In 1965 Sir Geoffrey Vickers issued a challenge to the community interested in the exploration of human systems. That challenge was one of embracing the moral importance of responsibility; more to the point, the urgent need to develop an ethic of Systems Thought. Since that time Systems Thought has cautiously engaged the ethical question. It has done so through questioning the methodological purity of any particular inquiry; it has done so through critically engaging the boundary of any particular system and it has done so in the epistemological sense. That being said it has not confronted in a heroic sense the fundamental ground of the ethical question: ‘what is to be done’.
This paper demonstrates that Neo-pragmatism is the most appropriate approach to a decision making process within the context of Systems Thinking expressly because both Systems Thinking and Neo-pragmatism recognize the contingent nature of the phenomenal world and the modeling nature of both Systems Thought and Neo-pragmatism. Finally the implications of social transformation of Neo-pragmatism as the appropriate decision making process for Systems Thinking is discussed.
John Vodonick received his Juris Doctor degree (cum laude) from the Pepperdine University School of Law, as M.T.S. from the Pacific School of Religion and his Ph.D. from Saybrook University, School of Organizational Systems. Doctor Vodonick lives in Northern California and teaches, writes and consults on matters of organizational ethics, structure and change management.
This paper primarily argues that Epidemiology is Ecosystem Science. It will not only explore this notion in detail but will also relate it to the argument that Classical Chinese Medicine was/is Ecosystem Science. Ecosystem Science (as instantiated by Epidemiology) and Ecosystem Science (as instantiated by Classical Chinese Medicine) share these characteristics: (a) they do not subscribe to the monogenic conception of disease; (b) they involve multi variables; (c) the model of causality presupposed is multi-factorial as well as non-linear.
Keywords
Ecosystem science Epidemiology Classical chinese medicine Multifactorial causation Non-linear causality
1 Introduction
This contribution explores the thesis that Epidemiology should be considered as Ecosystem Science; it does this through an examination of the following sub-themes.
1.
Biomedicine exhibits two paradigms of explaining disease. The monogenic conception of disease, which is the dominant paradigm, embodies the standards and criteria of scientificity for Biomedicine. In contrast, Epidemiology is considered to be the Cinderella as its paradigm of explanation and scientificity is different and hence, held, at arm’s length, if not with outright suspicion.1
2.
The two paradigms differ ontologically and methodologically. The monogenic conception of disease upholds the thesis: one causal agent, one disease entity. It rests on thing-ontology. Its implied model of causality is Humean, monofactorial and linear (the causal arrow is unidirectional, from cause to effect only). On the other hand, Epidemiology understands disease not so much as a disease entity but more as a pattern of interrelated events which may lead to a pattern of ill-health in the population. It rests on process-ontology. Its model of causality is non-Humean, multi-factorial and non-linear (the relationships are synergistic, reciprocal, with feedback loops).2
3.
While the monogenic conception of disease is rooted in the Gold Standard of the Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) and of late its related Gold Standard of Evidence-based Medicine (EBM), Epidemiology proceeds more in the manner of Ecology as a field science. Ecology explicitly studies ecosystems: the biotic and abiotic components which make up a particular ecosystem, the relationships between these with the ecosystem as a Whole, not to mention with other ecosystems. This kind of science is necessarily non-Reductionist as the Whole in terms of its causal inter- as well as intra-relationships are reciprocal in character; this complicated network of causal relations means that properties emerge from the Whole which cannot be predicted by simply adding up the contribution of each of the component parts of the Whole. Epidemiology is, hence, Ecosystem Science.3 It will also be shown that Ecosystem Science/Thinking itself may be considered as a variant of Systems Thinking.
4.
If one cares to do some comparative history of science, the model of Ecosystem Science/Thinking and Systems Theory/Thinking can be said to be found in Classical Chinese Medicine (CCM for short, whose origin may be traced back to more than two and a half thousand or more years): CCM is a science which is Wholist4 in orientation, resting on process-ontology (rather than thing-ontology) and whose causal model is multi-factorial, non-linear and reciprocal, and with feedback loops.5
5.
In a very brief extension of the theme at 4, this contribution looks at how CCM perceived/perceives epidemics and whether it had/has any grasp of what today we call Epidemiology. The conclusion is positive, although to mark the differences in spite of the similarities between CCM and modern Epidemiological thinking, the CCM discipline will occur in italicised form, namely, Epidemiology.
The thick broken lines of the circle and their arrows stand for the mutually engendering cycle while the thinner unbroken lines and their arrows inside the circle stand for the mutually constraining cycle
6 Chinese Epidemiological thinking is necessarily ecosystem thinking
John Thackara’s phrase, the metabolic rift, is growing with me. We don’t have any feeling for the ecosystem that supports us. We are no longer part of it in important ways. We do lots of things that result in damage that we may not even see until it is too late. In that Maturana sense of any organism being in contact with its environment — we are not — we are increasingly separated by a metabolic rift.
Metabolic because this is about the most basic and fundamental level of life processes. About breathing, about nourishment, about a zillion symbiotic creatures that we depend on in ways more complex than we will ever understand.
And rift, well, because riven — cracked, split, broken. The metabolic rift is at least economic, cultural, educational, medical, social, legal, colonial, practical, emotional, and mental.[1]
Any life-form, from the simplest virus to complex interconnected forests to social insects to intelligent mammals, has behaviour that is adaptive. Partly, it stabilises its environment the way it needs to be and partly, it adapts to changing circumstances that cannot be stabilised. This is a many-to-many symmathesy[2] as described by Nora Bateson. It cannot be otherwise. Creatures can and do fail to stay in contact with their environment and whole species and families of species go out of existence. Sometimes there are waves of rapid change (“extinction events”) like the one we are part of now.[3]
The metabolic rift says we have lost this ability. We do not know how to use our supposedly superior intelligence to stay in touch with our environment. In fact, there is a widespread cultural belief that we can manage our environment for our own narrow benefit. We can’t: that is it doesn’t work at all when we try to.[4]
History and economics
David Graeber says that the nature of neoliberalism is this: when faced with a choice between the political and the economic, it always chooses the political. It is far more important (to neoliberalism) to give the impression that it is successful, even triumphant, than it is to make the economy actually work better.
If we take a tolerably intelligent farming system like a managed rapid rotation of different sorts of animals and other stock, it is about eight to ten times more productive than the surrounding conventional agriculture. But we are told that only mechanised agriculture and monocultures are economically viable. Here is the metabolic rift at the economic level. The neoliberalism of Monsanto and government agriculture departments insists on huge scale mechanisation and depopulation of the land which produces highly inferior foodstuffs.
The immediate history of the interaction of culture, social systems, and food production centres around labour-intensive modes of food production. Instead of assuming that labour-intensive is a problem, we can ask the other question. In Miraculous Abundance by Perrine and Charles Herve-Gruyer, there are details of a properly controlled experiment to see how many people 1000 square metres of land in Normandy can support. If the health and material needs of a family of four can be met from a tiny patch of land, what is the problem actually? And if the food produced is so good that chefs come from Paris and pay premium prices, why would anyone grow monocultures and use a combine harvester? Why?
In England, prior to George III and his Enclosure Act of 1773, most land was common land, where local people had rights to various sorts of access.[5]This system encouraged crop rotation and grazing by many species of animals and birds. In practice, it maintained the soil and the fertility of the soil. The so called British Agricultural Revolution, much celebrated by the landed gentry, raised the productivity of farms but in a way that has proved not to be sustainable. I can remember from my school days that we were supposed to be impressed by Jethro Tull and his Horse-hoeing Husbandry, but of course tilling was one of the things that eventually destroyed the soil.
The mucous membrane of the land
We have spoken before about the membrane that lines our human insides and of the mucous film that works with it. By analogy, Didi Pershouse speaks of the mucous membrane of the land, a surface layer of organic glue that holds the soil together and allows it to develop its healthy sponge-like structure. The glue comes from many soil organisms but perhaps especially from the exudates of fungi. Most of these organisms are not visible to the naked eye, but they depend on a complex cycle where plants make sugars and supply them to mycorrhizal fungi and surface plant litter supports saprophytic fungi.
Human life literally depends on this mucous membrane of the land that we cannot see and which we usually ignore and destroy. And we don’t want to know. It is the ploughing and fertilising and use of a range of biocides (weedkiller, insecticide, fungicide, etc.) that wrecks this invisible life support system. Our modern world of droughts and floods and wildfires is literally and directly a result of this wanton destruction — it is not just that we wreck our food.
We used to have a human culture that grew up protecting the source of human life over the centuries because it was focused on stewardship and maintaining an intensive local food supply in all its diversity. The labour intensive nature of this system is not accidental nor incidental. Much land at the time was not in cultivation at all: there was a necessary density of production that maintained the land in good order.
The diversity is the key. As soon as you move to a single species of animals grazing, sheep for instance, they get parasites and the pasture needs more intervention. As soon as you move to a monoculture of plants in a given field, there will be insect problems and fungal problems that need intervention in order to protect the crop. But if you maintain the diversity, these problems occur less or not at all. Multiple species of animals and birds grazing perennial plants maintains the health of soil, plants, and animals.
I think this is a neoliberal agricultural system: move to monocultures because they are mechanisable and look clean and sterile. This seems to be the technocratic future: GPS controlled mega-machinery putting exactly the right amount of fertiliser on each part of the field, etc.[6] But it is a neoliberal lie: the way to intensive production that supports human health is in the opposite direction. It would be nice to think that agricultural production was about human health but it hasn’t been so for a long time. Even organic production is typically not sustainable.[7]
This exactly matches Graeber’s statement about economics: the political act of seemingly intensive agricultural production that throws people off the land is much more important than genuinely intensive production that provides employment and health. And this is not an anti-industrial rant or crusade, it is proper agricultural economics on a properly social basis.
Social history
The societies that organised themselves around common land and mutual systems of using and stewarding the land were themselves sustainable. In such societies there may have been hunger and hardship but no-one starved. The workhouse for the indolent, work-shy poor was an invention of enclosure and the destruction of the commons.
James Scott in his Seeing Like a State describes how a village in Tsarist Russia threw people into starvation simply by mapping the land. The mapping required that all land had an owner, and this threw into disarray the existing customs where people had rights to different uses of the land at different seasons. This is the clearest possible pursuit of political objectives ahead of systems of human and ecosystem health.
In general, there were complex systems of craft skills that supported a local economic system for a wide range of trades. This is not simply about agriculture in the narrow sense, but about the supply chain of related services and trades. The classic text is H.J.Massingham, Men of Earth, (1943!) that celebrates a world now largely lost to a different sort of economics, that as a side effect wrecks the soil and the ecosystem.
I am hypothesising that the ecosystemic nature of the local economy is required to match the ecosystemic nature of soil regeneration if they are to thrive. We cannot have a neoliberal political system regenerating soil ecosystems and we cannot have impoverished soil ecosystems supporting a vibrant local economy. If this is true, it would be a pivotal insight into the current climate crisis. Only both ecosystems thriving together is viable and sustainable.
Two more recent vignettes. There is a first people’s tribe somewhere in the mid-west (USA) that live on and manage a small forest reservation. They maintain the forest while extracting enough timber to support the whole tribe. There are people queuing up of course to tell them how to do it properly and make more money, but increasingly there are a different sort of people queuing up to study something that they have realised they don’t know how to do for themselves.
And I am reading, because I need to learn the basics, about perennial vegetables. I am an allotment gardener and I grow the vegetables we need. There are of course things like rhubarb and asparagus that can only be grown as lusty perennial plants. But our vegetable culture revolves around digging the soil and growing annuals in the brief summer months. There are ways to have a riotous mixture of plants improving each other’s environments and soil and supplying vegetables, without that annual cycle of thinking we know better!
Financial ecosystems
The Victorians in the UK, especially in the dynamic northern towns which were so enterprising in spirit, developing mutual self-help financial cultures and mechanisms that also mirror what we speak of here. The original Building Societies were just that: groups of people who came together in mutual organisations so that they had enough capital to build houses for each other. The original societies might have perhaps thirty members and disbanded again when everyone had built a house.
As with capital so with risk. There were, and actually still are, mutual insurance societies where the members jointly meet the losses of individual members. The major current example is the Strike Club which insures shipping containers and their contents as they are transported round the world. The interesting feature of such an enterprise is that it is seriously in the interest of each member, each shipping line, to limit the losses suffered by other members.[8] Because of that, they actively share information about risks, threats, and mitigation techniques.
Throughout Africa there are mutual savings clubs.[9] I worked with some Somalis and some Zimbabweans in London to see how these cultural institutions could be applied to their problems such as excessive credit card debt. In these clubs people contribute a weekly or monthly small amount and then the fund is applied, perhaps by a lottery or perhaps according to urgent need, to give the members access to sums of money they can otherwise never gather.
The metabolic rift
There is no future for mankind without bridging, healing, overcoming the metabolic rift. We need to live in a way that plays our role in the ecosystems of life that ARE the world, even though we have forgotten it. There are lots of places where we can see the damage caused by our forgetting, and the soil is perhaps the key one. We can see it locally in our hands when we use them and we can see it globally in terms of the billions of tons of soil that are lost each year. Remember that more weight of soil is lost than weight of crops that are grown.
It is perhaps another application of Conway’s Law that as we farm, so we reap! Our social organisations and our mental organisation are broken and blind and so we harvest a broken ecosystem in our soils and what we grow in them.
We wrote before about Robin Wall Kimmerer, herself from a first peoples tribe, teaching ecology in college in New York. All her students were keenly aware of the damage humans do to various ecosystems and to the whole planet. But when she asked them what the positive role that humans need to play in those ecosystems was, they were struck dumb. We really need to do better than dumb, in all its senses.
— —
[1] You’ll recognise some of these as dimensions of what Nora Bateson calls “warm data”
[2] For the uninitiated, symmathesy is a learning together, “an ongoing process of calibration within contexts of aggregate interrelational variables.”
[3] See point 4 of Scott Alexander’s essay, which posits that we may be playing brinkmanship with a tipping point of extinction, despite the countable extinctions.
[4] If you immediately thought of James Scott’s Seeing Like a State, bravo! We’ll get back to that in a moment.
[5] Still in force today, though 223 years later, they passed the Countryside and Rights of Way Act
[6] Admittedly, I suspect that animals raised in computer-controlled environments have it better than the ones who are just jammed in on top of one another. I saw a Dutch documentary in which individual chickens were dosed when they seemed poorly, rather than whole-flock applications, and where cows walked themselves to the milking stations unaided, etc. But doing ‘better’ than conventional factory farms is a pretty low bar. Fun fact: tiny Netherlands is the #2 exporter of food to the world, after the USA.
[7] How could it be sustainable when the capitalist system demands that any product that attracts a premium price have its premium nature beaten out of it in the interests of scale and profit?
[8] Yes of course, it’s the Prisoner’s Dilemma all over again. But the players are in an iterated game, not fly-by-night one-shot operators.
[9] Excellent book on the variety and purposes of such clubs: Portfolios of the Poor
Your SysCoI co-host David Ing has a habit of coming out of left-field with well-researched and integrative blog items like this which are really just accessible, properly-research academy articles. Recommended!
Doing, not-doing; errors of commission, errors of omission
Should we do, or not-do? Russell Ackoff, over many years, wrote about (negative) potential consequences:
There are two possible types of decision-making mistakes, which are not equally easy to identify.
(1) Errors of commission: doing something that should not have been done.
(2) Errors of omission: not doing something that should have been done.
For example, acquiring a company that reduces a corporation’s overall performance is an error of commission, as is coming out with a product that fails to break even. Failure to acquire a company that could have been acquired and that would have increased the value of the corporation or failure to introduce a product that would have been very profitable is an error of omission [Ackoff 1994, pp. 3-4].
Ackoff has always been great with turns of phrases such as these. Some deeper reading evokes three ideas that may be worth further exploration:
1. Doing or not-doing may or may not invoke learning.
2. Doing or not-doing invokes implicit orientations on time.
3. Doing or not-doing raises question of (i) changes via systems of willful action, and/or (ii) changes via systems of non-intrusive action.
These three ideas, explored in sections below, lead us from the management of human affairs, beyond questions of science, and into question of philosophy.
For those interested in the history of philosophy and science, the three ideas above are followed by an extra section:
Appendix. Doing or not-doing in management can be placed philosophically in American pragmatism.
The question of doing or not-doing has been deep in the intellectual traditions of American management thinking in the latter 20th century. The attitude of Bias for Actionespoused by Tom Peters first published in 1982 exhorts managers to do. Peters describes the shifts of 1962 “Bias of planning”, to 1982 “Bias for action” in a report card from 2001, and observes in a 2018 interview that it’s become the first of eight commandments in Silicon Valley.
Rest of contents covers:
1. Doing or not-doing may or may not invoke learning
2. Doing or not-doing invokes implicit orientations on time
3. Doing or not-doing raises question of (i) changes via systems of willful action, and/or (ii) changes via systems of non-intrusive action
Appendix. Doing or not-doing in management can be placed philosophically in American pragmatism
Systems thinking is generally considered difficult, both to learn and to explain what it is about. Here is the latest of my efforts in this blog to make it simple. At the end is a concept map. It is self-explanatory, but only if you read the table above it very carefully. This post could be considered a follow-up to the previous one. It has been syndicated by The Systems Community of Inquiry to https://stream.syscoi.com, the global network of systems thinkers, scientists and practitioners.
The three steps …. are: (1) recognizing that some problems are socially and organizationally complex; (2) acquiring some basic knowledge of systems thinking, social systems thinking in particular; and (3) selecting one or more systems approaches to address the complex problem, at first arguably a generic systems method such as Churchman’s dialectical systems approach. The numbering is arbitrary: the three form what could be…
As demonstrated by a simple Google search, the MBSE acronym seems to be widely and consistently understood. Yet, the consensus about ‘M’ standing for models comes with different meanings for ‘S’ standing either for software or different kinds of systems.
Tools At Hand (Annette Messager)
In practice, the scope of model-based engineering has been mostly limited to design-to-code (‘S’ for software) and manufacturing (‘S’ for physical systems); leaving the engineering of symbolic systems like organizations largely overlooked.
Models, Software, & Systems
Models are symbolic representationsof actual (descriptive models) or contrived (prescriptive models) domains.Applied to systems engineering, models are meant to serve specific purposes: requirements analysis, simulation, software design, etc. With software as the end-product of system engineering, design models can be seen as a special case of models characterized by target (computer code) and language(executable instructions). Hence the letter ‘S’ in the MBSE acronym, which can…
Many of the big challenges and issues confronting humanity are only solvable using all available knowledge – across disciplines and paradigms of knowledge. Edward Wilson set out an agenda for better integration of all sciences in his book “Consilience” two decades ago.
More-over many of the most interesting developments in knowledge, of both practice and theory, are coming from inter- or trans-disciplinary domains.
There have been huge developments in the practical integration of knowledge across many disciplines often outside of academia – examples like rare species preservation, ecological management, space exploration, etc come to mind.
In addition the existence of multi-disciplinary social science ‘vocational’ University departments – like social work, business administration, public administration and public policy – have encouraged more cross-disciplinary working and created their own ‘spaces’ (conferences, journals, etc) where such fusions can occur (although that is not a given even in these schools – disciplinary boundaries can…
Per Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/atcx8l/researchers_watched_in_real_time_as_a/):
Researchers watched in real time as a single-celled algae evolved into a multicellular organism. The transition took place over the course of 50 weeks and was caused simply by the introduction of a predator to the environment. Time-lapse videos are available in the supplementary info.
Making Places Work for
Women: Gender and
Systems Change.
A Discussion Paper by The Point
People and Giselle Cory
October 2018
Contents
Introduction
Executive Summary
Our aims and approach
Chapter 1: The case for change
Chapter 2: What’s getting in the way?
A limited understanding of ‘systems change’ and what it
looks like in practice
Data is often gender blind and service focused
Commissioning doesn’t work with the grain of
women’s lives
Mental health services aren’t sufficiently engaged in
supporting women
The voluntary sector plays a key role but it is vulnerable
The need for gender-influenced ‘systems leadership’ is
not recognised
There are significant cultural factors that are getting in
the way of change
Chapter 3: Five principles for systems change: making
the difference for women experiencing multiple
disadvantage
1: Build a shared understanding of the population of
women experiencing multiple disadvantage
2: Outcomes are attached to the system and defined by
and with women, not for them
3: Services that work together, not just alongside
one another
4: Visible leadership at all levels of the system
5: Look below the surface to address
unconscious dynamics
Chapter 4: Where next for this work?
Recommendations for Trusts and Foundations
Recommendations for commissioners and
local authorities
Recommendations for central government
Conclusion
As I’ve written about in the recent past, I focused my recently completed Masters of Design focused on a domain I’m particularly passionate about — environmental issues.
This post aims to uncover some of the research, thinking and framing of systems change and systemic action, from my Masters Thesis. I share the model I worked with to communicate my systems change initiatives.
If you’re interested in a spot of reading, you can read the entirety here:
Communicating the research, synthesis, strategy + execution for systems change is difficult but necessary. I present a model for doing that.
I share how I blended systems analysis, strategy and prototyping, to develop a portfolio of prototypes which make up a systems change initiative.
I share some insights about alternative approaches to developing, scaling and coordinating systems interventions, which may be more effective at increasing the likelihood of reaching a desired state.
A Model for Targeted Systems Change
I developed this model as part of my Masters of Design, in order to communicate my design process, and to give shape to the sometimes slippery concept of systems change work which may be about culture, relationships and products/services.
My starting point was inspired by an illustration of Transition Theory, presented in Finance Innovation Lab’s ‘A Strategy For Systems Change’ Report [1], which shows how three interconnected strategies come together to catalyse systems change.
In this model, I present my perspectives about the foundational stacks needed when we design a targeted systems change intervention:
Systems Sight — an analysis of the existing system, communicated as a map and story.
Strategic Insights & Hypotheses — a diagnosis and direction for action.
Portfolio of Prototypes — an array of interventions which give form to the strategic action.
Together, these come together to create the targeted systems intervention, which must also be aware of the wider context it’s working in.
My conceptualisation of targeted systems change interventions was built on Odin Mühlenbein’s article “Systems Change — Big or Small?” [2], which posits that there should be ‘big vision’ objectives for systems change, and smaller initiatives which focus resources towards systemic change, often coordinated tightly or loosely:
“it is much easier to develop strategies for targeted systems change than for big visions. Targeted systems change is more specific, smaller in scope, and often more closely related to ideas and networks that social entrepreneurs are already familiar with. Obviously, it’s important to keep the bigger picture in mind. But the goal is to use a targeted systems change as the focal point for an impact strategy, combined with a clear rationale how that that change promotes the big vision.”
— Odin Mühlenbein, 2018. “Systems Change — Big or Small?”, SSIR
On Systems Leverage
In addition to the model of systems change, I wanted to explore how to best articulate the important nuances of the strategy’s specific target. In doing so, I was reading Adam Groves’ piece about moving from service design to systems change [3], in which he introduced a systems leverage map, based on concepts from Donella Meadows and Simon Wardley’s work.
As part of my work to articulate the Strategy layer of the intervention, I created a v2 of the Systems Leverage Map in collaboration with Adam, which looked like this:
This map presents several useful aspects, which I think others might find valuable in their own practice:
A way to visualise the a strategy, service or other form of intervention, in the context of systems leverage points and lifecycle of a challenge.
A boundary artefact to engage in generative discussion and critique about the design of an intervention, with others.
A way to visualise the discrete or interconnected nature of an intervention, but also potentially the amount of resource to be invested in each (use size to denote scale), alternative scenarios (use colour to denote alternative scenarios), or really whatever else people dream up.
I am excited by this canvas, for it’s potential to advance the crafting of systems change strategies. I would love to hear from you if it resonates, and how you might use it in your own practice.
What I feel we additionally need discussion about and ways to communicate, is the breadth (what percentage of the system?) and depth (what kind of impact, and how deep and lasting is the change?) of systems change strategies. We need to be more explicit about what scale we want to act at, and what degree of change we aspire to.
Crafting a Systemic Intervention
In formulating my final written part of my Masters, I explored how to share the non-linear nature of my design practice. What I ended up sharing was this simple visual:
What I found, was that as I developed systems sight, I would bridge those insights into elements of strategy or concept design, project those back into the systems analysis, and continue in this vein throughout the project. This non-linearity is a vital part of working in complexity due to the nature of emergent outcomes.
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
– Heraclitus, Greek Philosopher
To this end, as I mentioned in the description of the model, I feel that the stacks of systems analysis, strategy and prototype portfolio are a minimum-viable architecture to design a systems intervention. Yet it’s the weaving together of these, and the ability to zoom in and out, and evaluate and evolve that is the art of creating an intervention that is likely to succeed. As Dan Hill notes in ‘Dark Matter and Trojan Horses’ [4]— zooming from the meta to the matter is a core competency of strategic designers. We need to give form to ideas which may evolve into something much bigger (such as a workshop resource which introduces a new culture of working together), but also be able to play in the dark matter (such as navigating power and relationships) that makes up systems.
On Scaling Impact
Finally, I’d like to offer some thoughts about systems change and impact, based on the insights from closely attuning my work with cutting edge research about complexity and its implications for how we approach complex challenges.
There’s a common theory of change which seems to have swept across the social sector, but the problem is — it rarely works as intended.
The idea is that we try something, often as a Pilot, and then if it works, we scale it up. Yet, all too often the ‘scaled up’ version doesn’t have the same effect as the pilot. Why is this? In a word: complexity.
Complexity denotes that you can do exactly the same thing, to exactly the same part of the systems, and you can get a different result. Causality is not fixed. Emergence is a dominant characteristic of living systems.
I know I’m not saying anything new about Pilots — people have been saying this for awhile…
Well, if we’re not going to ‘scale up’ a pilot that has worked, what could we do instead? How could we have the scale of impact which we need, given the size of the challenges which face us locally and globally, today?
Here’s three alternative models which I am interested in exploring further, borrowed from ecological approaches to replication:
Swarm. Much of the effort that goes into scaling efforts is about centralising the coordination, monitoring or otherwise. What we’ve learnt about swarm behaviour in nature, is that it relies on self-organised, collective behaviour. There are some examples around the world of decentralised movements and causes, but more experiments are needed in how to better use this approach for systems change.
Replicate + Adapt. The driving force of evolution is the constant cycle of replication and adaptation. Incentivising this approach for systems change activities could avoid the need for scaling up individual efforts, by significant replication of the core of an intervention, which is then localised to a specific context. For example, a funder might recognise the value in this approach, and fund a systems change initiative with explicit budget to open source the intervention (e.g. service / product blueprints and handbooks) so that others could replicate. Having taken Lifehack (our social lab on youth mental health in NZ) in this direction, I am deeply surprised this doesn’t happen more often.
Cascade. This is a nascent thought, but I regularly see this pattern in nature whereby a species of animal or tree creates conditions for many others to live. Whether it’s a beaver dam, a tree with a large canopy, or a hermit crab, this pattern is common and has potential to be explored. I could see a role for ‘keystone’ interventions which create a sort of beach head into a system where a complex challenge (like obesity for example) may exist. These keystone interventions would explicitly be part-funded to share insights, relationships and resources which allow other, niche interventions, to get started and make a difference.
As I say, these ideas are fieldnotes — ponderings which others may find useful, that I intend to pursue in the coming years, and am keen to hear from other people about. Perhaps you know people who are already working in these ways? Perhaps you have good examples of ‘impact ecosystems’ being established with one or more of these patterns? Whatever sparks, I’d love to hear more about it.
Alongside the painful and heart-wrenching events of the last few years, there have been a number of positive developments—many of which are culminations of efforts that began long ago. Movement actors are increasingly working in networked ways across issues to provide opportunities for systems-level change. Cross-movement collaborations between immigrant rights and economic development groups have resulted in promising opportunities for integrating immigrants’ experiences into regional economic plans. Racial justice has become foundational to strategies for change among reproductive rights organizations, climate justice advocates, and philanthropic institutions. These are just a few examples of the positive developments that bring us hope.
In Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown, social justice author, facilitator, and healer writes, “If we accept the scientific and science fictional premise that change is a constant condition of this universe, then it becomes important that we learn to be in right relationship with change.”
Through our work with nonprofit organizations, grantmakers, movement networks and other partners in the field, we have had the opportunity to work collaboratively with people deeply engaged in these efforts toward positive change. Through these partnerships, we are getting increasingly clear that both deep and wide-scale change is found in the interconnected practices that weave together a set of five elements.
Continuous and synchronous attention to these elements is foundational to being in “right relationship” with change—to advancing transformation toward love, dignity and justice.
The Interdependent and Interconnected Practices of the Elements
We first shared approaches and practices for embracing these elements through a series of articles published in the Nonprofit Quarterly where we looked at each element separately.
On their own, these elements are essential components of advancing transformative justice. However, the real power comes from approaches that draw on the interconnectedness and interdependence of these elements. When intentionally engaged together, they comprise a liberating context with deep equity at the core.
“The interplay of the elements is more than five fingers; it is one hand.” – Lupe Poblano
Lupe Poblano, codirector of CompassPoint—a leadership development and capacity building resource for the nonprofit sector and a longstanding partner of MAG—has done a deep dive into the five elements and has been exploring their interconnections. He points out that “the interplay of the elements is more than five fingers; it is one hand.”
This hand—a miracle of veins, nerves, bones and skin—hand in hand with others is what is needed to create a more equitable, just and sustainable world—to indeed live liberation.
Attending to the relationships between these elements, these fingers of one hand, looks different for different practitioners, but there are some important themes emerging from these efforts, ones that can help us all deepen our interconnected practices.
Deep Equity Transforms People, Practices, and Systems
We begin with an exploration of the practices that hold deep equity as the rhythm that defines and anchors liberating compositions—as the hand’s opposable thumb.
As our current political climate, the accessibility and prevalence of media, and the work of many people are making violence and injustice from the systemic to the interpersonal more visible and known, shifts are taking place within the various spheres of the justice ecosystem moving the whole ecosystem toward a practice of deep equity.
Deep equity is a cultural revolution, one that encompasses honoring differences; recognizing the impact our identities and positions have on our individual and collective experiences; focusing on relationships and whole beings with multiple identities; addressing trauma and healing; and eliminating systemic disparities.
Embracing deep equity is not a simple process, even for leaders, organizations, and networks that have engaged in focused equity work for some time and that have taken steps to make space for and nourish the leadership of people of color. Lupe Poblano acknowledges that both he and CompassPoint still wrestle with the destructive habits of white dominant culture. “Habits such as paternalism and a sense of urgency have historically socialized all of us to make decisions without including those most impacted. When we put process over people, we make bad decisions.”
The proud son of Mexican immigrants, Lupe, along with his team, is focused on the principles of liberation as an antidote to these habits, practices such as collective, intentional breathing. “Every time we pause and breathe together, we are doing deep equity work,” he says. “We need to create time to heal ourselves and build one another up. These are liberatory practices.They are essential to developing another way of being.”
Cibonay Cordova, consultant for the California Consortium for Urban Indian Health and member of the Network Weaver Learning Lab identifies early social training in white dominant culture norms. “We are told from a young age that transactional relationships are the most valuable. Those are the ones that make the most money. But when making decisions that have broad impact,” she says, “you need to hold multiple perspectives and [be able to] call on a number of people. This is really hard for some folks.” A woman and a mother of Native (Cazan Guamares/Yaqui) and Chicana descent, Cibonay focuses her efforts on supporting changes that are enduring by engaging multiple sources of “knowing.” This requires being rooted in deep equity. “And deep equity,” she says, “comes from having the humility to say we don’t know and can’t know everything.”
These practices are just a few of the ways individuals, organizations, and networks are working to embrace and embody deep equity. As awareness of the endemic racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia (the list goes on) in the United States increases, many organizations are also demonstrating a commitment to advancing systems change that centers equity and addresses the root causes of persistent social problems. We turn to the promising practices from these efforts next.
Advancing Complex Systems Change Requires Centering Equity
Despite increased attention towards systems change efforts that address root causes, many of these efforts have failed to acknowledge the historical and present conditions, structures, and practices that maintain inequity. This can be readily seen, for example, in philanthropic efforts to address poverty in which race is neither recognized as a corollary nor causal connection. And yet most, if not all, current poverty data—not to mention historical memory—looking at both the instances and persistence of poverty demonstrate how race and economic circumstances are inextricably tied.
In a 2018 webinar, MAG and Building Movement Project offered the following understanding of what it means to do equitable systems change:
“True systems change efforts do not merely change inequitable structures, but strive to transform the underlying power dynamics, narratives, and histories that built these structures and enable them to thrive. An equity lens is essential to systems change efforts to avoid change efforts that reinstitute the status quo or replace one systemic inequity with another.”
Much of the system-level work on social justice is funded and therefore influenced by philanthropy. Given the history of the philanthropic sector, grantmaking institutions are often quite challenged with truly centering equity in systems change efforts. However, there are promising practices emerging from several grantmaking organizations that are on the journey to center equity in their systems change efforts. And in doing so they are transforming not only their grantmaking approaches but also their understanding of both the problems and potential solutions.
For Pia Infante, a queer, first generation Filipina and co-executive director of The Whitman Institute—a philanthropic institution based in San Francisco—complex systems change requires centering those most impacted by unequal structures and systems. “When looking at environmental, political, and economic destruction,” she says, “it is clear that the brunt of its impact is on black and brown women.” But black and brown women are rarely at the center of grantmaking efforts.
In a post reflecting on the 2018 Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) Conference, Pia outlines many uncomfortable truths about philanthropy’s complicity in maintaining structural and economic racism at the same time that it strives to advance systems change efforts to addresses today’s most intractable problems.
Pia believes that it is critical to pass decision-making onto the community, but, she says, in order to do so, “grantmakers have to be brave, radical, and embodied.” Grantmakers must build relationships of trust with communities. And, in doing so, grantmakers are called on to reimagine many of their existing practices and roles.
“When you think in terms of seven generations then there is real accountability within philanthropy [required]. When we embody values of equity, trust, and accountability, our relationships and grantmaking practices look very different.” – Pia Infante
In her own work, Pia asks the philanthropic sector to take a good look at themselves in the mirror. “Wealth, whether inherited or created newly, is built on a system of inequalities where a small few [extract] profit from the work of many. Historically, the wealth of the U.S. is built on stolen lands and bodies.” If this is not acknowledged, efforts to center equity fall short.
What we need to do is acknowledge sources of wealth and their relationship to current social ills—and then transform those relationships. “When you think in terms of seven generations,” Pia says, “then there is real accountability within philanthropy [required]. When we embody values of equity, trust, and accountability, our relationships and grantmaking practices look very different.”
For example, grantmakers “living into accountability” are expanding the time horizons for investments. Thousand Currents—a foundation based in the San Francisco Bay Area that funds grassroots groups led by women, youth, and Indigenous Peoples in the Global South—has been doing just that since its founding in 1985. They provide multi-year grants of support, investing in grassroots groups that are building the cultural and political power of the communities who are most impacted by global injustices. Drawing on “grassroots brilliance” Thousand Currents funds what is most needed for the time duration that it is needed as defined by grassroots groups. As a result, Thousand Currents has been able to support organizations in building community capacity, financial resilience, and networked ecosystems to achieve meaningful impact.
“Why,” Pia asks, “is the default grant time one year? We are funding solutions to poverty, to stopping rampant deportations.” These are complex problems that developed over generations, centuries, millennia. In order to solve such problems, grantmaking efforts need to be focused on more longitudinal time commitments; this is critical to supporting more enduring solutions.
Those that are investing for the long haul are advancing systems change and doing so in a way that amounts to looking, thinking, and behaving–doing and being–differently. As Pia notes, they are building relationships rooted in trust, centering those most impacted, and shifting power.
The melody that holds the cadence of systems change and the rhythm of equity together emerges only when the being and doing are in sync—when the values of love, equity, trust, and justice are truly embodied (the being) and approaches, behaviors, and practices (the doing) reflect these values. Being in sync is not a linear or simple process; one can expect to be off key or out of rhythm sometimes, especially when we prioritize or are over-reliant on very limited sources of information (and often not the best ones for understanding the problem). Embracing multiple ways of knowing is central to these synching efforts—we explore its role next.
Multiple Ways of Knowing Catalyzes the Conditions Needed for Equitable Systems Change
Centering equity in complex systems change requires us to engage multiple perspectives and experiences in order to define both problems and solutions. To engage multiple perspectives, we need to draw on more than knowledge restricted to the intellectual and academic realms of numeric analysis, logic, theory, and rationalist approaches to truth. We need to lift up ancestral wisdom, intuitive knowing, the insight of the arts with their ability to represent complexity, and the ancient knowing of nature.
Without surfacing these multiple ways of knowing, we lose access to ourselves, our connections to each other and to the environment around us, and in so doing, we lose access to transformational approaches to creating a world in which we can all thrive.
Amee Raval—policy and research associate for the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN) and a second generation South Asian American—shares that drawing on multiple ways of knowing is central to APEN’s work. An organization dedicated to bringing together low income, immigrant and refugee Asian and Pacific Islander communities to create a collective voice and develop an alternative agenda for environmental, social and economic justice, APEN centers storytelling in their organizing and advocacy efforts. “For us storytelling is really critical; it is not just a way of knowing but a way of healing,” she says.
In his book, TheTruth about Stories, Cherokee writer and photographer Thomas King writes, “The truth about stories is that’s all we are.” And thus the stories we tell matter a great deal. Many people and cultures across the globe are rooted in the wisdom of stories and we see this practice being brought forth more intentionally and frequently in justice work.
When speaking with Sacramento legislators about the need for clean energy in California, APEN community leaders shared stories about the health impacts of living in neighborhoods surrounding a nearby Chevron Refinery. One community member described her children struggling to breathe due to asthma. Another described the circumstances of her neighbors who were dying of cancer. “The whole room was silent; some legislators were crying,” says Amee. “Clean energy can seem so technical and political, so the space for stories isn’t always made.” But it was the community members stories—their lived experiences—that were most influential with legislators. And too, these stories enabled community members—many of whom are refugees that have fled war and upheaval in their home countries only to endure racism, discrimination and other hardships in the United States—to lift up their own resilience and be honored and witnessed in their enduring survival.
As we know from the work of Monica Dennis—a Black, feminist, leadership and liberation consultant, and co-director of Move to End Violence—distortion of story is a practice of white dominant culture that furthers oppression. Thus, it is through the reweaving or retelling of our individual and collective stories that we can move toward liberation.
“We live out multiple truths everyday.” – Harold Steward
Storytelling—holding many perspectives and drawing on cultural and ancestral wisdom—is also central to The Theater Offensive’s mission to present the diversity of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer lives in ways that break through personal isolation, challenge the status quo, and build thriving communities. This engagement with multiple ways of knowing goes beyond theater programming.
Harold Steward, interim executive director of Theater Offensive and a queer black man from the South, intentionally centers a southern black practice in his leadership and work. For Harold, drawing on cultural and ancestral wisdom is critical to bringing his full self to his artistic and community organizing efforts. “I grew up in a largely black community in Dallas, Texas,” he says; “this was my training ground.”
Notes Harold, “we live out multiple truths every day.” Drawing on black culture, as well as black arts traditions such as jazz, is central to Harold’s ability to hold complexity and multiple truths. Unlike many western European traditions that tend to center one plot while subjugating others, black expressive forms such as jazz hold multiplicity—different yet non-competing musical compositions that link, weave and skirt one another. Such facility is critical to holding the many perspectives, needs and experiencesof different communities—and bringing them forward in order to develop transformative solutions.
For Evelyn Francis, interim artistic director of Theater Offensive and a self-identified femme dyke of white Appalachian origins, centering multiple ways of knowing is core to the Theater’s ‘Out in the Neighborhood Program’ or ‘OUT’hood.’ The program was born out of the invocation of a young, queer Haitian woman who participated in the Theater’s youth program. During an afternoon rehearsal at the theater, she asked, “Why do I have to take two buses and a train to feel [comfortable with] who I am? I want to be out in my neighborhood.” The question became the fulcrum for Theater Offensive’s journey from a more traditional theater company to one rooted in community development and activism.
Moving out of formal theaters and into churches and community centers in four communities of color within the greater Boston area was just one of the shifts Theater Offensive made. They also began developing and performing their own theatrical productions, ones that drew from the work, lives and dreams of community members.
This deep engagement of community culture, lived experience, ancestral knowledge and additional ways of knowing are the vehicle through which Theater Offensive is affecting cultural change, change that is co-created by the communities themselves. The transformative nature of theater also provides opportunities for all who participate to bear witness to their strengths and begin to heal the intergenerational wounds of systemic racism, patriarchy, and homophobia.
Healing these intergenerational wounds, while attempting to heal the systems and people who affect ongoing harm (who are sometimes the same people), requires that we attend to our inner work.
Collective and Individual Inner Work Supports the Transformative Healing Needed to Simultaneously Hold the Five Elements
“I believe that by changing ourselves we change the world, that traveling El Mundo Zurdo path is the path of a two-way movement—a going deep into the self and an expanding out into the world, a simultaneous recreation of the self and a reconstruction of society.” – Gloria Anzaldúa
The recognition of the significant role inner work plays in our ability to engage in transformative outer work is not new. Indigenous teachings throughout the Americas are rooted in practices of creating balance in self in order to be in right relation to others. Chicana American activist and author Gloria Anzaldúa wrote in her essay La Prieta, “I believe that by changing ourselves we change the world, that traveling El Mundo Zurdo path is the path of a two-way movement—a going deep into the self and an expanding out into the world, a simultaneous recreation of the self and a reconstruction of society.”
There is an increasing number of organizations and networks sharing their collective inner work practices, from organizers and activists to the progressive funders contributing to their work. The inner work practices of grantmakers in particular have a reverberating impact on the capacity of grantees to advance what grantees and communities see is needed.
Inner transformation is a focal point for the Hidden Leaf Foundation—a family foundation based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Tara Brown, a white woman, long-time activist, and the founding and former executive director of the foundation, describes the foundation’s efforts as “supporting transformative approaches within change movements.” An essential condition for transformation, Tara says, is spaciousness, it literally, “makes space for transformation [to occur].” Tara and other members of her family have brought their individual inner work practices to their foundation work and practice together before making important philanthropic decisions.
In their external grantmaking efforts, the family foundation’s focus has evolved from supporting non-profit leaders in deepening their own leadership and inner work practices to investing in organization-wide transformation through group engagements with deep practice in one or more modalities or traditions.
Specifically, the foundation has been committed to supporting intermediaries and capacity builders who focus on embodiment, mindfulness and inner work. Notes Tara, “internal and external capacity building is truly the only way to create the change we want to see.”
Another dimension of inner work comes from racial equity work that is focused on culturally-rooted healing and resilience practice. This is the cornerstone of Lauren Padilla-Valverde’s efforts for The California Endowment, which has been deeply investing in a 10-year, place-based community change effort in fourteen California regions known as Building Healthy Communities.
As Senior Program Manager for East Salinas (Alisal), Lauren uses what she calls a healing-informed, racial equity framework to guide her work with the community to influence a regional ecosystem of government, philanthropy, resident organizing and non-profits to work on systems change that centers a healing informed, racial justice practice. Lauren, the daughter of indigenous Guatemalan immigrants who were forced to flee their country in 1969 because of her father’s community organizing work fighting back land grabs by US national corporations, is driven by her late father’s culturally rooted philosophy on justice. For Lauren, achieving racial equity requires the centering of healing in order to create the conditions for accountability and collective action.
Her work in Monterey County arose out of a community response to four police officer involved shootings of people of color that occurred within a three-month span of time in 2014. The shootings catalyzed community outrage, but, notes Lauren, “community leaders recognized that rage alone wouldn’t address it.” Instead, “Building Healthy Communities partners and resident leaders came together to call for and create healing-informed systems change.”
Lauren and other community leaders asked members of city government “if [they] were willing to look in the mirror and understand how racism, andother forms of oppression, operate within systems to perpetuate inequity and injustices in the community.” Coming out of this request was the design and creation of a week-long racial healing and racial equity curriculum which brought together 50 community members (BHC leaders, community organizations) and 50 city government leaders and employees—such as law enforcement, planning, public works—local business owners, and nonprofit professionals.
Together, they developed a shared racial equity language and core concepts, deepened their understanding of how racism and white supremacy manifest in policies and budgeting priorities, and, most importantly, collectively grappled with racism, recognized its impact on their lives, and created a space for listening, healing and transformation. The curriculum was informed by local leaders and co-presented by Race Forward and the National Compadres Network. (To read more about this partnership and project, see the report: Building the We.)
“When we stop doing the healing, we stop moving. When you light the match of healing, it is unstoppable.” – Lauren Padilla-Valverde
“When you center healing in racially equitable systems change, the entire process brings a sense of humanity to the work,” Lauren says, one that connects multiple ways of knowing, systems change, equity and inner work. The healing reduces defensiveness and creates the conditions to develop deep understanding of how oppression and white supremacy separate entire communities to form an `Us’ vs. `Them’ narrative.” They are also cultivating a leaderful ecosystem by building community leadership capacity that can support transformative change over the long haul. Notes Lauren, the problems we are addressing “aren’t ones that we are going to fix in our lifetime.”
Lauren also brings an indigenous perspective on impact. “It took seven generations to get this way,” she says, and likely it will take “another seven generations to change it.”
Leaderful Ecosystems Build the Agency and Power Needed for Advancing Love, Dignity, and Justice
“One thing that is really important to building community and creating systems change is developing space that builds agency and power.” – Sage Crump
This alternate time horizon for change—one the recognizes the complexity of the challenges we are facing and the need for investing in deep relationship building to ensure sustained efforts that move us toward love, dignity and justice for all—foregrounds the importance of creating leaderful ecosystems to create the conditions and a people path forward.
According to Sage Crump—program specialist for Leveraging a Network of Equity (LANE) and a queer, Black woman living in the American South who is working to strengthen arts and culture in social justice movements—“one thing that is really important to building community and creating systems change is developing space that builds agency and power.”
LANE is a collaborative program that delivers the methodology and resources to strengthen the financial and organizational health of arts organizations that are geographically isolated; led by and for people of color; and/or are rooted in small to mid-sized community-based groups.
This work is needed at the individual, organizational, network, movement and ecosystem level. Building the capacity of arts organizations alone will not ensure a thriving arts sector, especially one in which arts organizations of color flourish. So LANE is addressing the two prongs of racial oppression: racial superiority and racial inferiority. “We are working to build power individually and collectively,” Sage says. “Often we have the funder in the room as a listener and a participant. This is a way to dismantle capital as a primary source of power. What does grantmaking really take? We need for funders to come from the lens of a grantee. Equity is not just the changing of people but also the processes.”
In her book The Power Manual, Cyndi Saurez notes, “Further, one can build one’s capacity for liberatory power. It requires a commitment to living mindfully, constantly increasing one’s level of awareness, so that when one finds oneself in an interaction that positions one as powerless, one is able to perceive it, keep calm, and assert mutuality. Liberatory power helps one refrain from asserting power over others, or to do so carefully.”
LANE is now broadening its focus from arts organizations and funders to social justice efforts more broadly. In doing so, they are embedding arts and culture in social justice as a fulcrum of social transformation.
It is through the arts that we can create, at an experiential level, a shared understanding of our vision for the future and simultaneously recreate ourselves and our world.
Making Music: The Syncopated, Contrary, and Melodic Rhythms of the Five Elements
“The universe is not asking us to do something, the universe is asking us to be something. And that’s a whole different thing.” – Lucille Clifton
In the Network Weaver Learning Lab, organizational and network leaders of color (and their allies) working in domestic violence prevention and services as well as other intersecting justice issues, such as reproductive and racial justice, came together to deepen their network leadership practice, build greater capacity for collaborating across movements, and cultivate leaderful ecosystems in all their networked social justice efforts.
Rooted in the five elements, the Lab became a space for exploring their interconnections. Creating leaderful ecosystems meant deepening equity, addressing power in the room, and holding tension generatively; making the space for and engaging in shared practices of inner work; drawing on multiple ways of knowing to re-member the wisdom of our communities, our ancestors, the land on which we gathered; and making visible the interconnected systems that perpetuate injustices in order to create approaches to transform these systems.
Another experience of the interplay of these five elements took place just over a year ago at MAG’s Confluence. A two-day gathering of approximately 90 of MAG’s partners and friends working on issues of justice, it was described by many as a “liberated zone.” The experience of liberation was the result of many aspects of the gathering, but the foundation of Confluence’s design—both in terms of what we dove into and our ways of moving in the waters in which we swam—was the five elements and the interplay of this five-fingered hand.
What we’ve learned through these experiences, and others, is the critical nature of “deep hanging out” (hat tip to Chris Barahona—an Urban Futures Lab Fellow—who lifted up this concept for us, originally from anthropologist Clifford Geertz). Deep hanging out entails building relationships and trust so we can wrestle with the hard stuff; focusing on the intersectionality of oppressions and liberation; building muscles for collaboration and networked approaches to leadership; developing experiments to create possibilities for new and improved outcomes; and being in right relationship with change.
Through embodying these five vital elements together, our five fingers becoming not just one hand but many hands playing together, creating music that is expansive and interdependent enough to hold improvisation—our contrary, melodic and syncopated rhythms—connecting us to one another and to the invocation of our song: a world filled with love, dignity and justice.
Many of the big challenges and issues confronting humanity are only solvable using all available knowledge – across disciplines and paradigms of knowledge. Edward Wilson set out an agenda for better integration of all sciences in his book “Consilience” two decades ago.
Systems Community of Inquiry 
You must be logged in to post a comment.