Reading Nature's Signals

There are quite a number of “systems of systems thinking”, that I broadly describe the history of in my entry in the Encyclopedia of the Earth on Complex Systems.  Every science made up its own, for example, which are sometimes linked and sometimes not really linked much at all.

It’s a problem, that also displays “systems thinking” as going through an evolutionary stage like the great eruption of new biological of forms called the Cambrian Explosion.  I think the “great war” between the modeling and learning approaches will not be settled for a while, for one example of the struggles people are in, but is “where the action is”, at present.

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Many “systems of systems thinking” represent the accumulation of an individual person’s work over decades, and may be original enough to not have apparent connections to other languages for how things work other than how they individually have learned to use them.   So as a “discipline”  Systems Thinking is a “silo” with lots of “micro-silos”.   Being thrown into them is a little “sink or swim”, with little to grab onto.

Like most systems themselves, though, most people have some “starting point” for their organized way of thinking about systems.   It might be the nesting of small operations/management units within large ones, for example, as you might find in studying how a business works.    I look at those common units of organization as a “cybernetic body parts” to be use to help understand the observed systems around you.  That treats systems thinking as a “learning process”, though, rather than as a a way to define the mechanisms of systems , though.  Real systems work in more complex ways than our mental models can describe.

My main focus in on natural systems that are identifiable “self-managing units” of organization (natural systems).   For them the “management” of the system becomes a role for the loops of relationships that are also the system’s “operations”, so operations and management are not separated, but the same.  The loops of relationships define the “body” of its organization as a whole individual working unit.   That definition by observation also provides an observable “natural boundary” to locate in the environment, and a way to define individual systems for research studies by their own unique shape and location.

Maybe the following summary would offer a kind of  “life preserver” for the “sink or swim” task, that the somewhat unwieldy accumulation of my work presents.  ;-)    My approach starts with recognizing that growth, for a business, social or physical system, is itself a:

1. a self-managing system for building whole systems,
   1. starting from a seed of organization
   2. using existing resources in an open environment
   3. that I can observe closely, and
      1. helps me pick out simple models of working parts
      2. to then better understand the full relationships of the things seen in their real contexts
      3. importantly for understanding the transition between growth and maturation
         1. when the system’s surplus resources change use
         2. from first developing internal relationships to then develop external relationships
         3. from first building the scale of the growing system
         4. and then to maturing its relationships

Systems develop on a path of changing organizational stages

My materials are kind of scattered all over my site and blog.

PICS projecting images of complex systems

Chapters of whole system events

TEA total environmental assessment PDF slides

Blog: Reading Nature’s Signals

Intro: Open Systems Physics

HDS systems design science: Consulting services, Publication list

Proposal: Natural Principles for steering the global economy

My Influences general site  Synapse9 and  search tools

jlh

A pair of systems thinking posts on how why the natural way to reform capitalism and bring about its stable and healthy climax. is to turn the world’s accumulated investment funds (the savings of individuals) endowments for their owners purposes other than piling up more money.   JLH

• Group: Systems Thinking World
• Discussion: UN call for revolutionary thinking and action to ensure an economic model for survival… How to make this happen?

Posted by Ferenc Kovacs

@Helen, My systems thinking aptitude is simple minded. Follow the medical practice that cannot fully undersatnd what is going on in a living organism, has no clue of the causation chain of all diseases, but they heavily rely on the self-corrcting and healing nautre of organisms and time as the only cure without telling us how it works. Therefore I see humanity as the disease, but as we are successulf as parasites and society is built on parasitism, it is is difficult to get the message accross: stop being a parasite and acccept that you need to work to get rewarded. Go bakc to the Garden of Eden, check out what the knowledge of good and bad is really about and accept that life on earth is not optimised for the life span of individuals, not veent a happy life, but on the growth of species and offsrpings in a growing variety which was halted by hmans presence and growth in number. Surely, that will not go on like that, Nature will teach you by taking sanity away from us first. the rest will be easy. We are already insane in pursuing excitement, show and appearances and covering up knowledge and giving up common sense.

Jessie Henshaw • @Ferenc – You said to Helene, “Therefore I see humanity as the disease, but as we are successful as parasites and society is built on parasitism, it is difficult to get the message across: stop being a parasite and accept that you need to work to get rewarded.”

Why it’s “difficult to get the message across” is partly the difference between “feedbacks” as “ratios” and “feedbacks” as “investment choices”. That’s what I had mentioned, to which William Ross said “You have succeeded in expressing it well and succinctly.” as “one of the more fundamental differences between how models of systems and real physical systems actually operate. Particularly for growth systems that represent complex construction processes.” (more…)