1. … a type of innovation where value can only be derived when the innovation is synergistically integrated with other complementary innovations, going beyond the boundaries of a single organization.
2. … the development of policies and governance at a local, regional or national scale to create an
enabling environment for the above kind of synergistic, multi-organizational innovations.
3. … when its purpose is to change the fundamental nature of society; for instance, to deliver on major transitions concerning ecological sustainability.
4. … how the people acting to bring about an innovation engage in a process to support systemic thinking,
Systems thinking has evolved over time:
1950s – 1960s: The early systems sciences (with cybernetics)
1970s – 1980s: The 1st paradigm shift: from real-world systems to ways of thinking in systems terms
1980s – 2000s: The 2nd paradigm shift: understanding power relations and mixing methods
The methodological progression is used to redefine systemic innovation (in the fourth way, above).
We can now move to formulate a new definition of systemic innovation, based on the foregoing
discussion. At its most basic, a systemic Innovation is one that emerges from a process that supports innovators and their stakeholders in using systems concepts to change their thinking, relationships, interactions and actions to deliver new value. The definition of stakeholders needs to happen within that same process. [p. 19]
This fourth approach can be integrated with the field of systemic intervention.
Dave Snowden at TedX: A succinct overview of his groundbreaking work
I first met Dave in 2002 when we were both employed by IBM. I remember experiencing an immediate resonance with his work, especially the inherent integrity of honoring context and not mindlessly applying best-practice recipes as the big consultancies tend to do.
It is now 16 years later, and it has been a privilege to be part of his journey, and to see the thinking and methods become more and more coherent over time. This talk is an excellent resource for anyone who wants an introduction to the thinking, or who wants to introduce others to it.
In less than 18 minutes, Dave manages to introduce complex systems theory; tell the children’s party story (3 mins 30 secs) and introduce a new theory of change based on the power of micro-narrative and vector measures enabled by Sensemaker (7 mins).
Watch it … It’s 18 minutes well spent.
Some stand-out nuggets:
On our over-focus on order and measurement (40 secs)
Order is hugely valuable to human beings, on a negative side a fear of chaos has been used to impose order unnecessarily and destroy creativity and freedom.
Over the last 40 or 50 years we’ve taken an engineering focus on society and an engineering metaphor. We’ve actually compounded order with excessive outcome based measurement. If you actually look at the history of last 40 or 50 years, everything has to have a target; everything has to have a defined outcome and it has to be a number. Whether it’s KPI’s, number of published papers or whatever else. The reality is all of the scientific evidence says that when human beings are pursuing explicit targets it destroys intrinsic motivation, there is no evidence to contradict that.
Where do we most need intrinsic motivation? In health and education. And where do we impose the worst targets? In health and education so we need to start thinking differently about this and move away from a primitive dichotomy.
On managing Complex Adaptive Systems (2 mins):
Complex adaptive system: it’s a system defined not by its structure by it by its connectivity. In a complex system everything is connected with everything else but many of the connections cannot be known. …
… Understanding how we manage them is critical and it’s not about control it’s about understanding the connections and changes in the linkages.
3 mins 30 secs: Children’s Party Story
6 mins 30 secs:
… what we manage is the emergence of beneficial coherence within attractors within boundaries and we manage the only three things that you can manage in a complex adaptive system: the boundary conditions; the probes and the amplification strategy.
Management and governance is much simpler when you understand the nature of the system and you stop trying to treat an ecosystem as if it was an engineering problem when it’s an ecological problem.
On micro-narrative and a new theory of change (7 mins 10 secs)
We need to understand what’s going on, and you can only understand a complex system by understanding the small particular parts of day-to-day interaction. For humans those are the anecdotal data of the school gate, the street stories, the beer after work; not the grand narratives of workshops but the day-to-day anecdotes of people’s existence.
And we need to understand them through the voice of the people who tell them not through an AI machine interpreting the text or an expert making them fit their cultural expectations.
The people’s own voice has to be subject to their own interpretation.
And then we need to allow those in power at any level of society to have direct access to the raw stories of the people they govern, without multiple levels of interpretation which allow them to hide from reality behind the guise of policy reports.
On change (nudging towards adjacent possibles) (15 min 40 sec)
… they can all nudge their systems in a direction appropriate to their context rather being subject to the tyranny of the average approach: the global campaign.
We need to start doing small things in the present rather than promising massive things in the future because that just leads to perpetual disappointment.
We are Dave’s exclusive South Africa partners, so if you want to explore how to implement these ideas in your own context, please contact us to find out more.
daviding
9:19 am on February 16, 2018 Tags: anthropology, science and technology studies
Lucy Suchman’s Medea Talk explores recent developments in the study of digital media that recover the entanglements of bodies and technologies. Drawing on a series of examples from her own research and others within science and technology studies (STS) and design, she makes the case for an understanding of information as irreducibly social and material, virtual and real. In October, Lucy Suchman was also appointed as Honorary Doctorate at Malmö University.
Photographs in the presentation about the Macy Conferences are excerpted from “How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics Literature and Informatics” | N. Katherine Hayles | 1999 | U. of Chicago Press, listed on Google Scholar.
It occurs to me that some readers would like to know more about Pattern Languages; the pros and cons; pointers to the research; perhaps, how to write (or find) Patterns. I will do that soon on the basis of my current understanding. I’d like to put out a few more examples first though. I find that concepts such as “Pattern” and “Pattern Language” are much better defined by example than by rule. In the meantime, here below are some pointers to give a better flavor of what this odd creature, A Pattern Language, actually looks like and whether it can be housebroken or used for hunting. As you can tell by the list below, I have tried this creature in many different circumstances. To me, it seems quite happy and affectionate. I think that when it comes to trying to work with Pattern Languages, it is necessary to treat it something like a puppy. Your attitude will be an even more important a predictor of your success than your cleverness or knowledge of the Patterns.
Let every Pattern be “frisky” and let each Pattern explore and check out odd corners of the domain (and each other). There are cases where a Pattern doesn’t apply and there are cases where no Pattern applies just as your puppy can’t do anything they want. And, there are a few places where Pattern Languages are not at all appropriate just as there are places where no pets are allowed. For example, some situations are well enough understood that they can be characterized by a mathematical formula. No need for a Pattern (or a puppy) there, though it could still be fun.
CCS2018 is the flagship conference on Complex Systems promoted by the CSS. It brings under one umbrella a wide variety of leading researchers, practitioners and stakeholders with a direct interest in Complex Systems, from Physics to Computer Science, Biology, Social Sciences, Economics, and Technological and Communication Networks, among others.
We are looking forward to seeing the best of your new insights in Complex Systems at the Conference on Complex Systems 2018, in Thessaloniki, Greece, to be held from 23 to 28 September 2018.
Topics covered by the Conference include, but are not limited to:
Main Tracks
1. Foundations of Complex Systems (complex networks, self-organization, nonlinear dynamics, statistical physics, mathematical modeling and simulation)
2. Information and Communication Technologies (Internet, WWW, search, semantic web, Blockchain, Bitcoins)
3. Cognition and Linguistics (evolution of language, social consensus, artificial intelligence, cognitive processes)
4. Economics and Finance (social networks, game theory, stock market and crises)
5. Infrastructure, Planning and Environment (critical infrastructures, urban planning, mobility, transport and energy, Smart Cities)
6. Biological and (Bio)Medical Complexity (biological networks, systems biology, evolution, natural science, medicine and physiology)
7. Socio-Ecological Systems (SES) (global environmental change, green growth, sustainability and resilience)
8. Complexity in Physics and Chemistry
9. Other applications of Complex Systems
We invite you to submit a one-page abstract until the 30th of April 2018, via our EasyChair submission link: EasyChair
Abstract Submission Guidelines
Easychair will be used for all procedures
Log in to easychair.org using an existing account.
If you do not have an account, you can easily sign up.
Click on the submission link (see below).
Log in to the conference as an author, and proceed with uploading your paper at the top left corner by clicking “New Submission”
Follow the instructions easy chair provides you and fill in all the necessary details.
We accept contributed talks (regular and lightning talks) and posters. Please indicate your preference for one of the following categories to present your research:
Regular talk
Poster submission
Lightning talk
Oral Presentations
The allocated time for each oral presentations is 15 minutes, which total time for presentation +questions (12 min + 3 min). There is a tight schedule and it is important that each presenter stay within this time limit. Presenters will have access to a laptop with LCD projector and a laser pointer. Please, bring your presentation to the meeting on a USB flash drive to load on the in-room laptops. You should load your presentation on one of the conference laptops before the first session, during the coffee breaks, or during lunch preceding your presentation. A support staff member will be in each room to assist with the loading.
Poster Presentations
For each poster, display boards will be allocated. The poster area will open 30 minutes before each poster sessions begins each day. It is advisable to hang the posters sometime before 9:00 a.m. the day of the respective session. Posters will need to be taken down by the end of the day of each session. Presenters will be required to be next to their posters during specific time slots. Poster dimensions: 90 x 120 cm.
Lightning (Ignite) presentations
A few oral talks will be presented in the “ignite” mode. Such talks should present a single, new, key idea of the problem at hand, rather than give complete and detailed results of a research project. Thus, the allocated time will be 3 minutes. No questions/answers will be allowed. Each ignite talk should have no more than 3 slides. All presentations should be loaded to the room laptop before the beginning of the session. Please see the support staff member of the room to assist you with the loading.
Important dates:
Deadline for abstract submission: 30 Apr 2018
Notification to authors: 1 June 2018.
Dates of the Conference: 23-28 September 2018.
Dates of satellite meetings: 26-27 September 2018.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us: ccs2018@auth.gr
The science of complexity is based on a new way of thinking that stands in sharp contrast to the philosophy underlying Newtonian science, which is based on reductionism, determinism, and objective knowledge. This paper reviews the historical development of this new world view, focusing on its philosophical foundations. Determinism was challenged by quantum mechanics and chaos theory. Systems theory replaced reductionism by a scientifically based holism. Cybernetics and postmodern social science showed that knowledge is intrinsically subjective. These developments are being integrated under the header of “complexity science”. Its central paradigm is the multi-agent system. Agents are intrinsically subjective and uncertain about their environment and future, but out of their local interactions, a global organization emerges. Although different philosophers, and in particular the postmodernists, have voiced similar ideas, the paradigm of complexity still needs to be fully assimilated by philosophy. This will throw a new light on old philosophical issues such as relativism, ethics and the role of the subject.
Contextuality: A Philosophical Paradigm, with Applications to Philosophy of Cognitive Science
Gershenson, C (2002) Contextuality: A Philosophical Paradigm, with Applications to Philosophy of Cognitive Science.[Departmental Technical Report] (Unpublished)
We develop on the idea that everything is related, inside, and therefore determined by a context. This stance, which at first might seem obvious, has several important consequences. This paper first presents ideas on Contextuality, for then applying them to problems in philosophy of cognitive science. Because of space limitations, for the second part we will assume that the reader is familiar with the literature of philosophy of cognitive science, but if this is not the case, it would not be a limitation for understanding the main ideas of this paper. We do not argue that Contextuality is a panaceic answer for explaining everything, but we do argue that everything is inside a context. And because this is always, we sometimes ignore it, but we believe that many problems are dissolved with a contextual approach, noticing things we ignore because of their obviousity. We first give a notion of context. We present the idea that errors are just incongruencies inside a context. We also present previous ideas of absolute being, relative being, and lessincompleteness. We state that all logics, and also truth judgements, are contextdependent, and we develop a “Context-dependant Logic”. We apply ideas of Contextuality to problems in semantics, the problem of “where is the mind”, and the study of consciousness.
Carlos Gershenson, Francis Heylighen (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
(Submitted on 16 Feb 2004 (v1), last revised 1 Jun 2004 (this version, v2))
This chapter does not deal with specific tools and techniques for managing complex systems, but proposes some basic concepts that help us to think and speak about complexity. We review classical thinking and its intrinsic drawbacks when dealing with complexity. We then show how complexity forces us to build models with indeterminacy and unpredictability. However, we can still deal with the problems created in this way by being adaptive, and profiting from a complex system’s capability for selforganization, and the distributed intelligence this may produce.
The Implications of Interactions for Science and Philosophy
Carlos Gershenson
Computer Sciences Department,
Instituto de Investigaciones en Matem´aticas Aplicadas y en Sistemas
Universidad Nacional Aut´onoma de M´exico
May 17, 2011 Abstract
Reductionism has dominated science and philosophy for centuries. Complexity has recently shown that interactions—which reductionism neglects—are relevant for understanding
phenomena. When interactions are considered, reductionism becomes limited in several aspects. In this paper, I argue that interactions imply non-reductionism, non-materialism, non-predictability, non-Platonism, and non-nihilism. As alternatives
to each of these, holism, informism, adaptation, contextuality, and meaningfulness are put forward, respectively. A worldview that includes interactions not only describes better our world, but can help to solve many open scientific, philosophical, and social problems caused by implications of reductionism.
Since it’s a good source – especially recently – I took a look at the person behind Complexity Digest (https://comdig.unam.mx/ – and often drawn from the open-contribution, curated scoop.it at http://www.scoop.it/u/complexity-digest). Though there’s a storied history, going back to Dr Gottfried Mayer (see https://comdig.unam.mx/about/), Carlos Gershenon, the current editor, is an interesting chap doing some interesting work (headline link and below):
I can’t find a free source for this article, so have linked to the Complexity Digest piece – this and the recentre three articles are from that excellent resource.
Evolving Ecosystems: Inheritance and Selection in the Light of the Microbiome
The importance of microorganisms in human biology is undeniable. The amount of research that supports that microbes have a fundamental role in animal and plant physiology is substantial and increasing every year. Even though we are only beginning to comprehend the broadness and complexity of microbial communities, evolutionary theories need to be recast in the light of such discoveries to fully understand and incorporate the role of microbes in our evolution. Fundamental evolutionary concepts such as diversity, heredity, selection, speciation, etc., which constitute the modern synthesis, are now being challenged, or at least expanded, by the emerging notion of the holobiont, which defines the genetic and metabolic networks of the host and its microbes as a single evolutionary unit. Several concepts originally developed to study ecosystems, can be used to understand the physiology and evolution of such complex systems that constitute “individuals.” In this review, we discuss these ecological concepts and also provide examples that range from squids, insects and koalas to other mammals and humans, suggesting that microorganisms have a fundamental role not only in physiology but also in evolution. Current evolutionary theories need to take into account the dynamics and interconnectedness of the host-microbiome network, as animals and plants not only owe their symbiogenetic origin to microbes, but also share a long evolutionary history together.
Evolving Ecosystems: Inheritance and Selection in the Light of the Microbiome
Santiago Sandoval-Motta, Maximino Aldana, Alejandro Frank
If you’ve been frustrated by seeing situations at work or elsewhere in the world going wrong in the same way over and over again then, without knowing it, you’ve probably experienced a systems law in operation. If you’re interested in learning more about the insight made possible through understanding how systems work, why not join us for an evening Systems Café event to learn about systems thinking and try applying it to some of the news topics of the day or your own management issues?
This Systems Café is organised by SCiO. SCiO is a community of systems practitioners who believe that traditional approaches to running organisations are responsible for many of the problems we see today. We believe that systems approaches to designing and running organisations offer radically new and better alternatives. We have run quarterly Open Meetings (mini-conferences) and Development Days for some years. Systems Cafés are a new initiative to help support Systems Practitioners and others interested in learning about Systems approaches and practice.
£2 fee towards refreshments
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“In systems thinking… understanding proceeds from the whole to its parts, not from the parts to the whole as knowledge does.” – Russell Ackoff
What the body feels is every bit as significant as what the mind thinks, a neuroscientist argues. Turn to emotions to explain human consciousness and cultures
Skin trade: Homeostasis, 2005-2006, by Liza Lou. Homeostasis is the key word throughout the book. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian
Nietzsche would have given four cheers for this intricately argued book, which is at once scientifically rigorous and humanely accommodating, and, so far as this reviewer can judge, revolutionary. Antonio Damasio, a professor of neuroscience, psychology and philosophy, sets out to investigate “why and how we emote, feel, use feelings to construct our selves … and how brains interact with the body to support such functions”. We are not floating seraphim, he reminds us, but bodies that think – and all the better for it.
From Plato onwards, western philosophy has favoured mind over “mere” body, so that by the time we get to Descartes, the human has become hardly more than a brain stuck atop a stick, like a child’s hobbyhorse. This is the conception of humanness that Damasio wishes to dismantle. For him, as for Nietzsche, what the body feels is every bit as significant as what the mind thinks, and further, both functions are inextricably intertwined. Indeed, from the very start, among the earliest primitive life forms, affect – “the world of emotions and feelings” – was the force that drove unstoppably towards the flowering of human consciousness and the creation of cultures, Damasio insists.
The idea on which he bases his book is, he tells us, simple: “Feelings have not been given the credit they deserve as motives, monitors, and negotiators of human cultural endeavours.” In claiming simplicity, it is possible the author is being a mite disingenuous. The tone in which he sets out his argument is so carefully judged, so stylistically calm and scientifically collected, that most readers will be lulled into nodding agreement. Yet a moment’s thought will tell us that we conduct our lives largely in contradiction of his premise, and for the most part deal with each other, and even with ourselves, as if we were pure spirit accidentally and inconveniently shackled to half a hundredweight or so of forked flesh.
“Feelings, and more generally affect of any sort and strength,” Damasio writes, “are the unrecognised presences at the cultural conference table.” According to him, the conference began among the bacteria, which – who? – even in their “unminded existence … assume what can only be called a sort of ‘moral attitude’”. In support of his claim, he adduces the various ways in which bacteria behave that bear a striking resemblance to human social organisation. The implication is, then, that “the human unconscious literally goes back to early life-forms, deeper and further than Freud or Jung ever dreamed of”. Damasio’s argument is that we are directly descended not only from the apes, but from the earliest wrigglers at the bottom of the primordial rock pool.
Antonio Damasio … wholly his own man. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
The keyword throughout the book is homeostasis, of which he offers a number of definitions, the clearest of which is the earliest, and which he favours enough to set it in italics: homeostasis is the force – the word seems justified – that ensures that “life is regulated within a range that is not just compatible with survival but also conducive to flourishing, to a projection of life into the future of an organism or a species”.
Damasio, whose books include The Feeling of What Happens and Self Comes to Mind, is a scientist but also a convinced, one might say a crusading, humanist. He wants us to recognise the richness of life in all its aspects, good or bad; but he is no sentimentalist. The human condition is one of struggle and assertion and the will to prevail: “Life comes equipped with a precise mandate: resist and project life into the future, no matter what.” Here again the shadow, or the radiance, of Nietzsche’s thinking falls across the page.
Also called to the table is Spinoza – on whom Damasio has written at length – and his emphasis on conatus, the essential force by which all things strive to persevere, and which had for Spinoza the same significance that homeostasis has for Damasio.
There are echoes here too of William James, that most endearing of philosophers, as when Damasio pauses for a brief, Jamesian consideration of the anomalous fact that for all the hi-tech sophistication of modern life, we still cling to the primitive pleasure and reassurance of the domestic fireplace. And James would have been delighted by Damasio’s “everydayness”, his readiness to acknowledge the fundamental underpinnings of even our highest endeavours, for instance when he remarks in wonderment: “It is intriguing to think that the enteric nervous system” – that is, the gut – “might well have been the very first brain.”
But Damasio, while ever ready to salute his predecessors and peers, is wholly his own man, and The Strange Order of Things is a fresh and daring effort to identify the true spring and source of human being – of the being, in fact, of all living things – namely feeling. As he beautifully puts it, “The sick patient, the abandoned lover, the wounded warrior, and the troubadour in love were able to feel.” The truth of this is simple and profound; how else may we be said to live, except by feeling?
Although complexity surrounds us, its inherent uncertainty, ambiguity, and contradiction can at first make complex systems appear inscrutable. Ecosystems, for instance, are nonlinear, self-organizing, seemingly chaotic structures in which individuals interact both with each other and with the myriad biotic and abiotic components of their surroundings across geographies as well as spatial and temporal scales. In the face of such complexity, ecologists have long sought tools to streamline and aggregate information. Among them, in the 1980s, T. F. H. Allen and Thomas B. Starr implemented a burgeoning concept from business administration: hierarchy theory. Cutting-edge when Hierarchy was first published, their approach to unraveling complexity is now integrated into mainstream ecological thought.
This thoroughly revised and expanded second edition of Hierarchy reflects the assimilation of hierarchy theory into ecological research, its successful application to the understanding of complex systems, and the many developments in thought since. Because hierarchies and levels are habitual parts of human thinking, hierarchy theory has proven to be the most intuitive and tractable vehicle for addressing complexity. By allowing researchers to look explicitly at only the entities and interconnections that are relevant to a specific research question, hierarchically informed data analysis has enabled a revolution in ecological understanding. With this new edition of Hierarchy, that revolution continues.
JOHN HENRY HOLLAND is a professor of psychology and a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His main research interests are complex adaptive systems (natural and artificial), computer-based models of cognitive processes, and the construction of models for computer-based thought experiments. Known widely as the “father of genetic algorithms,” he is a board member of the International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Santa Fe Institute. He has been named a MacArthur Fellow and is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum. His two most recent books are Emergence: From Chaos to Order and Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity.
more at https://www.edge.org/memberbio/john_h_holland
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Holland frequently lectured around the world on his own research, and on research and open questions in complex adaptive systems (CAS) studies. In 1975 he wrote the ground-breaking book on genetic algorithms, “Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems”. He also developed Holland’s schema theorem.
Publications
Holland is the author of a number of books about complex adaptive systems, including:
Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems (1975, MIT Press)
Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity (1995, Basic Books)
Emergence: From Chaos to Order (1998, Basic Books)
Signals and Boundaries: Building Blocks for Complex Adaptive Systems (2012, MIT Press)
Complexity: A Very Short Introduction (2014, Oxford University Press)
![[img]](https://stream.syscoi.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/application_pdf.png?w=776)
I did a PhD on 
Before that, I did a BEng in Computer Engineering at the 
Systems Community of Inquiry 
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