John Mingers' new volume, Self-Producing Systems: Implications and Ap plications of Autopoiesis, is a much-needed reference on autopoiesis, a subject penetrating many disciplines today. I can genuinely say that I enjoyed reading the book as it took me stage by stage through a clear and easy-to-grasp understanding of the concepts and ideas of auto poiesis and then, as the book's title suggests, on through their applica tions. I found the summary in Chapter 12 particularly useful, helping to crystalize the main points of each chapter. The book conveyed enthusi asm for the subject and stimulated my interest in it. At times the book is demanding, but only because of the breadth of the subject matter, the terms and concepts associated with its parts, and the challenge of keep ing hold of all this in the mind at once. This is an exceptional text. ROBERT L. FLOOD Hull, UK Preface In recent years Maturana's and Varela's concept of autopoiesis, origi nally a biological concept, has made a remarkable impact not just on a single area, but across widely differing disciplines such as sociology, policy science, psychotherapy, cognitive science, and law. Put very briefly, the term autopoiesis connotes the idea that certain types of sys tems exist in a particular manner-they are self-producing systems. In their operations they continuously produce their own constituents, their own components, which then participate in these same production pro cesses.
John Mingers' new volume, Self-Producing Systems: Implications and Ap plications of Autopoiesis, is a much-needed reference on autopoiesis, a subject penetrating many disciplines today. I can genuinely say that I enjoyed reading the book as it took me stage by stage through a clear and easy-to-grasp understanding of the concepts and ideas of auto poiesis and then, as the book's title suggests, on through their applica tions. I found the summary in Chapter 12 particularly useful, helping to crystalize the main points of each chapter. The book conveyed enthusi asm for the subject and stimulated my interest in it. At times the book is demanding, but only because of the breadth of the subject matter, the terms and concepts associated with its parts, and the challenge of keep ing hold of all this in the mind at once. This is an exceptional text. ROBERT L. FLOOD Hull, UK Preface In recent years Maturana's and Varela's concept of autopoiesis, origi nally a biological concept, has made a remarkable impact not just on a single area, but across widely differing disciplines such as sociology, policy science, psychotherapy, cognitive science, and law. Put very briefly, the term autopoiesis connotes the idea that certain types of sys tems exist in a particular manner-they are self-producing systems. In their operations they continuously produce their own constituents, their own components, which then participate in these same production pro cesses.
The term "sustainability" has entered the lexicon of many academic disciplines and fields of professional practice, but to date does not appear to have been seriously consid ered within the systems community unless, perhaps, under other guises. Within the wider community there is no consensus around what sustainability means with some authors identifying 70 to 100 definitions of the term. Some see sustainability as the precise and quantifiable outcomes of biological systems whilst others see it in terms of processes rele vant to personal and organizational change with the potential to effect changes in our rela tionships with out environments. Internationally it has been increasingly used in relation to the term "sustainable development"--a term popularised by the Brundland Commis of definitions sion's report in 1987 entitled "Our Common Future. " Despite this diversity and polarised perception on its utility, unlike many other popular terms, it has not had its time and subsided quietly from our language. It is therefore timely for the systems com munity to explore the relationship between systems and sustainability in a range of con texts. Participants in this, the 5th International Conference of the United Kingdom Systems Society (UKSS), have been invited to reflect critically on the contribution of sys tems thinking and action to sustainability-to the sustainability of personal relationships, the organizations in which live and work, and our "natural" environment.
Wealth is no longer just an ability to live well in a world shaped by human activities. It is also an ability to push back or defer the limits of a world in biological and climatic closure. This book examines the theoretical conflicts and the power plays which often oppose the socio-political and technical-financial practices of recognition of what intervenes in the production of this wealth i.e. of what has value. It lays down the principles of a contributory modeling method, allowing debates around the concept of development; the building of scenarios; the negotiation of their implementation; and a cross-sectoral reading of their social, ecological and economic costs. This method, called Dynamic Modeling of Cost Systems, is based on a territorial communication device which articulates political, contractual and accounting innovations using deliberative and normative digital tools. It combines different local representations of value, in order to approach wealth through an integrated analysis of micro-, meso- and macro- issues.
The subject “Systems sciences and cybernetics” is the outcome of the convergence of a number of trends in a larger current of thought devoted to the growing complexity of (primarily social) objects and arising in response to the need for globalized treatment of such objects. This has been magnified by the proliferation and publication of all manner of quantitative scientific data on such objects, advances in the theories on their inter-relations, the enormous computational capacity provided by IT hardware and software and the critical revisiting of subject-object interaction, not to mention the urgent need to control the efficiency of complex systems, where “efficiency” is understood to mean the ability to find a solution to many social problems, including those posed on a planetary scale. The result has been the forging of a new, academically consolidated scientific trend going by the name of Systems Theory and Cybernetics, with a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary focus and therefore apt for understanding realities still regarded to be inescapably chaotic. This subject entry is subdivided into four sections. The first, an introduction to systemic theories, addresses the historic development of the most commonly used systemic approaches, from new concepts such as the so-called “geometry of thinking” or the systemic treatment of “non-systemic identities” to the taxonomic, entropic, axiological and ethical problems deriving from a general “systemic-cybernetic” conceit. Hence, the focus in this section is on the historic and philosophical aspects of the subject. Moreover, it may be asserted today that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, problems, in particular problems deriving from human interaction but in general any problem regardless of its nature, must be posed from a systemic perspective, for otherwise the obstacles to their solution are insurmountable. Reaching such a perspective requires taking at least the following well-known steps: a) statement of the problem from the determinant variables or phenomena; b) adoption of theoretical models showing the interrelationships among such variables; c) use of the maximum amount of – wherever possible quantitative – information available on each; d) placement of the set of variables in an environment that inevitably pre-determines the problem. That epistemology would explain the substantial development of the systemic-cybernetic approach in recent decades. The articles in the second section deal in particular with the different methodological approaches developed when confronting real problems, from issues that affect humanity as a whole to minor but specific questions arising in human organizations. Certain sub-themes are discussed by the various authors – always from a didactic vantage –, including: problem discovery and diagnosis and development of the respective critical theory; the design of ad hoc strategies and methodologies; the implementation of both qualitative (soft system methodologies) and formal and quantitative (such as the “General System Problem Solver” or the “axiological-operational” perspective) approaches; cross-disciplinary integration; and suitable methods for broaching psychological, cultural and socio-political dynamisms. The third section is devoted to cybernetics in the present dual meaning of the term: on the one hand, control of the effectiveness of communication and actions, and on the other, the processes of self-production of knowledge through reflection and the relationship between the observing subject and the observed object when the latter is also observer and the former observed. Known as “second order cybernetics”, this provides an avenue for rethinking the validity of knowledge, such as for instance when viewed through what is known as “bipolar feedback”: processes through which interactions create novelty, complexity and diversity. Finally, the fourth section centres around artificial and computational intelligence, addressing sub-themes such as “neural networks”, the “simulated annealing” that ranges from statistical thermodynamics to combinatory problem-solving, such as in the explanation of the role of adaptive systems, or when discussing the relationship between biological and computational intelligence.
This book deals with the contribution of a systems approach to a range of disciplines from philosophy and biology to social theory and management. It weaves together material from some of the pre-eminent thinkers of the day. In doing so it creates a coherent path from fundamental work on philosophical issues of ontology and epistemology through specific domains of knowledge about the nature of information and meaning, human communication, and social intervention.
The contributions to the collection Systems Theory and Theology explore the interplay between systems theory, religion and theology, and the symbolic expressions and philosophical foundations of these academic disciplines. This endeavor is rooted in the oeuvre of the late Austrian physicist Alfred Locker (1922-2005), who firmly believed that systems theory would finally emerge, some sixty years after von Bertalanffy's seminal work on General System Theory, as a bridge-building metatheory between the sciences and religion. The essays in this volume show, however, that such conversation transcends the usual form of dialogue among these disciplines. The studies contained in this collection enter into a critical evaluation and reassessment of the dominant postulates of scientific and theological systems and their interaction. Systems Theory and Theology includes treatments of paradoxes (A. Locker), the inner sciences (Zwick), systems of meaning (Krieger), philosophy (Murphy), theology (Sedmak), isomorphies of religious symbols (Zwick), and the bridging of science and religion (M. Locker).
In an effort to shed light on recent developments in sociocybernetic research, this volume represents recent and advanced thinking in this rapidly developing field. The authors address the core problems in social science caused by increasing societal complexity and analyze the inadequacy of many of the methodological tools still used for grappling with nonlinear, self-organizing systems. Together, the 18 contributors propose elements of a new methodology based on sociocybernetic principles aimed at describing and explaining the growth of societal complexity, the contribution of autopoiesis of societal subunits to more societal complexity, and the new simulation-based methodology needed to observe complex social systems. This unique volume contributes to a greater understanding of sociocybernetics and its uses as a method for researching modern problems of increasing complexity and interdependence. The first part of the book deals with increasing societal complexity and contains chapters on its overall development, the complexity of brain-environment interaction loops, organizational change, the development of human values, and the increasing interpenetration of societal subsystems. The second part concentrates on a current issue in sociocybernetics: autopoiesis, or self-production. The chapters included in Part II concentrate on embodied cognition, on the applicability of autopoiesis to business firms, on its roots in Aristotelian philosophy, and on the possibility of societal control and steering in democratic societies. Part III, more focused on methodology, discusses the difficulties inherent in observing complex social systems. The chapters deal with the problems of cross-cultural comparative research, simulation of the evolution of social systems, longitudinal simulation of education systems, and the methodological difficulties associated with analyzing the unexpected complexities of mutually interacting nonlinear systems.
The theme ofthe conference at which the papers in this book were presented was'Systems Thinking in Europe'. Members of the United Kingdom Systems Society (UKSS) were conscious that the systems movementflourishes notonly in the UK, America and the Antipodes, but also in continental Europe, both East and West, and in the USSR, a nation increasingly being welcomed by the European comity. Membership of the UKSS had not perhaps had the opportunity, however, of hearing important new ideas from continental Europe, and this conference provided an opportunity to do so. Some interesting papers are to be found here from both the West and the East, if the editors may be forgiven for perpetuating what may be an increasingly irrelevant dichotomy. One lesson to be learned from this conference, though, is that systems thinking is truly international. This is not to say that there is one systems paradigm unifonnly applied, however. Perhaps the core of systems thinking is that one is interested in complex 'wholes' with emergent properties, to which cybernetic ideas can be applied. Examples of such systems thinking can be found in these proceedings, for example in the section entitled "Applications of Systems Thinking". Attempts to bring about change with these ideas, however, have given rise to a diversity of approaches, as is evidenced by the papers dealing with the application of methodologies in the 'hard' and 'soft' systems traditions.
This book has a rather strange history. It began in Spring 1989, thirteen years after our Systems Science Department at SUNY -Binghamton was established, when I was asked by a group of students in our doctoral program to have a meeting with them. The spokesman of the group, Cliff Joslyn, opened our meeting by stating its purpose. I can closely paraphrase what he said: "We called this meeting to discuss with you, as Chairman of the Department, a fundamental problem with our systems science curriculum. In general, we consider it a good curriculum: we learn a lot of concepts, principles, and methodological tools, mathematical, computational, heuristic, which are fundamental to understanding and dealing with systems. And, yet, we learn virtually nothing about systems science itself. What is systems science? What are its historical roots? What are its aims? Where does it stand and where is it likely to go? These are pressing questions to us. After all, aren't we supposed to carry the systems science flag after we graduate from this program? We feel that a broad introductory course to systems science is urgently needed in the curriculum. Do you agree with this assessment?" The answer was obvious and, yet, not easy to give: "I agree, of course, but I do not see how the situation could be alleviated in the foreseeable future.
