antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 4:46 pm on January 5, 2026

The cybernetic music of Bebe and Louis Barron – the score to Forbidden Planet (1956)

I learned about this from Imaginary Worlds podcast Episode 288: Music of a Forbidden Planet from Eric Molinsky

https://www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/episodes/music-of-a-forbidden-planet

The First Electronic Filmscore-Forbidden Planet: A Conversation with Bebe Barron

by Jane Brockman

The First Electronic Filmscore-Forbidden Planet: A Conversation with Bebe Barron

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bebe_and_Louis_Barron

From ChatGPT:

Forbidden Planet (1956) is one of the cleanest, most literal intersections of film music and cybernetics.

The connection in one line
Louis and Bebe Barron built and ‘performed’ cybernetic electronic circuits, inspired directly by Norbert Wiener’s cybernetics, and used the circuits’ feedback-driven behaviours to generate the entire electronic score for Forbidden Planet. Effectrode+1

Who the musicians were, and why they matter
The film’s ‘music’ (credited on-screen as ‘electronic tonalities’) was created by the composer-engineer couple Bebe Barron and Louis Barron. It is widely recognised as the first entirely electronic score for a major feature film. Wikipedia+1

They were not working like later synth composers who play stable instruments. They were building unstable systems and harvesting the sonic traces of those systems behaving, failing, and sometimes ‘dying’.

What ‘cybernetics’ meant in their studio (not metaphorically, but technically)
Cybernetics, in Wiener’s 1948 sense, is about control and communication in animals and machines, especially via feedback. JSTOR+1

The Barrons took that seriously, and operationalised it:

They built ‘cybernetic circuits’
They followed concepts and equations from Wiener’s Cybernetics (1948) to design bespoke electronic circuits for different themes and characters. Wikipedia+1
They treated circuits as quasi-organisms
They described their circuits as behaving like ‘lower life-forms’ with characteristic activity patterns and ‘voices’. In their own liner notes they emphasised that each circuit had its own behaviour, not just a timbre. Wikipedia
Feedback and instability were the sound source
They pushed circuits into overload, where feedback, oscillation, and breakdown generated complex, unpredictable outputs. Many circuits burned out, which meant sounds were often unrepeatable. So they recorded everything. Wikipedia+1

This is a cybernetic method: you set up a system with internal feedback loops, perturb it, observe how it responds, and then select results. It is composition via controlled emergence.

Why this is cybernetics rather than ‘just electronic music’
A lot of electronic music uses electronics as instruments.

The Barrons used electronics as systems with autonomous behaviour.

That distinction matters:

instrument model: human chooses notes; machine produces them predictably
cybernetic model: human sets conditions; machine produces behaviours; human curates and edits outputs

Their process looks like an early form of what we would now call generative or procedural sound design, except fully analogue, and with real physical failure modes.

How it shaped film music history (and why the credit matters)
The Musicians’ Union pushed MGM to avoid calling it ‘music’, so the Barrons were credited with ‘electronic tonalities’. This labour/definition conflict had real consequences: it helped block them from further Hollywood scoring work. Wikipedia+1

This is an important cybernetics-adjacent point: institutions defend existing categories to preserve stability. The Barrons produced a disturbance in the system (a new form of scoring), and the system compensated by relabelling it and excluding them.

The deeper connection: cybernetics inside the film’s story-world
Forbidden Planet is already a cybernetics-saturated film: control rooms, automation, feedback, and the ‘monster from the Id’ as an emergent product of a man-machine system.

The score is not just accompaniment. It is structurally aligned with the film’s themes because it is produced by the same conceptual machinery: humans interacting with autonomous systems that respond in ways you cannot fully predict. A scholarly analysis of the score explicitly reads its sound world through organism-machine hybrids and ecology, which is very much in the cybernetics lineage. JSTOR

A useful way to think about it (very Wiener, very Barron)
If you want the cybernetic punchline:

The Barrons composed by designing a feedback system, letting it behave, and then selecting the behaviours that best regulated the audience’s emotional state in the film.

That is control and communication, via sound, using actual cybernetic artefacts.

Jon Awbrey 10:10 am on January 1, 2026
Tags: C.S. Peirce ( 28 ), Connotation ( 11 ), Denotation ( 11 ), inquiry ( 18 ), logic ( 30 ), Logic of Relatives ( 15 ), Mathematics ( 29 ), Relation Theory ( 16 ), Semiosis ( 14 ), Semiotic Equivalence Relations ( 11 ), Semiotics ( 20 ), Sign Relations ( 18 ), Triadic Relations ( 17 )

Sign Relations • Semiotic Equivalence Relations 2

A few items of notation are useful in discussing equivalence relations in general and semiotic equivalence relations in particular.

In general, if $E$ is an equivalence relation on a set $X$ then every element $x$ of $X$ belongs to a unique equivalence class under $E$ called the equivalence class of $x$ under $E$ . Convention provides the square bracket notation for denoting such equivalence classes, in either the form $[x]_E$ or the simpler form $[x]$ when the subscript $E$ is understood. A statement that the elements $x$ and $y$ are equivalent under $E$ is called an equation or an equivalence and may be expressed in any of the following ways.

Thus we have the following definitions.

In the application to sign relations it is useful to extend the square bracket notation in the following ways. If $L$ is a sign relation whose connotative component $L_{SI}$ is an equivalence relation on $S = I,$ let $[s]_L$ be the equivalence class of $s$ under $L_{SI}.$ In short, $[s]_L = [s]_{L_{SI}}.$ A statement that the signs $x$ and $y$ belong to the same equivalence class under a semiotic equivalence relation $L_{SI}$ is called a semiotic equation (SEQ) and may be written in either of the following forms.

In many situations there is one further adaptation of the square bracket notation for semiotic equivalence classes which can be useful. Namely, when there is known to exist a particular triple $(o, s, i)$ in a sign relation $L,$ it is permissible to let $[o]_L$ be defined as $[s]_L.$ This lets the notation for semiotic equivalence classes harmonize more smoothly with the frequent use of similar devices for the denotations of signs and expressions.

Applying the array of equivalence notations to the sign relations for $A$ and $B$ will serve to illustrate their use and utility.

The semiotic equivalence relation for interpreter $\mathrm{A}$ yields the following semiotic equations.

In this way the SER for $\mathrm{A}$ induces the following semiotic partition.

The semiotic equivalence relation for interpreter $\mathrm{B}$ yields the following semiotic equations.

In this way the SER for $\mathrm{B}$ induces the following semiotic partition.

Taken all together we have the following picture.

Resources

Sign Relation • OEIS • MyWikiBiz • Wikiversity
Survey of Semiotics, Semiosis, Sign Relations

cc: Academia.edu • Laws of Form • Research Gate • Syscoi
cc: Cybernetics • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

#c-s-peirce, #connotation, #denotation, #inquiry, #logic, #logic-of-relatives, #mathematics, #relation-theory, #semiosis, #semiotic-equivalence-relations, #semiotics, #sign-relations, #triadic-relations

Jon Awbrey 12:08 pm on December 30, 2025
Tags: C.S. Peirce ( 28 ), Connotation ( 11 ), Denotation ( 11 ), inquiry ( 18 ), logic ( 30 ), Logic of Relatives ( 15 ), Mathematics ( 29 ), Relation Theory ( 16 ), Semiosis ( 14 ), Semiotic Equivalence Relations ( 11 ), Semiotics ( 20 ), Sign Relations ( 18 ), Triadic Relations ( 17 )

Sign Relations • Semiotic Equivalence Relations 1

A semiotic equivalence relation (SER) is a special type of equivalence relation arising in the analysis of sign relations. Generally speaking, any equivalence relation induces a partition of the underlying set of elements, known as the domain or space of the relation, into a family of equivalence classes. In the case of a SER the equivalence classes are called semiotic equivalence classes (SECs) and the partition is called a semiotic partition (SEP).

The sign relations $L_\mathrm{A}$ and $L_\mathrm{B}$ have many interesting properties over and above those possessed by sign relations in general. Some of those properties have to do with the relation between signs and their interpretant signs, as reflected in the projections of $L_\mathrm{A}$ and $L_\mathrm{B}$ on the $SI$ ‑plane, notated as $\mathrm{proj}_{SI} L_\mathrm{A}$ and $\mathrm{proj}_{SI} L_\mathrm{B},$ respectively. The dyadic relations on $S \times I$ induced by those projections are also referred to as the connotative components of the corresponding sign relations, notated as $\mathrm{Con}(L_\mathrm{A})$ and $\mathrm{Con}(L_\mathrm{B}),$ respectively. Tables 6a and 6b show the corresponding connotative components.

A nice property of the sign relations $L_\mathrm{A}$ and $L_\mathrm{B}$ is that their connotative components $\mathrm{Con}(L_\mathrm{A})$ and $\mathrm{Con}(L_\mathrm{B})$ form a pair of equivalence relations on their common syntactic domain $S = I.$ This type of equivalence relation is called a semiotic equivalence relation (SER) because it equates signs having the same meaning to some interpreter.

Each of the semiotic equivalence relations, $\mathrm{Con}(L_\mathrm{A}), \mathrm{Con}(L_\mathrm{B}) \subseteq S \times I \cong S \times S$ partitions the collection of signs into semiotic equivalence classes. This constitutes a strong form of representation in that the structure of the interpreters’ common object domain $\{ \mathrm{A}, \mathrm{B} \}$ is reflected or reconstructed, part for part, in the structure of each one’s semiotic partition of the syntactic domain $\{ ``\text{A}", ``\text{B}", ``\text{i}", ``\text{u}" \}.$

It’s important to observe the semiotic partitions for interpreters $\mathrm{A}$ and $\mathrm{B}$ are not identical, indeed, they are orthogonal to each other. Thus we may regard the form of the partitions as corresponding to an objective structure or invariant reality, but not the literal sets of signs themselves, independent of the individual interpreter’s point of view.

Information about the contrasting patterns of semiotic equivalence corresponding to the interpreters $\mathrm{A}$ and $\mathrm{B}$ is summarized in Tables 7a and 7b. The form of the Tables serves to explain what is meant by saying the SEPs for $\mathrm{A}$ and $\mathrm{B}$ are orthogonal to each other.

Resources

Sign Relation • OEIS • MyWikiBiz • Wikiversity
Survey of Semiotics, Semiosis, Sign Relations

cc: Academia.edu • Laws of Form • Research Gate • Syscoi
cc: Cybernetics • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 6:47 am on December 30, 2025

Improving the reporting of intervention studies underpinned by a systems approach to address obesity or other public health challenges – Li et al (2022)

Bai Li¹^*Steven Allender²Boyd Swinburn³Mohammed Alharbi¹Charlie Foster¹

Share by Michele Battle-Fisher, PhD on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mbattlefisher_bai-et-al-2022-improving-reporting-of-activity-7407444850884775936-X18o?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAACuq-oBecVFDW6PCf3lkoG-peMeuLBeoho

Introduction

A systems approach to obesity prevention is increasingly urged (1, 2). However, confusion exists on what a systems approach entails in practice, and the empirical evidence on this new approach is unclear. Several reviews (3–6) have tried to synthesize available evidence on a systems approach targeting obesity and other public health areas, but found that authentic, comprehensive application of this approach is scarce. We believe this is largely due to the uncertainty around the exact meaning of “a systems approach,” and sub-optimal reporting.

Fully and transparently reported evidence can improve our understanding of how a systems approach is applied practically in different cultures and settings, support methodological development, and improve synthesis of emerging evidence on the effectiveness of this new approach.

https://media.licdn.com/dms/document/media/v2/D561FAQHVn8QF_FU7gg/feedshare-document-pdf-analyzed/B56ZsyG4yOGsAY-/0/1766072226785?e=1767830400&v=beta&t=Vqd8Z7evETKR9aTrrUJoSH4Y9XlWqfqjTsrT7W2QRlA

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.892931/full

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 5:28 am on December 30, 2025

Russell L. Ackoff seminars 2003-2006 from the Deming Cooperative via David Ing’s Coevolving Innovations blog

Russell L. Ackoff seminars | The Deming Cooperative | 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 5:24 am on December 30, 2025

Machine Intelligence is not Artificial – Part 5: The Ratio Club and British Cybernetics – Manion (2024)

Sean Manion

Mar 08, 2024

https://seanmanion.substack.com/p/machine-intelligence-is-not-artificial-956

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 11:00 am on December 29, 2025

Systems Thinking: How to address highly complex problems – Prof Gerald Midgley (YouTube, AGN+ Network) (2024)

They say:

Anyone who’s tried to unravel and address problems in the agri-food system will know how complex it is: Agri-food researchers, stakeholders and professionals working towards net zero also have to account for other economic, health, social and environmental issues, which are often multiple, interlinked and overlapping. If this sounds familiar, so will the below characteristics of highly complex problems (sometimes called ‘wicked problems’ by policy makers): · Interlinked issues, where trying to address one in isolation worsens the others. · Multiple perspectives and conflict on which issues matter most, and therefore what action should be taken. · Power relations making change difficult, and · Pervasive uncertainty While traditional scientific, policy and management approaches can make useful contributions, we need something in addition if we want to address more of the complexity and conflict associated with these kinds of complex problems. Systems thinking can help. In this talk, Prof Gerald Midgley will introduce a framework of systems thinking skills, plus a variety of systems ideas and methods, that can help people put these skills into practice. He will illustrate the use of the methods with examples from food system, natural resource management, social policy and community development projects undertaken over the last thirty years in the UK, New Zealand and Nigeria. Some of these projects involved working with agri-food companies and their stakeholders, while others focused on intransigent social issues. Through these examples, Gerald will show how we can begin to get a better handle on highly complex problems. About Gerald: Prof Gerald Midgley is a foremost authority on the theory and practice of systems thinking and systemic leadership, and has been researching it for 40 years. His work is transdisciplinary and he has worked across public health, health and social service design, natural resource management, community development, public sector management and technology foresight. He is currently researching how to integrate neuroscience and cognitive psychology into systemic leadership and systems thinking, to address some of the most challenging local-to-global issues of our time. He is an emeritus professor at the University of Hull, and a visiting professor at the Birmingham Leadership Institute at the University of Birmingham. To download Gerald’s presentation slides, go here https://www.agrifood4netzero.net/uplo…. These should obviously be credited appropriately to him if used in any way. About the webinar series: The webinar is chaired by Jez Fredenburgh, Knowledge Exchange Fellow for the AFN Network+, and agri-food journalist. Jez is based at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia. This webinar is part of a series run by AFN Network+ which explores net zero in the UK agri-food system with leading movers and shakers. Expect deep and varied insight from across the sector, including farmers, scientists, policy analysts, community leaders, retailers, politicians, businesses and health professionals. The series is put together by Jez and Prof Neil Ward, also based at the University of East Anglia, and a co-lead of AFN Network+. Watch past webinars here – / @afn-network-plus Follow AFN Network+ on Twitter/X https://x.com/AFNnetwork and LinkedIn / agrifood4netzero Join our growing network of 1,600+ people across UK agri-food working on food system transformation, from academics to farmers, food companies, NGOs, policy makers and citizens https://www.agrifood4netzero.net/join The AFN Network+ is funded by UKRI https://www.ukri.org/

Link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GMXXkinHp0

Jon Awbrey 10:15 am on December 29, 2025
Tags: C.S. Peirce ( 28 ), Connotation ( 11 ), Denotation ( 11 ), inquiry ( 18 ), logic ( 30 ), Logic of Relatives ( 15 ), Mathematics ( 29 ), Relation Theory ( 16 ), Semiosis ( 14 ), Semiotic Equivalence Relations ( 11 ), Semiotics ( 20 ), Sign Relations ( 18 ), Triadic Relations ( 17 )

Sign Relations • Ennotation

A third aspect of a sign’s complete meaning concerns the relation between its objects and its interpretants, which has no standard name in semiotics. It would be called an induced relation in graph theory or the result of relational composition in relation theory. If an interpretant is recognized as a sign in its own right then its independent reference to an object can be taken as belonging to another moment of denotation, but this neglects the mediational character of the whole transaction in which this occurs. Denotation and connotation have to do with dyadic relations in which the sign plays an active role but here we are dealing with a dyadic relation between objects and interpretants mediated by the sign from an off‑stage position, as it were.

As a relation between objects and interpretants mediated by a sign, this third aspect of meaning may be referred to as the ennotation of a sign and the dyadic relation making up the ennotative aspect of a sign relation $L$ may be notated as $\mathrm{Enn}(L).$ Information about the ennotative aspect of meaning is obtained from $L$ by taking its projection on the object‑interpretant plane and visualized as the “shadow” $L$ casts on the 2‑dimensional space whose axes are the object domain $O$ and the interpretant domain $I.$ The ennotative component of a sign relation $L,$ variously written as $\mathrm{proj}_{OI} L,$ $L_{OI},$ $\mathrm{proj}_{13} L,$ or $L_{13},$ is defined as follows.

As it happens, the sign relations $L_\mathrm{A}$ and $L_\mathrm{B}$ are fully symmetric with respect to exchanging signs and interpretants, so all the data of $\mathrm{proj}_{OS} L_\mathrm{A}$ is echoed unchanged in $\mathrm{proj}_{OI} L_\mathrm{A}$ and all the data of $\mathrm{proj}_{OS} L_\mathrm{B}$ is echoed unchanged in $\mathrm{proj}_{OI} L_\mathrm{B}.$

Tables 5a and 5b show the ennotative components of the sign relations associated with the interpreters $\mathrm{A}$ and $\mathrm{B},$ respectively. The rows of each Table list the ordered pairs $(o, i)$ in the corresponding projections, $\mathrm{Enn}(L_\mathrm{A}), \mathrm{Enn}(L_\mathrm{B}) \subseteq O \times I.$

Resources

Sign Relation • OEIS • MyWikiBiz • Wikiversity
Survey of Semiotics, Semiosis, Sign Relations

cc: Academia.edu • Laws of Form • Research Gate • Syscoi
cc: Cybernetics • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

Jon Awbrey 11:45 am on December 28, 2025
Tags: C.S. Peirce ( 28 ), Connotation ( 11 ), Denotation ( 11 ), inquiry ( 18 ), logic ( 30 ), Logic of Relatives ( 15 ), Mathematics ( 29 ), Relation Theory ( 16 ), Semiosis ( 14 ), Semiotic Equivalence Relations ( 11 ), Semiotics ( 20 ), Sign Relations ( 18 ), Triadic Relations ( 17 )

Sign Relations • Connotation

Another aspect of a sign’s complete meaning concerns the reference a sign has to its interpretants, which interpretants are collectively known as the connotation of the sign. In the pragmatic theory of sign relations, connotative references fall within the projection of the sign relation on the plane spanned by its sign domain and its interpretant domain.

In the full theory of sign relations the connotative aspect of meaning includes the links a sign has to affects, concepts, ideas, impressions, intentions, and the whole realm of an interpretive agent’s mental states and allied activities, broadly encompassing intellectual associations, emotional impressions, motivational impulses, and real conduct. Taken at the full, in the natural setting of semiotic phenomena, this complex system of references is unlikely ever to find itself mapped in much detail, much less completely formalized, but the tangible warp of its accumulated mass is commonly alluded to as the connotative import of language.

Formally speaking, however, the connotative aspect of meaning presents no additional difficulty. The dyadic relation making up the connotative aspect of a sign relation $L$ is notated as $\mathrm{Con}(L).$ Information about the connotative aspect of meaning is obtained from $L$ by taking its projection on the sign‑interpretant plane and visualized as the “shadow” $L$ casts on the 2‑dimensional space whose axes are the sign domain $S$ and the interpretant domain $I.$ The connotative component of a sign relation $L,$ variously written as $\mathrm{proj}_{SI} L,$ $L_{SI},$ $\mathrm{proj}_{23} L,$ or $L_{23},$ is defined as follows.

Tables 4a and 4b show the connotative components of the sign relations associated with the interpreters $\mathrm{A}$ and $\mathrm{B},$ respectively. The rows of each Table list the ordered pairs $(s, i)$ in the corresponding projections, $\mathrm{Con}(L_\mathrm{A}), \mathrm{Con}(L_\mathrm{B}) \subseteq S \times I.$

Resources

Sign Relation • OEIS • MyWikiBiz • Wikiversity
Survey of Semiotics, Semiosis, Sign Relations

cc: Academia.edu • Laws of Form • Research Gate • Syscoi
cc: Cybernetics • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

Jon Awbrey 10:17 am on December 27, 2025
Tags: C.S. Peirce ( 28 ), Connotation ( 11 ), Denotation ( 11 ), inquiry ( 18 ), logic ( 30 ), Logic of Relatives ( 15 ), Mathematics ( 29 ), Relation Theory ( 16 ), Semiosis ( 14 ), Semiotic Equivalence Relations ( 11 ), Semiotics ( 20 ), Sign Relations ( 18 ), Triadic Relations ( 17 )

Sign Relations • Denotation

One aspect of a sign’s complete meaning concerns the reference a sign has to its objects, which objects are collectively known as the denotation of the sign. In the pragmatic theory of sign relations, denotative references fall within the projection of the sign relation on the plane spanned by its object domain and its sign domain.

The dyadic relation making up the denotative, referent, or semantic aspect of a sign relation $L$ is notated as $\mathrm{Den}(L).$ Information about the denotative aspect of meaning is obtained from $L$ by taking its projection on the object‑sign plane. The result may be visualized as the “shadow” $L$ casts on the 2‑dimensional space whose axes are the object domain $O$ and the sign domain $S.$ The denotative component of a sign relation $L,$ variously written as $\mathrm{proj}_{OS} L,$ $L_{OS},$ $\mathrm{proj}_{12} L,$ or $L_{12},$ is defined as follows.

Tables 3a and 3b show the denotative components of the sign relations associated with the interpreters $\mathrm{A}$ and $\mathrm{B},$ respectively. The rows of each Table list the ordered pairs $(o, s)$ in the corresponding projections, $\mathrm{Den}(L_\mathrm{A}), \mathrm{Den}(L_\mathrm{B}) \subseteq O \times S.$

Looking to the denotative aspects of $L_\mathrm{A}$ and $L_\mathrm{B},$ various rows of the Tables specify, for example, that $\mathrm{A}$ uses $``\text{i}"$ to denote $\mathrm{A}$ and $``\text{u}"$ to denote $\mathrm{B},$ while $\mathrm{B}$ uses $``\text{i}"$ to denote $\mathrm{B}$ and $``\text{u}"$ to denote $\mathrm{A}.$

Resources

Sign Relation • OEIS • MyWikiBiz • Wikiversity
Survey of Semiotics, Semiosis, Sign Relations

cc: Academia.edu • Laws of Form • Research Gate • Syscoi
cc: Cybernetics • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

Jon Awbrey 11:24 am on December 25, 2025
Tags: C.S. Peirce ( 28 ), Connotation ( 11 ), Denotation ( 11 ), inquiry ( 18 ), logic ( 30 ), Logic of Relatives ( 15 ), Mathematics ( 29 ), Relation Theory ( 16 ), Semiosis ( 14 ), Semiotic Equivalence Relations ( 11 ), Semiotics ( 20 ), Sign Relations ( 18 ), Triadic Relations ( 17 )

Sign Relations • Dyadic Aspects

For an arbitrary triadic relation $L \subseteq O \times S \times I,$ whether it happens to be a sign relation or not, there are six dyadic relations obtained by projecting $L$ on one of the planes of the $OSI$ ‑space $O \times S \times I.$ The six dyadic projections of a triadic relation $L$ are defined and notated as shown in Table 2.

$\text{Table 2. Dyadic Aspects of Triadic Relations}$

By way of unpacking the set‑theoretic notation, here is what the first definition says in ordinary language.

The dyadic relation resulting from the projection of $L$ on the $OS$ ‑plane $O \times S$ is written briefly as $L_{OS}$ or written more fully as $\mathrm{proj}_{OS}(L)$ and is defined as the set of all ordered pairs $(o, s)$ in the cartesian product $O \times S$ for which there exists an ordered triple $(o, s, i)$ in $L$ for some element $i$ in the set $I.$

In the case where $L$ is a sign relation, which it becomes by satisfying one of the definitions of a sign relation, some of the dyadic aspects of $L$ can be recognized as formalizing aspects of sign meaning which have received their share of attention from students of signs over the centuries, and thus they can be associated with traditional concepts and terminology.

Of course, traditions vary with respect to the precise formation and usage of such concepts and terms. Other aspects of meaning have not received their fair share of attention and thus remain innominate in current anatomies of sign relations.

Resources

Sign Relation • OEIS • MyWikiBiz • Wikiversity
Survey of Semiotics, Semiosis, Sign Relations

cc: Academia.edu • Laws of Form • Research Gate • Syscoi
cc: Cybernetics • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 4:07 am on December 22, 2025

Top ten most read posts on the Systems Community of Inquiry in 2025 (number four will have you shook!)

Every now and again I look at the stats for this site. It’s a useful little reality check for what people actually look for when they land here.’ (The stats I think only pick up web visitors; my suspicion is that a bunch of people look just at the emails).

If you’re new: this site is a public commonplace book, or what used to be called a ‘weblog’ – ostensibly an attempt to share all the systems | complexity |cybernetics links I come across, partly an Electric Monk, resource-based, a compost heap towards a curriculum.

The top clicks tell a clear story. People keep coming for foundations, for sources, and for practical bridges between ‘systems’ as an idea and systems as work.

McLuhan consistently sits at the top. That always makes me smile, because his point is basically what this site is for. Tools are extensions, and therefore amputations. If you extend your memory into a notebook, you also stop rehearsing. If you extend your judgement into a dashboard, you also numb your situational sense. Pretending otherwise is how we end up surprised by our own inventions.

Then comes the pragmatic end of the field, if we squint: poka-yoke, homeostasis, STAMP, promise-based management. The appeal here is not ‘be cleverer’, it’s ‘design so normal humans can succeed without heroics’. A cybernetic idea: shift the work from willpower to feedback.

Reading lists feature heavily too, which is both flattering and slightly alarming. A reading list is an honest artefact: it admits you don’t have the map. It also changes you as you build it. You notice what you keep omitting. You start to see the field as much as being a set of disagreements as a set of answers. Which is why debates like ‘systems thinking and complexity’ keep drawing attention. We want a tidy resolution, rarely get one, but sometimes get better questions.

And people really do care about attribution. The Kurt Lewin quote post keeps getting read. Good. There is far too much ‘systems’ talk built on lines no-one can trace. A misattributed quote can still be helpful, but it’s a different kind of helpful – dodgy authority rather than lineage.

A few other regular visitors show up in the stats: Bateson, Menzies Lyth, Joanna Macy. That’s the moral and emotional dimension of systems work. Organisations are not just information processing. They are also anxiety processing. If you don’t deal with that, you get defences that pretend to be structure.

And there’s a pleasing concentration of systems practice in the mix – SysPrac25, the upcoming Hull conference, and the OR Society: events, newsletters, debates. Systems | complexity | cybernetics stays alive when people meet, argue, teach, and keep the conversation going in actual places, not just on platforms. And this is in a year where I have substantially failed the core task and lost track of brilliant events from ISSS, CybSoc, ASC, Metaphorum, even SCiO. But I think that the field also stays alive when someone bothers to ask ‘who are our fellow travellers?’.

Anyway, for what it’s worth, here’s the current ‘most read’ list. If it looks like a slightly eccentric syllabus, well, there y’go!

Media, attention, and extensions

Marshall McLuhan – extensions and amputations: every tool gives you reach, and steals a sense https://stream.syscoi.com/2019/05/30/marshall-mcluhan-extensions-and-amputations/
Ackoff’s lift and Rory Sutherland’s fantasy: why optimisation can be a kind of organised stupidity https://stream.syscoi.com/2020/05/28/ackoffs-lift-and-rory-sutherlands-fantasy/
Simon’s ant and system complexity: behaviour that looks clever can be the environment doing the steering https://stream.syscoi.com/2020/03/22/simons-ant-system-complexity-the-seemingly-unrelated/
Elon Musk’s ‘giant cybernetic collectives’: techno-utopia as feedback myth https://stream.syscoi.com/2019/04/07/elon-musks-giant-cybernetic-collectives-jennifer-sensiba-cleantechnica/
Jakob Nielsen’s 90-9-1 rule: participation inequality is structural, not a personal failing https://stream.syscoi.com/2018/12/10/the-90-9-1-rule-for-participation-inequality-jakob-nielsen-2006/
Charles Handy’s sigmoid curve: success contains the seed of its own decline unless you start the next curve early https://stream.syscoi.com/2020/05/25/charles-handys-sigmoid-curve/

Cybernetics, quality, and the craft of organising

Where poka-yoke and cybernetics meet: error-proofing is feedback design, not magic https://stream.syscoi.com/2019/10/29/where-poka-yoke-and-cybernetics-meet-quality-digest-harish-jose/
Bateson on conscious purpose versus nature: the world fights back when you push one variable too hard https://stream.syscoi.com/2018/09/22/conscious-purpose-versus-nature-gregory-bateson/
Commitment-based or promise-based management: coordination is not control, it’s making and keeping commitments https://stream.syscoi.com/2018/08/17/commitment-based-or-promise-based-management-flores-and-winograd-plus-vision-consulting-glennon-and-spinosa-later/
Living systems (James Grier Miller): systems as living organisation, not metaphor https://stream.syscoi.com/2018/07/09/living-systems-james-grier-miller-1978/
Homeostasis (Bernard, Cannon, Barcroft): regulation is an achievement, not a default https://stream.syscoi.com/2019/06/10/homeostasis-bernard-1865-cannon-1926-barcroft-1932/
Isabel Menzies Lyth and the functioning of social systems as a defence against anxiety: why ‘rational’ structures often aren’t https://stream.syscoi.com/2021/02/07/isabel-menzies-lyth-and-the-functioning-of-social-systems-as-a-defence-against-anxiety/
Lawrence and Lorsch, contingency theory: fit the organisation to the situation, not the other way round https://stream.syscoi.com/2020/06/24/lawrence-lorsch-contingency-theory-1967/
STAMP in Google SRE: resilience as constraint, feedback, and learning, not just ‘more reliability’ https://stream.syscoi.com/2025/01/01/the-evolution-of-sre-at-google-using-stamp-to-improve-resilience-in-google-production-systems-falzone-and-sloss-2024/

How we know, what we can cite, and what we should read next

Updated rough draft systems, complexity, cybernetics reading list: a live boundary object, not a finished map https://stream.syscoi.com/2024/10/01/updated-rough-draft-systems-complexity-cybernetics-reading-list/
Is there an actual source for the Kurt Lewin quote ‘you cannot understand a system until you try to change it’? – vibes are not references https://stream.syscoi.com/2021/11/22/is-there-an-actual-source-for-the-kurt-lewin-quote-you-cannot-understand-a-system-until-you-try-to-change-it/
Implementation of systems thinking in public policy (Nguyen et al, 2023): what the evidence says, not what we wish it said https://stream.syscoi.com/2023/02/27/implementation-of-systems-thinking-in-public-policy-a-systematic-review-nguyen-et-al-2023/
A very rough and partial draft systems thinking reading list: the earlier compost layer https://stream.syscoi.com/2020/05/06/a-very-rough-and-partial-draft-systems-thinking-reading-list/
Kerwin’s map of ignorance: taxonomies of the unknown, and the humility they force https://stream.syscoi.com/2019/04/21/taxonomies-of-the-unknown-kerwins-map-of-ignorance-1983/
John Vervaeke’s transjectivity: the awkward middle ground between ‘objective’ and ‘made up’ https://stream.syscoi.com/2020/05/11/john-vervaekes-transjectivity-andrew-sweeny-medium/
Moon and Blackman on ontology and epistemology: you can’t do interdisciplinary work without arguing about ‘what counts’ https://stream.syscoi.com/2021/04/06/a-guide-to-ontology-epistemology-and-philosophical-perspectives-for-interdisciplinary-researchers-integration-and-implementation-insights-moon-and-blackman-drawing-on-their-2014-article/

People, communities, and places where the field stays alive

Nick Kimber asking for a short history of relational practice: the hunger for lineage, not just slogans https://stream.syscoi.com/2025/10/24/nick-kimber-on-linkedin-hello-can-anybody-point-me-to-a-decent-accessible-history-of-relational-practice-thinking-leadership-ideally-short-form/
Systems thinking and complexity – incompatible or what? Jackson and Boulton debate: a useful argument to have properly https://stream.syscoi.com/2025/01/30/systems-thinking-and-complexity-incompatible-or-what-mike-jackson-and-jean-boulton-debate-26-february-2025-1800-uk-time-free-thanks-to-the-or-society/
Systems thinking and systems practice, 24-26 March 2026 at the University of Hull, UK: convening still matters https://stream.syscoi.com/2025/07/25/%f0%9d%97%a6%f0%9d%98%86%f0%9d%98%80%f0%9d%98%81%f0%9d%97%b2%f0%9d%97%ba%f0%9d%98%80-%f0%9d%97%a7%f0%9d%97%b5%f0%9d%97%b6%f0%9d%97%bb%f0%9d%97%b8%f0%9d%97%b6%f0%9d%97%bb%f0%9d%97%b4-%f0%9d%97%ae/
Who are our fellow travellers? – systems work as a community of practice, not a lone genius act https://stream.syscoi.com/2020/10/08/who-are-our-fellow-travellers/
Berkana’s theory of change: networks, emergence, and the long game of culture https://stream.syscoi.com/2018/02/28/our-theory-of-change-the-berkana-institute/
Gregory Bateson and the counter-culture: the politics and spirituality that shaped the ideas [one of several pieces in this list I don’t personally endorse] https://stream.syscoi.com/2019/04/08/gregory-bateson-and-the-counter-culture/
Centre for systems studies, University of Hull newsletter: signals from an actual institutional home https://stream.syscoi.com/2025/02/20/newsletter-centre-for-systems-studies-university-of-hull/
RIP Joanna Macy: systems thinking with grief, courage, and practice https://stream.syscoi.com/2025/07/20/rip-joanna-macy/
About: what this stream is, and what it isn’t https://stream.syscoi.com/about/

Harish’s Notebook – Throwing the Fish Back into the Water (Jose, 2025)

Throwing the Fish Back into the Water:

Jon Awbrey 6:00 pm on December 19, 2025
Tags: C.S. Peirce ( 28 ), Connotation ( 11 ), Denotation ( 11 ), inquiry ( 18 ), logic ( 30 ), Logic of Relatives ( 15 ), Mathematics ( 29 ), Relation Theory ( 16 ), Semiosis ( 14 ), Semiotic Equivalence Relations ( 11 ), Semiotics ( 20 ), Sign Relations ( 18 ), Triadic Relations ( 17 )

Sign Relations • Examples

Soon after I made my third foray into grad school, this time in Systems Engineering, I was trying to explain sign relations to my advisor and he, being the very model of a modern systems engineer, asked me to give a concrete example of a sign relation, as simple as possible without being trivial. After much cudgeling of the grey matter I came up with a pair of examples which had the added benefit of bearing instructive relationships to each other. Despite their simplicity, the examples to follow have subtleties of their own and their careful treatment serves to illustrate important issues in the general theory of signs.

Imagine a discussion between two people, Ann and Bob, and attend only to the aspects of their interpretive practice involving the use of the following nouns and pronouns.

$\{ ``\text{Ann}", ``\text{Bob}", ``\text{I}", ``\text{you}" \}$

The object domain of their discussion is the set of two people $\{ \text{Ann}, \text{Bob} \}.$

The sign domain of their discussion is the set of four signs $\{ ``\text{Ann}", ``\text{Bob}", ``\text{I}", ``\text{you}" \}.$

Ann and Bob are not only the passive objects of linguistic references but also the active interpreters of the language they use. The system of interpretation associated with each language user can be represented in the form of an individual three‑place relation known as the sign relation of that interpreter.

In terms of its set‑theoretic extension, a sign relation $L$ is a subset of a cartesian product $O \times S \times I.$ The three sets $O, S, I$ are known as the object domain, the sign domain, and the interpretant domain, respectively, of the sign relation $L \subseteq O \times S \times I.$

Broadly speaking, the three domains of a sign relation may be any sets at all but the types of sign relations contemplated in formal settings are usually constrained to having $I \subseteq S.$ In those cases it becomes convenient to lump signs and interpretants together in a single class called a sign system or syntactic domain. In the forthcoming examples $S$ and $I$ are identical as sets, so the same elements manifest themselves in two different roles of the sign relations in question.

When it becomes necessary to refer to the whole set of objects and signs in the union of the domains $O, S, I$ for a given sign relation $L,$ we will call this set the World of $L$ and write $W = W_L = O \cup S \cup I.$

To facilitate an interest in the formal structures of sign relations and to keep notations as simple as possible as the examples become more complicated, it serves to introduce the following general notations.

Introducing a few abbreviations for use in the Example, we have the following data.

In the present example, $S = I = \text{Syntactic Domain}.$

Tables 1a and 1b show the sign relations associated with the interpreters $\mathrm{A}$ and $\mathrm{B},$ respectively. In this arrangement the rows of each Table list the ordered triples of the form $(o, s, i)$ belonging to the corresponding sign relations, $L_\mathrm{A}, L_\mathrm{B} \subseteq O \times S \times I.$

The Tables codify a rudimentary level of interpretive practice for the agents $\mathrm{A}$ and $\mathrm{B}$ and provide a basis for formalizing the initial semantics appropriate to their common syntactic domain. Each row of a Table lists an object and two co‑referent signs, together forming an ordered triple $(o, s, i)$ called an elementary sign relation, in other words, one element of the relation’s set‑theoretic extension.

Already in this elementary context, there are several meanings which might attach to the project of a formal semiotics, or a formal theory of meaning for signs. In the process of discussing the alternatives, it is useful to introduce a few terms occasionally used in the philosophy of language to point out the needed distinctions. That is the task we’ll turn to next.

Resources

Sign Relation • OEIS • MyWikiBiz • Wikiversity
Survey of Semiotics, Semiosis, Sign Relations

cc: Academia.edu • Laws of Form • Research Gate • Syscoi
cc: Cybernetics • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 7:04 pm on December 16, 2025

An Interview with Eric Trist, Father of the Sociotechnical Systems Approach – Fox (1990)

Not available except behind paywall from main link, but fully readable if not downloadable on Scribd:

William M. Fox

The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science Volume 26, Issue 2

https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886390262014

Abstract

William M. Fox interviews Eric Trist, eminent scholar and social scientist, who was a founder and chairman of the Tavistock Institute in London. Trist recounts the foundation of the institute as an outpatient clinic and its evolution into a leading center of action research and applied behavioral science. He discusses his work in the British coal mining industry, from which he developed the concept of the sociotechnical system. Descriptions of his work and experiences with the British Army during World War II and of the various projects he undertook with multinational firms and smaller companies illustrate the resistance, suspicion, and other obstacles that he and his colleagues often encountered while working to implement new systems. Finally, Trist describes his sociotechnical systems work in the ailing industrial town of Jamestown, New York, and on the Ten recommendations.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0021886390262014