspedia

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

2nd Edition, as published by Charles François 2004 Presented by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science Vienna for public access. 

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics 2nd Edition, as published by Charles François 2004 Presented by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science Vienna for public access. About

Systemspedia

Training providers for Systems thinking practitioner (level 7)

Training providers for Systems thinking practitioner (level 7)

At time of writing, five providers are listed – two have live website listings:

https://www.cranfield.ac.uk/courses/taught/systems-thinking-practice

35-minute video from four of the moderators of the Ecology of Systems Thinking Group on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/ecologyofsystemsthinking)

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Metaphorum Webinar Series – metaphorum

Metaphorum Webinar Series

 WEBINAR SERIES

2020-2021

(Artwork from Vanilla Beer) – see source page

Dear Metaphorum members

As announced in our recent Newsletter, it is a pleasure for us to launch our new Metaphorum webinar series with the first confirmed program of speakers for the next few months. Our intention with this Webinar Series is to maintain an active community of learning, where members can share their most recent contributions to theory or practice, and get feedback and critical reviews from fellow cyberneticians and systems researchers or practitioners.

All sessions are on Wednesdays from 5 to 6 pm (UK time).  The speaker will present in the first 30 min and then there will be 30 minutes for the participants to engage with the speaker. If the speaker agrees, we will make all presentations available in the Metaphorum website.

If you want to participate in any of the webinars, follow this link confirming which webinars you’d like to participate.  

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1n9YyZlJf1Xe3R9smAGojiOKmSsIqjTw7YESnF2Ctsvw/prefill

You can include as many webinars as you’d like in the form -. There is no cost to attend the webinars for Metaphorum members.

Looking forward to have you with us in this webinars’ series.

Angela Espinosa, Allenna Leonard and Jon Walker

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Metaphorum Webinar Series – metaphorum

Viable Tribes: Jonathan Huxley

The Soul of the Viable System Model: Mike Jackson – 3 February 2021

The Neo-Cybernetic Synthesis: Ashby’s True Legacy: Manel Pretel-Wilson

Dr. Barry Clemson & Dr. Hans-Peter Plag:Monitoring the health of riverine systems

Dr. Steve Morlidge: ‘The VSM in 2020 – more relevant than ever?’

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Final Report – The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – GOV.UK

Independent report

Final Report – The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review

Final Report of the Independent Review on the Economics of Biodiversity led by Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta.Published 2 February 2021From:HM Treasury

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Final Report – The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review – GOV.UK

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Three complexity principles for convergence research – Integration and Implementation Insights

Three complexity principles for convergence research

February 4, 2021

By Gemma Jiang

How can principles adapted from complexity thinking be applied to convergence research? How can such principles help integrate knowledge, methods, and expertise from different disciplines to form novel frameworks that catalyze scientific discovery and innovation?

I present three principles from the complexity paradigm that are highly relevant to convergence research. I then describe three types of transformative containers that I have developed to create enabling conditions for applying complexity principles to convergence.

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Three complexity principles for convergence research – Integration and Implementation Insights

what do we think of this? Source:

Adrian Bejan – Constructal Law | Duke Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

Adrian Bejan – Constructal Law

The constructal law was stated by Duke’s Adrian Bejan in 1996

The constructal law is the law of physics that accounts for the phenomenon of evolution (configuration, form, design) throughout nature, inanimate flow systems and animate systems together.

The constructal law was stated by Adrian Bejan, the J.A. Jones Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Duke University, in 1996 as follows ^1,2:

“For a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it.”

THE CONSTRUCTAL LAW—ADRIAN BEJAN

The constructal law places the concepts of life, evolution, design and performance in physics, which is in the broadest scientific arena. The constructal law is the law of physics of life and evolution^3-5.

The constructal law accounts for the arrow of time⁶, which is the direction of the evolution of flow organization over time. It is receiving wide acceptance in the scientific literature.

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Adrian Bejan – Constructal Law | Duke Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

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Learning With Humility: Systems Thinking and Reordering Priorities (Global Change Days, 2020/10/22) – Coevolving Innovations

Learning With Humility: Systems Thinking and Reordering Priorities (Global Change Days, 2020/10/22)

 February 2, 2021  daviding 0 Comments

For the third of three workshops by the Systems Changes Learning Circle in October 2020, Kelly Okamura, Dan Eng and Joanne Dong led a Beacon Event for Global Change Days.

This session was one in a series for global changemakers.  Our expectation was that they would be hands-on practitioners, with relatively low familiarity with systems thinking methods and theory.

The workshop orientations were relatively short, with most of the time dedicated to two breakout periods.   In the web video, the plenary discussions and group readouts are included, with the parallel breakout conversations omitted.

The video file is accessible on the Internet Archive, should viewers want a downloadable version.

The digital audio is available as MP3 for those with mobile players.

Here is the original description for the session.

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This interactive beacon session will engage change makers to think differently, to explore their relationship to learning.

The breakout sessions will provide participants an opportunity to explore the Systems Thinking questions: the urgent vs the important, the local vs. the distant, problem solving vs history-making. Finally the audience will be invited to review their self-reflections and the potential re-ordering of their priorities, to make a difference.

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Workshop attendees were quite engaged with the challenge of making distinctions that we’ve been discussing within the Systems Changes Learning Circle.  Mentions of the systems thinking foundations were kept light.  Towards the close of the session, we pointed to the foundational work ahead, and invited the practitioners to contact us if they felt complementary interests.

Slides are available at systemschanges.com .

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Learning With Humility: Systems Thinking and Reordering Priorities (Global Change Days, 2020/10/22) – Coevolving Innovations

How To Choose Systems Methods | Barry A Clemson – Academia.edu

How To Choose Systems Methods

Barry A Clemson

This paper builds on David Alman’s (2012) Systems Thinking World LinkedIn discussion “How do I figure out which System thinking method or model is appropriate to the situation I’m trying to figure out how to deal with?” In this paper I restrict myself to social systems, e.g. organizations, tribes, grassroots movements and regions such as communities or nations. The problem is reformulated to reflect some fundamental constraints.

I then discuss five commonly used approaches to selecting methods:

1. Intuitive,

2. Action Research,

3. Heuristics,

4. Developing Viability, and

5. Rational Decision Framework.

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How To Choose Systems Methods | Barry A Clemson – Academia.edu

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A Great Event Foreshadowed: The Planetization of Mankind – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

A GREAT EVENT FORESHADOWED: THE PLANETIZATION OF MANKINDPierre Teilhard de ChardinDecember 25, 1945
   Click here to see all 15 quotes from this document.
Written in Peking in December 1945. Published in the August-September 1946 edition of Cahiers du Monde Nouveau with the title La planétisation humaine. PREVIOUS IN SERIES

ARGUMENT

Underlying all the surface-changes of present-day history, the reality and paramount importance of a single basic event is becoming daily more manifest: namely, the rise of the masses, with its natural corollary, the socialization of Mankind. The supreme interest and significance of this process lies in the fact that, scientifically analyzed, it may be seen to be irresistible in two ways: in the planetary sense, because it is associated with the closed shape of the earth, the mechanics of generation and the psychic properties of human matter; and in the cosmic sense because it is the expression and prolongation of the primordial process whereby, at the uttermost extreme from the disintegrating atom, psychic force is born into the Universe and continuously grows, fostered by the ever more complicated grouping of matter. Projected forwards, this law of recurrence makes it possible for us to envisage a future state of the Earth in which human consciousness, reaching the climax of its evolution, will have attained a maximum of complexity, and, as a result, of concentration by total ‘reflection’ (or planetization) of itself upon itself.

Although our individualistic instincts may rebel against this drive towards the collective, they do so in vain and wrongly. In vain, because no power in the world can enable us to escape from what is in itself the power of the world. And wrongly because the real nature of this impulse that is sweeping us towards a state of super-organization is such as to make us more completely personalized and human.

The very fact of our becoming aware of this profound ordering of things will enable human collectivization to pass beyond the enforced phase, where it now is, into the free phase: that in which (men having at last understood that they are inseparably joined elements of a converging Whole, and having learnt in consequence to love the preordained forces that unite them) a natural union of affinity and sympathy will supersede the forces of compulsion.

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A Great Event Foreshadowed: The Planetization of Mankind – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

c/o Ivo Velitchkov

full chapter in source:

Towards a Calculus of Redundancy | SpringerLink

The Evolutionary Dynamics of Discursive Knowledge pp 67-86| Cite as

Towards a Calculus of Redundancy

• Loet Leydesdorff

First Online: 01 January 2021

• Part of the Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of Scientific and Scholarly Communication book series (QQASSC)

Abstract

In this chapter, I extend Shannon’s linear model of communication into a model in which communication is differentiated both vertically and horizontally (Simon, 1973). Following Weaver (1949), three layers are distinguished operating in relation to one another: (i) at level A, the events are sequenced historically along the arrow of time, generating Shannon-type information (that is, uncertainty); (ii) the incursion of meanings at level B is referential to (iii) horizons of meaning spanned by codes in the communication at level C. In other words, relations at level A are first distinguished from correlations among patterns of relations and non-relations at level B. The correlations span a vector space on top of the network of relations. Relations are positioned in this vector space and can then be provided with meaning. Different positions provide other perspectives and horizons of meaning. Perspectives can overlap, for example, in Triple-Helix relations. Overlapping perspectives can generate redundancies—that is, new options—as a result of synergies.

The chapter is partly based on: Leydesdorff, L., Johnson, M., & Ivanova, I. (2018). Toward a Calculus of Redundancy: Signification, Codification, and Anticipation in Cultural Evolution. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 69(10), 1181–1192. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24052

full chapter in source:

Towards a Calculus of Redundancy | SpringerLink

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Action Research: Its Foundations in Open Systems Thinking and Relationship to the Scientific Method | Tim Haslett – Academia.edu

Action Research: Its Foundations in Open Systems Thinking and Relationship to the Scientific Method

Tim Haslett2009, Systemic Practice and Action Research329 Views14 Pages2 Files ▾Open systems theory,Fred EmeryShow more ▾This paper considers those interpretations of action research that can be traced to Kurt Lewin at the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the University of Michigan, and the work in social ecology by Emery and Trist at the Tavistock Institute. It locates the logical basis of these interpretations in the philosophy of pragmatism, particularly as it relates to Peirce’s inferential logic and inquiry system. Drawing on this argument, and on the significant developments in approaches to systemic thinking over the past 40–50 years, a normative set of criteria is established for action research. The paper concludes that both positivist science (which relates to closed systems thinking) and action research (which relates to open systems thinking) are essential to any complete scientific approach.

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Action Research: Its Foundations in Open Systems Thinking and Relationship to the Scientific Method | Tim Haslett – Academia.edu

book via: https://creative-systemic.eventbrite.ca.

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Systems Thinking Ontario – 2021-02-08

February 8 (the second Monday of the month) is the 87th meeting for Systems Thinking Ontario. The registration is on Eventbrite at https://creative-systemic.eventbrite.ca.

Creative Systemic Research

There is variety in schools of thought across the systemic design community. Many approach from a top-down, abstract predisposition of a world that might be. An alternative approach builds from the bottom-up, in a longitudinal appreciation of the learning in which communities develop resilience.

The Creative Systemic Research Platform (CSRP) Institute leads with the bottom-up, longitudinal perspective. It aims to nurture localized scholarly communities, distributed across multiple peri-urban regional geographies. The work of mapping and investigating emerging economies is informed by activities that include creative expression in social complexity that produces communal well-being.

The CSRP Institute incorporated in late 2020 in an Italian Swiss canton. The initial practice base is at a farm in Terre d’Ebre, Spain. These locations provide opportunities to explore practices in smaller communities and terrains, in relation with historic land use and cultural wisdom.

The co-presidents of the CSRP Institute are Susu Nousala and Jelena Sucic.

• Susu Nousala as a professor with the College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University, Shanghai (People’s Republic of China). She has previously had research positions at Aalto University (Finland), University of Melbourne (Australia), and Chiang Mai University (Thailand).
• Jelena Sucic is a researcher in systemic design and sustainable processes based in Switzerland. She previously led as the field specialist and project manager in the nascent research group, as she completed a double degree in the PoliTong project, completing a Master of Fine Arts in Product Service Service Design at Tongi University, simultaneously with a Master of Science in Systemic Design at Politecnico di Torino.

Susu and Jelena will be joining us in conversation via web conference, at significant time disadvantage. (At 6pm ET, they will start at midnight in Finland and Switzerland).

Venue:

• The link for a Zoom conference will be sent upon preregistration.
• Unfortunately, due to the pandemic OCADU, sLab (Strategic Innovation Lab), 205 Richmond Street West, Room 410 is not available!

Suggested pre-reading:

Related to Creative Systemic Research

• Nousala, Susu, Kim Blanca Galindo, David Romero, Xin Feng, and Pedro Aibeo. 2020. “Systemic Preconditions and Ontological Modeling for Peri-Urban Communities.” Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development (ahead-of-print). https://doi.org/10.1108/JCHMSD-05-2020-0074.
• Sucic, Jelena, Susu Nousala, and Pier Paolo Peruccio. 2019. “Introduction to: The Value of Living Systems Beyond a Price.” Art and Design 2 (3): 66. https://doi.org/10.31058/j.ad.2019.22009.

Agenda in source

Post-meeting artifacts

Bloggers are encouraged to write about their learning and experiences at the meeting. Links will be added to this page.

book via https://creative-systemic.eventbrite.ca.

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Systems Thinking Ontario – 2021-02-08