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New Titles and Bestsellers
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Important information for customers in the EU
Because of Brexit and other stupidity, we strongly recommend that you buy any book in ebook format. This can then be delivered without shipping costs and customs/import duties. (At checkout, be sure to select ‘No postage on ebooks’.

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If your postal administration tries to charge you VAT, contact them to say that it has already been paid via our IOSS account.
If necessary we can send you, or your postal administration, confirmation of this. Just ask us by emailing: admin@triarchypress.net
HOWEVER, you may still be charged import/customs duty by your country’s tax/customs authorities. We cannot predict or pay this duty for you.

If you want to order a printed book, it will almost certainly be cheaper and easier to order it from amazon.

New Titles & Bestsellers – Triarchy Press

https://www.triarchypress.net/bestsellers.html

[On Medium but not Member-only, I don’t think]

Aidan Ward

GentlySerious

The veil of numbersAidan Ward·FollowingPublished inGentlySerious

The veil of numbers. Numbers are now mostly used to mislead… | by Aidan Ward | GentlySerious | Jan, 2025 | Medium

Dan Davies

Jan 13, 2025

VOL. VIII: CYBERNETICSTaming the unaccountability machine“Public choice cybernetics” for the 21st century.DAN DAVIESJAN 13, 2025

Taming the unaccountability machine – by Dan Davies

Rest of the publication via:

https://hypertext.niskanencenter.org/

Dr Michael C Jackson OBE

Emeritus Professor, University of Hull, UK

link:

‘Critical Systems Thinking: A Practitioner’s Guide’ (Wiley, 2024)

https://www.patternlanguage.com/apl/direct-159.htm?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Conciser:

https://claytondorge.com/patterns-list

MAY 22-23, 2025 | NATIONAL AUTONOMOUS UNIVERSITY OF MEXICO | MEXICO CITY, MEXICO

SUBMISSIONS: [https://anticipation.philcomp.org](https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fanticipation.philcomp.org%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR0VEHQWNhL_M0roATyMuogAD55Es1l0rP8yyBIKuYp_Psr-lJqiqj_LZH4_aem_9FxptNnP_dAl0NoUH_FAvA&h=AT2TrmOEt03rw2OpgnujUqEnMhLDiHvXDakotYOMvPkEY-rL1ZFYZ5POSEcMucvDc-840Vg78eoWRiz2N1JwMgJf1DRLuS60RSAYMsyLXOYUIX-5SWf0vkM1nKwiy9PITGgPXzFxBlhwE5RfOK26dLR0Gw&__tn__=-UK*F)

May 22-23, 2025 | National Autonomous University of Mexico | Mexico City, Mexico

The National Autonomous University of Mexico, via its Research Group on Philosophy of Computing, is proud to invite you to participate in the International Conference on Anticipatory Systems and Rosennean Complexity.

Inaugurated by Dr. Robert Rosen, Anticipatory Systems Theory deals with how systems with the ability to anticipate model and act on future states. This conference aims to address anticipation in its many forms, including its philosophical, biological, cognitive, and technological dimensions. This year (2025) will also mark the 40th anniversary of the original publication of Rosen’s “Anticipatory Systems: Philosophical, Mathematical, and Methodological Foundations”, an occasion that we shall celebrate in our conference.

This conference is focused on Robert Rosen’s ideary and notions of life, complexity, modeling, and mind. For the International Conference on Anticipation, first organized by Dr. Roberto Poli on 2015, please refer to this link.

In this first edition, attendance will be free of charge.

We welcome contributions in, but not limited to, the following areas:

Philosophy of Science: Exploring the epistemological and metaphysical underpinnings of anticipatory systems, as well as their current and future role in scientific explanation.

Cognitive Science: Investigating the role of anticipation in contemporary, non-mechanistic cognitive science.

Theoretical Biology: Understanding life through the lenses of relational biology and Rosen’s anticipatory systems.

Foundational Mathematics of Relational Biology: Advancing formal frameworks for understanding organisms.

Complex Systems: Examining the role of anticipation in dynamic, nonlinear systems, as well as in emergent behaviour.

Medicine: Applying anticipation to predictive diagnostics, personalized treatment, and healthcare systems.

Artificial Intelligence: Studying anticipatory artificial intelligent systems, as well as their ethical and practical implications.

Climate Crisis: Leveraging anticipatory systems theory as strategy to address challenges related to climate change, including mitigation, adaptation, and sustainability.

Presentation Modalities

Participants may choose from the following presentation formats:

Oral Presentations: 25-minute talks followed by a 5-minute Q&A session, designed for sharing significant findings or conceptual advancements.

Panel Discussions: Collaborative sessions featuring 3-5 panelists addressing a specific topic related to anticipation, with a moderator facilitating audience interaction.

Workshops: Interactive, hands-on sessions aimed at exploring specific tools, methods, or approaches to anticipation in depth.

Important Dates

Abstract Submission Deadline: February 28, 2025

Notification of Acceptance: March 10, 2025.

Venue & accommodation

This conference will be an in-person event to be celebrated in the Central Campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, in Mexico City (Mexico). Nearby hotels and other accommodation recomendations will be sent to all accepted authors.

Proceedings book

We will gladly organize a collaborative volume to be published in an open access journal if the participating authors show enough interest. This will be discussed during the conference.

SUBMISSIONS: [https://anticipation.philcomp.org](https://anticipation.philcomp.org/…)

1st International Conference on Anticipation

Short Course #3: Applied Systems Science for Equity and Injury and Violence Prevention

Accelerating equity necessitates elevating and integrating empirical evidence, practice-based evidence, and lived experience into our research, practice, and policies. The success of injury and violence prevention (IVP) is predicated on multisectoral collaboration; yet facilitating a process that includes rigor and allows for the development of trust, consensus building, and developing a shared language across diverse sectors (e.g., law enforcement, school system, hospitals, universities) is difficult.

Systems thinking is an approach that underscores the value of diverse perspectives to understand the social and structural drivers of an outcome of interest. Two helpful systems tools to achieve this are group model building (GMB) and causal loop diagramming (CLD). GMB is a qualitative, collaborative, systems thinking method that allows participants to collectively discuss complex problems and build resulting qualitative and quantitative models describing interrelationships among multilevel factors driving the problems over time. The collaborative nature of GMB allows for cultural responsiveness to be incorporated into the discussions. The discussions, which reference data and lived experience, are then translated into qualitative CLDs to identify potential intervention points to prevent and disrupt IVP.

Through a mixture of hands-on learning and didactic presentation, this course will teach participants how to use systems thinking to engage diverse perspectives in their efforts to achieve collective goals of equity and IVP. More specifically, participants will learn and apply the fundamentals of GMB and collectively construct a CLD.

Instructors: Belinda-Rose Young, Sable Watson, University of North Carolina Injury Prevention Research Center

link:

SAVIR 2025 Annual Conference

Virtual Event

irtual Book Tour: Multisolving – Creating Systems Change in a Fractured WorldJANUARY 15 @ 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM ESTVirtual Event

Virtual Book Tour: Multisolving – Creating Systems Change in a Fractured World – System Dynamics Society

Tutorials: Basics | Links | Subsystems

Launch SOCKit!

SOCKit is an interactive, dynamic, web-based tool for creating and exploring concept maps. Use simple, intuitive gestures to add concepts and link them together. The whole concept map responds when you move things around, making it easy to rearrange and organize, and it works great on mobile devices.

Concepts are connected by labeled links with arrows. Related concepts can be grouped into subsystems, which helps users divide complex systems into more manageable chunks. Subsystems also express the limits of the system being explored, and help to promote “systems thinking”. 

Diagrams can be downloaded as .socme files, and later reloaded into the SOCKit web page. Diagrams can also be exported as graphics, in SVG and PNG formats.

The System-Oriented Concept Map Extension, or SOCME, is an approach to concept mapping that promotes and facilitates systems thinking. SOCKit’s “subsystem” features are designed with SOCMEs in mind.

SOCKit was developed as part of IUPAC Project 2020-014-3-050.

SOCKitAn easy-to-use tool for creating and exploring concept-maps in your browser.Tutorials: Basics | Links | Subsystems

SOCKit: SOCME Online Construction Kit – KCVS

Post:

Here’s a little Systems Seeing adventure for the new year. The idea is sketch-journaling to better understand the situations we’re in, and care about.
If that is interesting to you, this “starter kit” offers prompts to help get that practice going. There are prompts and “containers” to structure quick and varied investigations. (It overlaps with the 2024 edition, so if you did that, scan for diffs.)

Link to the full System Seeing Starter Kit (pdf) in the comments.

Ruth MalanRuth Malan • Following • FollowingArchitecture Consultant at Bredemeyer ConsultingArchitecture Consultant at Bredemeyer Consulting3d • 3 days agoHere’s a little Systems Seeing adventure for the new year. The idea is sketch-journaling to better understand the situations we’re in, and care about.If that is interesting to you, this “starter kit” offers prompts to help get that practice going. There are prompts and “containers” to structure quick and varied investigations. (It overlaps with the 2024 edition, so if you did that, scan for diffs.)Link to the full System Seeing Starter Kit (pdf) in the comments.

(3) Post | Feed | LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7282070530961141761/

System Seeing Starter Kit (pdf): https://www.ruthmalan.com/systems/2025SystemSeeingJournal.pdf

[Already a favourite new podcast, the episode with Evan Thompson was recommended by Ivo Velitchkov today, but I started with this episode, which is inspiring. See also episode with Karl Friston]

Christopher Alexander, Pattern Language, and Place Release

Christopher Alexander, Pattern Language, and Place Release — Love & Philosophy

https://loveandphilosophy.com/beyond-dichotomy-podcast/christopher-alexander-pattern-language-and-place-release

This course is free to join on the FutureLearn platform. 

Link:

Systems Thinking – Social and Applied Ecology

A colleague has asked me this question – and there does seem to be room for systems dynamics and/or causal loop diagrams – and indeed the good old ‘archetypes’ – to describe unproductive public policy and implementation.

I see some of something like this in an economics context – usually on Twitter – discussing topics like ‘rent control’, congestion charging etc (but rarely in a formal SD sense).

I recall it being really used in the unpublished drafts of the Monroe Review of child protection – only some of which made it to the published.

I suspect there is some material out there – in Kumu, Medium, Substack, RSD Conference proceedings maybe? And there is certainly some use of this kind of mapping in international development, education (both Linda Booth Sweeney and John Raven’s work on his website and RC51)…, public health – childhood obesity famously, COINTEL of course….

I did a pointed prompt to my own slightly-trained ChatGPT but didn’t quite get nice juicy examples (see below) – and I’ll reach out to some expert practitioners. Anyone got other examples to add?

__ChatGPT respnse__
System dynamics and causal loop diagrams (CLDs) have been applied to analyse public sector policies, revealing how certain interventions can be self-defeating. Here are concrete examples, focusing on recent UK public services:

1. Energy Transition in Tees Valley, UK (2022):
– Study: Researchers developed a qualitative causal loop diagram to understand policy design challenges for a sustainable energy transition in the Tees Valley region.
– Findings: The CLD highlighted complexities in balancing job creation with decarbonisation efforts. Policies promoting renewable energy investments inadvertently risked job losses in traditional energy sectors, illustrating the “Fixes That Fail” archetype. (https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/8/4462)

2. Public Utility Policy in Cleveland, Ohio (1998):
– Study: A case study demonstrated the use of systems thinking and causal loop diagramming in developing public policy for Cleveland Public Power.
– Findings: The CLD revealed that certain competitive strategies led to unintended consequences, such as reduced service quality, embodying the “Fixes That Fail” archetype. (https://proceedings.systemdynamics.org/1998/PROCEED/00078.PDF)

3. UK Government’s Systems Thinking Toolkit (2021):
– Resource: The UK Government Office for Science published a toolkit introducing systems thinking tools, including causal loop diagrams, for civil servants.
– Application: The toolkit provides guidance on using CLDs to model policy problems, understand feedback loops, and anticipate unintended consequences in policy implementation. (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/systems-thinking-for-civil-servants/toolkit)

4. Policy Resistance and Systemic Mindset (1991):
– Analysis: A Department of Energy tutorial on system dynamics discussed how policy resistance occurs when a policy is applied to a system dominated by negative feedback processes, and the policy change does not alter the desired states of the negative loops. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep20101.10)

5. Implementation of Systems Thinking in Public Policy (2023):
– Review: A study investigated the state of systems thinking application in public policy, highlighting the value of systems thinking in decision- and policy-making within the government and civil service. (https://pure.strath.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/153163650/Nguyen_etal_Systems_2023_Implementation_of_systems_thinking_in_public_policy.pdf)

6. Systems Thinking in Policymaking (2023):
– Insight: An article discussed how systems thinking can be applied in policy design, emphasizing the importance of understanding complex systems to improve public services. (https://publicpolicydesign.blog.gov.uk/2023/09/08/systems-thinking-for-policymaking/)

Generative AI and Inquiring Systems: Ways of Patterning and Ways of Knowing | Systems Thinking Ontario | 2025-01-08

Generative AI and Inquiring Systems: Ways of Patterning and Ways of Knowing | Systems Thinking Ontario | 2025-01-08 – Coevolving Innovations