Someone I know asked directions in Dublin. Receiving them, he followed up ‘can I walk there?’ ‘To be sure I suppose you could walk anywhere’ The way …

Context cues and the limits of possibility

At 15:00 (UK time) on 3 November 2021, I will give a seminar, hosted by the Health Science Faculty of the University of the Free State, South Africa. This is entitled: “Systemic Intervention: Developing Services with Young People (Under 16) Missing from Home or Care”. My abstract is pasted below the link.

The Ecology of Systems Thinking | At 15:00 (UK time) on 3 November 2021, I will give a seminar, hosted by the Health Science Faculty of the University of the Free State, South Africa | Facebook

Gerald Midgley on facebook:

At 15:00 (UK time) on 3 November 2021, I will give a seminar, hosted by the Health Science Faculty of the University of the Free State, South Africa. This is entitled: “Systemic Intervention: Developing Services with Young People (Under 16) Missing from Home or Care”. My abstract is pasted below the link.There is no need for signing up, and the link is: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_NjU2MmIyNmEtNTYxNi00MjFjLWJhZmQtZTMzOWEzOWM3Y2Zk%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%228efc1bb9-b90f-4a48-bf6c-ba0686193b80%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22a8e40218-fc06-4cae-b653-bd4df81d22ba%22%7dIn this seminar, Gerald Midgley will discuss the systemic intervention methodology that he has been developing over a thirty-year research program. He will focus on key aspects of this methodology, such as the need for critical reflection on ethical and boundary judgements, and the value of mixing methods from a wide variety of sources to ensure that intervention is flexible and responsive to stakeholders’ concerns. The methodology will then be illustrated with a case study of an intervention conducted in Central Manchester (UK) in which young people and a variety of agencies developed new ideas to support children missing from home or care. The emphases will be on (i) how systemic intervention directs attention to the need to amplify the voices of marginalized stakeholders (such as, in this case, children); and (ii) the value of mixing a variety of methods to promote co-operation and mutual learning in a situation where multi-agency working was highly problematic.

source

Thought Leadership for Systems Transformation

Thought Leadership for Systems Transformation

An evolving space for co-learning with prominent thinkers and practitioners of our time

Bayo Akomolafe | Nora Bateson | Chong Kee Tan | Phoebe Tickell | Mich Levy | Arturo Escobar | Levy Odera | Mansi Kakkar | Cleofash Alinaitwe & Ignatius Ahumiza | Christiana Gardikioti | Rani Langer-Croager | Antony Upward | Michelle Holliday | Tamsin Woolley-Barker | Gil Friend | Jacqueline McGlade | Ben Roberts | Bert-Ola Bergstrand | David Hodgson | Alyona Yuzefovich | Kathy Jourdain & Jerry Nagel | Mary Alice Arthur | Dave Snowden | Graham Leicester | Chris Corrigan & Kelly Poirier | Ria Baeck

Note: The number of confirmed teachers/sessions will depend on the registration fees we will collect before the registration deadline (see our financial model for more details)

• WHO SHOULD ATTEND:
  Systems transformation practitioners across all domains and levels of experience.
   
• KEY OBJECTIVE:
  Broaden awareness of available approaches, tools, and practices that can support systems transformation.
   
• REGISTRATION FEES:
  Pay What You Wish (it shouldn’t be a stretch for you, but the more you pay, the more money we’ll have in the budget to confirm sessions with guest teachers).
   
• REGISTRATION DEADLINE:
  January 25, 2022
   
• STARTING DATE:
  February 16, 2022
   
• DURATION:
  4-54 weeks depending on the number of confirmed sessions (see our financial model for details).

• SCHEDULE:
  • Opening session:
    Wednesday, February 16 from 9 am to 12 pm Pacific Time.
  • Peer learning sessions:
    Every second Wednesday from 9 am to 11 am or 12 pm (depending on group size) Pacific Time.
  • Group calls with guest teachers:
    Every second Friday from 9 am to 10 am Pacific Time unless schedule adjustment is requested by the teacher.
  • Closing session:
    TBD depending on the number of guest teachers/sessions we will confirm.
     
• TIME COMMITMENT:
  • Minimum time commitment:​
    • 5-7h of self-study + 6-7h of calls (if you only attend the opening session and engage with one guest teacher).
  • General time commitment:
    • 3h opening session + 8-12h every 2 weeks (5-7h of self-study, 2-3h of peer learning, and a 1h group call with a guest teacher).
    • Participants will be required to attend the opening session (3h) on February 16 to be able to attend other sessions.
    • Participants will be able to choose which group calls with guest teachers (1h each) and related peer learning sessions (2-3h each) they want to attend.
    • Attending related peer learning sessions will be required to join group calls with guest teachers.

continues in source: Thought Leadership for Systems Transformation

Thought Leadership for Systems Transformation

source:

Political use of the rhetoric of complex systems – enfascination

POLITICAL USE OF THE RHETORIC OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS

I’m excited about the field called “complex systems” because it reflects of best of science’s inherent humility: everything affects everything, and we oughtn’t pretend that we know what we’re doing. I think of that as a responsible perspective, and I think it protects science from being abused (or being an abuser) in the sociopolitical sphere. So imagine my surprise to discover that the “everything affects everything” rhetoric of complex systems, ecology, and cybernetics was leveraged by tobacco companies in the 1990s to take attention away from second-hand smoke in office health investigations. Second-hand smoke wasn’t causing sickness, the hard-to-pin-down “sick building syndrome” was. For your reading pleasure, I’ve pulled a lot of text from “Sick building syndrome and the problem of uncertainty,” by Michelle Murphy. I’ve focused on Chapter 6, “Building ecologies, tobacco, and the politics of multiplicity.” Thanks to Isaac.

continues in source: POLITICAL USE OF THE RHETORIC OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS

Political use of the rhetoric of complex systems – enfascination

On the origin of minds

The study of the mind needs a Copernican shift in perspective | Aeon Essays

On the origin of minds

Cognition did not appear out of nowhere in ‘higher’ animals but goes back millions, perhaps billions, of years

Pamela Lyon is an interdisciplinary visiting research fellow at the Southgate Institute for Health, Society and Equity, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University in Adelaide. She is currently writing a book based on the ideas in this essay.

Edited bySally Davies4,200 words

In On the Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin draws a picture of the long sweep of evolution, from the beginning of life, playing out along two fundamental axes: physical and mental. Body and mind. All living beings, not just some, evolve by natural selection in both ‘corporeal and mental endowments’, he writes. When psychology has accepted this view of nature, Darwin predicts, the science of mind ‘will be based on a new foundation’, the necessarily gradual evolutionary development ‘of each mental power and capacity’.

MIT’s ‘Beer Game’ Shows Humans Are Weakest Link in Supply Chains
by Brendan Murray  and Enda Curran
Read More

What MIT’s Beer Game Teaches About Panic Hoarding
By Brandan Murray
Read More

Interesting synchronicity – the ISSS (www.isss.org) is engaged in an email discussion about ‘holism’ and ‘a general theory of systems’, in searching for something I just came across a grumbly Facebook Messenger discussion about ‘universalism’, and here’s Gene Bellinger (with an intriguing titbit about von Bertalanffy’s title?) on a similar thing… must be something in the air!

The Foundation Trilogy

The Foundation Trilogy – by Gene Bellinger – SystemsWiki’s Musings

The Foundation Trilogy

Didn’t Isaac Asimov write that?

My first introduction to “Archetypes” was via Peter Senge’s “The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization.” I may be a bit slow as I read Senge’s book once a year from 1990 through 1994, and I finally thought I understood it. While I thought I understood the essential nature of the necessity of integrating the five disciplines Archetypes really fascinated me. Their recurring nature was captivating from the extent of their apparent meaningfulness.

Then I recalled reading, in “Uncommon Sense: The Life and Thought of Ludwig von Bertalanffy,” by Mark Davidson, that in the 1930s Bertalanffy proposed that there were fundamental underlying structures that operated across all branches of science. When I first read this I considered it was a ludicrous proposal. Yet, after pondering it for some time, I realized that the branches of science are a fabrication of man, not nature. As such, why shouldn’t there be one set of structures that operated across all branches of science?

As I understand it, based on this proposal Bertalanffy conceived of an approach to teaching about these structures in something termed “General Systems Teaching.” The difficulty was that Bertalanffy’s paper was written in German and the translator made a mistake translating the title to, “General Systems Theory.” And as such there came to be a field of study that was never quite meant to be, which I thought quite curious.

Both the Senge and Bertalanffy perspectives sort of faded into the background as I pursued other interests in the realm of what I used to refer to as “systems.” Then after reading Michael C. Jackson’s “Systems Thinking: Creative Holism for Managers,” and realizing I simply wasn’t smart enough to understand dozens of models and methods to any level real utility, there was a real Aha! moment.

The Aha! moment was the realization that all the models and methods are just about relationships and their implications. With that realization, the next thoughts were of Senge and Bertalanffy, and what might be the basis for understanding everything else? Please watch the following video to get a sense of where I landed.

Continues, with video, on Gene’s substack:

https://systemswiki.substack.com/p/the-foundation-trilogy

pdf: https://www.orangecompass.com.au/images/Scoping_Paper_Culture_of_Learning.pdf

BUILDING A CULTURE OF LEARNING AT SCALE: LEARNING NETWORKS FOR SYSTEMS CHANGE A scoping paper prepared for the Paul Ramsay Foundation October 2021

Publications – Orange Compass

h/t Toby Lowe

Humanistic Principles and Social Systems Design | Douglas Austrom + Carolyn Ordowich (ST-ON 2021-05-10) October 20, 2021 daviding 0 Comments Douglas Austrom and Carolyn Ordowich shared some reflections developed jointly with Bert Painter (Vancouver, BC) on some draft humanistic principles, the three Tavistock perspectives, and a meta-methodology with Systems Thinking Ontario.

Humanistic Principles and Social Systems Design | Douglas Austrom + Carolyn Ordowich (ST-ON 2021-05-10) – Coevolving Innovations

HOW SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY STRENGTHENS CROSS-SECTOR INITIATIVES TO DELIVER QUALITY HEALTH SERVICES

How Social Accountability Strengthens Cross-Sector Initiatives to Deliver Quality Health Services – GPSA Knowledge Platform

And paper:

Beyond Fundamentals: Learning About Social Accountability Monitoring Capacities and Action in Southern Africa
Florencia Guerzovich, Yeukai Mukorombindo and Elsie Eyakuze
August 2017

Click to access Beyond-Fundamentals-PSAM-paper-dd-August-2017-final-for-posting.pdf

20-OCT-2021 What drove the invention of military technologies? New research conducted through the Complexity Science Hub Vienna and applied to a rich historical dataset shed light on the evolution of weapons, armour and fortifications in human history. Peer-Reviewed Publication COMPLEXITY SCIENCE HUB VIENNA

What drove the invention of military technolo | EurekAlert!

How Bali could teach the world to manage its limited resources With a method taken from physics, scientists determine which factors contribute to the equilibrium in Balinese rice cultivation. Peer-Reviewed Publication COMPLEXITY SCIENCE HUB VIENNA

How Bali could teach the world to manage its | EurekAlert!

OURNAL

Physical Review Letters

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.168301

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modelingARTICLE TITLE

Bali’s Ancient Rice Terraces: A Hamiltonian Approach

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

15-Oct-2021

Dynamical Systems Shorts

Shorts applying dynamical systems theory to organizational behavior and dialogue. Made for Evergreen’s ChangeMaker Lab: an agile, knowledge creating company in a college learning environment.