For those interested, there is a particular systems methodology called (for rather obscure reasons) Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, or CHAT for short. CHAT was developed by Mike Cole and Yrjö Engestrom. Etienne Wenger later of Communities of Practice and Situated Learning fame, was also involved in the early days. CHAT is based on the idea that if systems approaches are intended to be opportunities for learning, then why not develop a systems methodology based on learning theories. In this case, it was based on Vygotsky’s ideas of learning as a social process. CHAT is a fascinating approach that has strongly influenced my practice, but in essence is based on the idea that an individual’s journey to fulfilling a need is mediated by the tools they use (including language), the rules of the community they are part of and the roles that they play in that community. How an individual learns how to fulfill that need is dependent on how they addresses and resolve the contractions within and between tool, rules, roles and needs. Now expand this into a work setting (ie a community of practice) where people are working on the same activity but fullfilling different needs, and you have a whole bunch more contradictions that need to be addressed, as this article so succinctly describes. CHAT is frequently used in high risk environments especially concerning health and safety issues, where contradictions abound. If anyone is interested to find out more, there is a description of CHAT in my book System Diagrams, along with the questions that CHAT addresses. The book is donationware (ie free but you can pay something if you wish) and can be downloaded from https://bobwilliams.gumroad.com
This inspired me to do a little run on CHAT – and also links to
From Heraclitus’s river to second-order cybernetics — twenty-five centuries of ideas about wholes, parts, flux, feedback, and the organised complexity of the living world.
SYSTEMSLITERACY.ORG The History of Systems Thinking From Heraclitus’s river to second-order cybernetics — twenty-five centuries of ideas about wholes, parts, flux, feedback, and the organised complexity of the living world.
The 19th International Conference of Sociocybernetics will take place in Oaxaca, Mexico, from August 3rd to August 7th, 2026. This event is organized under the theme “Glocal Intersections”
19TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF SOCIOCYBERNETICS
Glocal Intersections Oaxaca, Mexico, 3-7 August 2026 (Hybrid Format)
The 19th International Conference of Sociocybernetics will take place in Oaxaca, Mexico, from August 3rd to August 7th, 2026. This event is organized under the theme “Glocal Intersections”
Turning to the form of a simple recursive function the clause we used to define it earns the title of “syntactic recursion” due to the way the function name occurring in the defined phrase re‑occurs in the defining phrase
It needs to be clear there is no circle in the definition — each instance of the type is defined in terms of an instance one step simpler until the base case is reached and fixed by fiat. Instead of a circle then we have two gyres, the gyre down via the precedent function and the gyre up via the modifier function
On the Folly of Rewarding A, While Hoping for B Whether dealing with monkeys, rats, or human beings, it is hardly controversial to state that most organisms seek information concerning what activities are rewarded, and then seek to do (or at least pretend to do) those things, often to the virtual exclusion of activities not rewarded. . . . Nevertheless, numerous examples exist of reward…
[h/t Ivo Velitchkov. This confused me a bit, it started off with the usual systems thinking / system dynamics confusion, then pivoted to cybernetics along with complexity.]
Ongoing conversations with Dan Everett on Facebook have me backtracking to recurring questions about the relationship between formal language theory (as I once learned it) and the properties of natural languages as they are found occurring in the field. A point of particular interest is the role of recursion in formal and natural languages, along with collateral questions about its role in the cognitive sciences at large.
It has taken me quite a while to bring my reflections up to the threshold of minimal coherence — and the inquiry remains ongoing — but it may catalyze the thinking process if I simply share what I’ve thought so far …
Comment 1
Recursion is where you find it — so, myself not being a natural language researcher, when someone who is says they don’t find it in a given corpus I just take them at their word …
Comment 2
The question to which I keep returning has to do with the relationship between two ways we find recursion occurring.
One way I’d call pragmatic recursion — if I wanted to be precise and cover its full scope — since so many of its operations occur without conscious direction, but for now I’ll defer to more familiar language, calling it cognitive or conceptual recursion.
Comment 3
If we discard from the idea of recursion what is not of its essence, we find recursion occurs when our understanding of one situation has recourse to our understanding of other situations.
Very typically, the object situation presents itself as complex, difficult, or unfamiliar while the resource situations are regarded as being better understood.
It must be appreciated, however, that any ranking of situations by level of understanding is contingent on the circumstances in view and may vary radically in alternate settings.
Comment 4
Recursion occurs more markedly in syntactic recursion, where the recursive process shows its character as such in the symbols of its syntactic expression.
A sense of the difference can be gained by looking at a case of ostensible syntactic recursion. (How much substance backs the ostentation is a subject we’ll take up, maybe at length, but later …)
Consider the following diagram for the computation of a simple recursive function.
For example, the factorial function has a definition in terms of the predecessor function and the multiplier function
Comment 5
Recursion is rife in mathematics and computation, typically sporting its recursive character on its sleeve in the fashion of syntax sketched above. But mathematics and computation are overlearned subjects and practices, enjoying long histories of being gone over with an eye to articulating every last detail of any way they might be conceived and conducted. So it’s fair to ask whether all that artifice truly tutors nature or only creates a rationalized reconstruction of it. Then again, even if that’s all it does, is there anything of use to be learned from it?
Comment 6
The prevalence of recursion in mathematics arises from the architecture of mathematical systems.
Mathematical systems grow from a fourfold root.
Primitives are taken as initial terms.
Definitions expound ever more complex terms in relation to the primitives.
Axioms are taken as initial truths.
Theorems follow from the axioms by way of inference rules.
Recursive definitions of mathematical objects and inductive proofs of the corresponding theorems follow closely parallel patterns. And again, in computation, recursive programs follow the same patterns in action.
I am pleased to present my latest and last book, a heartfelt plea to take open systems seriously. We are a brilliant species but we have fallen into a very deep hole. If we had had a science which was genuinely always based on reality, we may not be in this hole, and may have a more assured future. While there has always been a strand of science which is based on accurate descriptions and explanations of reality, it has been, in too many circumstances, overtaken by its closed systems relative. Far too many branches of science have succumbed to the hypothesis of mechanism and the first design principle. Here we look at a collection of examples in which science has taken a wrong direction while the alternatives are always available. In many ways, it is a bit of a romp through these problems so I hope you find it enjoyable as well as instructive.
Systems Community of Inquiry 
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