Yo so you know how a bunch of scientists and theorists have been saying for years that tools are an extension of the human body?
A new study was just published in the Journal of Neuroscience and
Tools are *literally* interpreted by the brain as an extension of the human body. pic.twitter.com/VFEOIVUbZw
— James Rosen-Birch (YVR May 23 – Jun 15) (@provisionalidea) May 13, 2021
Date:May 10, 2021
Source:University of East Anglia
Summary:Researchers have made an astonishing new discovery about how our brains control our hands. The team used MRI data to study which parts of the brain are used when we handle tools. The findings could help shed light on the regions of the brain that evolved in humans and set us apart from primates, and could pave the way for the development of next-generation prosthetic limbs that tap into the brain’s control center.
1/ The 10 Features of Complex Systems: No 5 – Spontaneous order and self-organisation
"Spontaneous order and self-organisation: complex systems exhibit structure and order that arise out of the interactions among their parts." pic.twitter.com/AYsKvoeyXx
— Simplifying Complexity (@BHComplexity) June 8, 2023
1/ The 10 Features of Complex Systems: No 5 – Spontaneous order and self-organisation “Spontaneous order and self-organisation: complex systems exhibit structure and order that arise out of the interactions among their parts.”
Self-replicating pattern in discrete CA, a very rare (if not the first of its kind) finding by my friend Bo Yang. Unlike von Neumann's self-rep machine, "Outlier" is entirely emergent during a search for open-endedness, & shows signs of robustness.
Self-replicating pattern in discrete CA, a very rare (if not the first of its kind) finding by my friend Bo Yang. Unlike von Neumann's self-rep machine, "Outlier" is entirely emergent during a search for open-endedness, & shows signs of robustness.
Hey – we’re running a workshop test in Brussels tomorrow, and we’d like some extra test audience, please forward this to anyone who might be interested.
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In this workshop we shall learn new ways to play, and learn to understand the world through play. We shall try to come to see, perhaps re-see, that collective play, such as that which young humans and animals do together is a form of collaborative genius.
In this session in particular, through embodied play we shall learn some of the core principles of emergence, self-organisation, complex adaptive systems and cybernetics. The very principles through which one can think about brains, networks, ecosystems, economies, games design, collective intelligence, and much more besides.
At the heart of this workshop lies the understanding that play and complex adaptive systems share a profound connection. Play, with its intrinsic self-organisation and embodiment, mirrors the dynamics of complex adaptive systems. By engaging in playful experiences, we gain insights into the principles of complexity, cybernetics, and emergence. Simultaneously, our understanding of play deepens through the lens of complexity. In essence, play becomes a gateway to exploring and comprehending the intricate nature of systems.
During the workshop, we will collaboratively create and explore a shared research playground. Drawing upon the principles of complexity—where simplicity gives rise to spontaneous order through the interactions of relatively autonomous agents—we will examine the tipping point at which simplicity transforms into complexity.
Play must never be subordinated or instrumentalised. Play is, and must remain. sensual, giddy, improvised, and simply fun for its own sake. Likewise we should never mistake the cajoling, backflipping and chirruping of animals for mere training for life, or evolutionary survival advantage. (Whilst it may be true that it is also those things.) First and foremost it’s vital to approach life as play, and then, to have the skills and knowledge to extract any kind of knowledge from that play at the moment that it is needed.
Orion Maxted is an artist, theatre maker and director of artscience at The Center Leo Apostel for Transdisciplinary research, at the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels together with colleagues Evo Bussenairs, a researcher in mathematical anarchism, and Professor Francis Heylighen, a renowned researcher in cybernetics, self-organisation, emergence and consciousness. David Tann is a clown and researcher in biomimicry.
Please bring comfortable clothes that you can move around in.
This paper concerns the strongly theory based organisational intervention – Stafford Beers’ Viable Systems Diagnosis (VSD). The assumption that organisations have difficulty in transforming good theories into effective workplace practices is examined using VSD. We propose levels of knowledge or recursions of the Beer system that are appropriate and effective in terms of organisational interventions. We contend that the lexis emanating from Brain of the Firm, and The Heart of the Enterprise exacerbates the complexity of VSD causing readers to focus on Diagnosing the System. We suggest this outcome contributes to the non-popularity of VSD, but that Beer himself cannot be exonerated. The lack of fundamental VSD principles, identified as a deficiency in Diagnosing the System is expanded from the antecedents, Brain and Heart. The paper concludes by considering a systematic categorisation of Beer’s work that will guide organizational change agents wishing to use this intellectually complex and powerful system.
In 1969, the first edition of Systems Thinking: Selected Readings was published in the Penguin Modern Modern Management series.
From those selected readings, have we moved beyond that milestone? What do we see if we revisit the 18 chapters, the five parts, and the introduction.
David Hawk received a copy of the book from Fred Emery, when he was in graduate school at U. Pennsylvania. He thus has had the experience of supervised study, and many years of reflection on the content.
The link to the web conference appears on Eventbrite after registration. Mind the passcode!
Participants are welcomed to join in the conversation with questions, comments and diverging viewpoints.
Open-minded novices and learners are always welcomed. We’ll try to keep the conversations understandable by the layman, and entertain questions for clarification.
To be notified of future sessions, please join the Google Group: http://bit.ly/st-on
[Not pretending I completely understand this, but a very valuable indicator of the trouble inherent in looking at influences, causes etc – see: systems mapping]
In my post today, I am looking further at the idea of variety in Cybernetics. Cybernetics, as Ross Ashby, put is interested in all of the possibilities of a phenomenon as in what all it can do, rather than what the phenomenon actually is. Here, the possibilities align with the number of possible states of the phenomenon. This would mean that Cybernetics is based on distinctions and these distinctions are based on an observer. Stafford Beer explained variety as the measure of complexity of a situation or phenomenon. The more distinctions an observer can make, the higher the perceived complexity. In order to manage a complex situation, the observer has to be able to come up with enough variety to match the variety of the situation. This is also known as Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety (LRV), a key principle in Cybernetics. LRV simply put states that
Writing to draw your attention to a new journal in our field: Enacting Cybernetics – which is published by the UK Cybernetics Society and hosted, open access by Ubiquity Press.
Its focus is on exploring and developing the many ways in which cybernetics may be practiced in the world. The journal invites contributions that engage deeply with cybernetics, its possibilities, histories, and practices, and especially those that develop its radical transdisciplinarity in tangible ways.
It is open access with no author fees. It is funded by Cybernetics Society membership, so do please consider joining to support if you are not already a member: https://cybsoc.org/
Articles are published on a rolling basis and included peer reviewed and editorially reviewed content. So far, five items are available in the first issue:
Dulmini Perera – Design Fictioning of a Second-Order Kind: Runaway Cybernetics, Futures of Work, Possibilities of Engagement
Howard Silverman – Recursively Contextual Identity: A Variant Formulation of First- and Second-Order
Bernard Scott – Review of Robert Martin’s Book, Connect and Involve
Jean M. Russell and Howard Silverman – Currencies as Cybernetic Objects: A Conversation
Dietmar Koering – Exploring the Human-AI Nexus: A Friendly Dispute Between Second-Order Cybernetical Ethical Thinking and Questions of AI Ethics
Huge thanks to all authors, reviewers, editors, and members of the Cybernetics Society who have helped this come to fruition. I hope we can build this into a useful venue. If you have articles looking for a publication venue, please do consider submitting them.
Systems Community of Inquiry 
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