Systems practice and the design of learning systems: orchestrating an ecological conversation

Human beings live in language and only they can take responsibility for how they think and act. So what understandings of response are possible? The relationship between responsibility and response-abilty is explored in the light of emerging critiques of the prevailing Western attitude to reason, viz: Lakoff and Johnson's (1999) fundamental challenge to prevailing models of Western thought. They argue that reason (on which much practice is built, including research practice) is: (i) not disembodied, but arises from the nature of our brains, bodies and bodily experience; (ii) evolutionary, in that abstract reason builds on and makes use of perceptual and motor inference present in 'lower' animals; (iii) is not universal in the transcendent sense but rather universal in that it is a capacity all humans share; (iv) mostly unconscious; (v) largely metaphorical and imaginative and (vi) not dispassionate but emotionally engaged. Systems practice is introduced as a means to orchestrate a particular type of conversation; it is also an ecological conversation. As a species our unique selling point is that we can engage in conversation. In the process we bring forth both ourselves and our world. To converse is to turn together, to dance, and thus an ecological conversation is a tango of responsibility. A conversation is inventive, unpredictable and is always particularizing to place and people. Drawing on experiences of teaching systems thinking and practice for environmental decision making a praxiology is outlined for stakeholder responsibility and response-ability. It is argued that capacity building in systemic inquiry and the design of learning systems are central to this praxiology

Foreword: Trends in Functional Differentiation

Modern social sciences in imply rather than apply functional differentiation and remain preoccupied with the cross-tabling of variables associated with earlier forms of differentiation. The key variables of modernity hence remain blind spots or theoretically motivated constants of most sociology. The problem with this conceptual gap is that social theories and sciences have always featured a trend toward the observation of trends in functional differentiation such as the secularization, politicization, mediatization, aestheticization, juridification, or, most popularly, the economization of society. These trend statements, however, inevitably call for a systematic reflection not only on the individual trends, but also on the full concept of functional differentiation. Yet, in predominantly zooming in on political and economical issues, most social theories and sciences perform rather than study an assumed political and economic bias of modern societies, thus projecting it to the future. The challenge is hence to create a broader vision of sometimes changing trends in functional differentiation, and the contributions to this special issue of Cybernetics and Human Knowing may be read as pioneers in this venture

Conceptual Metaphors: a review with implications for human understandings and systems practice

We provide an overview of metaphor theory and explore implications for systems practice by building on claims that metaphors are central to our ways of understanding. As stakeholders will have different understandings, each metaphor will reveal and conceal different aspects of their understandings. These differences need to be accommodated within systems practice. Our contribution in this paper is to show how metaphors can explain, appreciate and create different understandings. Further, new understandings can emerge from considering different metaphors

Fruits of Gregory Bateson’s epistemological crisis: embodied mind-making and interactive experience in research and professional praxis

Background: The espoused rationale for this special issue, situated “at the margins of cybernetics,” was to revisit and extend the common genealogy of cybernetics and communication studies. Two possible topics garnered our attention: 1) the history of intellectual adventurers whose work has appropriated cybernetic concepts; and 2) the remediation of cybernetic metaphors. Analysis: A heuristic for engaging in first- and second-order R&D praxis, the design of which was informed by co-research with pastoralists (1989–1993) and the authors’ engagements with the scholarship of Bateson and Maturana, was employed and adapted as a reflexive in-quiry framework.Conclusion and implications: This inquiry challenges the mainstream desire for change and the belief in getting the communication right in order to achieve change. The authors argue this view is based on an epistemological error that continues to produce the very problems it intends to diminish, and thus we live a fundamental error in epistemology, false ontology, and misplaced practice. The authors offer instead conceptual and praxis possibilities for triggering new co-evolutionary trajectories

Learning participation as systems practice

We describe an evolving praxeology for Systems Practice for managing complexity built on 30 years of developing supported open learning opportunities in the area of Systems within the curriculum of The Open University (UK). We ground this description in two specific examples of how notions of participation are incorporated conceptually and practically into a learners programme of study by considering: (i) the postgraduate course 'Environmental Decision Making. A Systems Approach' (T860) and (ii) the undergraduate course 'Managing complexity. A systems approach' (T306)

Conversation, Design and Ethics: The Cybernetics of Ranulph Glanville

One of the major themes of Ranulph Glanville’s work has been the intimate connection between cybernetics and design, the two principle disciplines that he has worked in and contributed to. In this paper I review the significance of the analogy that he proposes between the two and its connection to his concerns with, firstly, the cybernetic practice of cybernetics and, secondly, the relation between cybernetics and ethics. I propose that by putting the cybernetics-design analogy together with the idea that in cybernetics epistemological and ethical questions coincide, we can understand design as not just a form ofcybernetic practice but also one in which ethical questions are implicit

Systemic design of an Idea Zone at a science center.

In this working paper we bring key systems and cybernetics ideas to the design of an Idea Zone in a large regional science center. Most notably, we bring the ecology and systems approaches of Gregory Bateson and the cybernetic systems designapproachesofRanulphGlanville,tothisevolvingdesign project and explore how our learning from this particular case may also inform more general systemic design principles. This includes issues of context at many levels, movement across boundaries, as well as the importance of the design of a communicationprocessforthedesignofanIdeaZon