January 9: Root Metaphors and World Hypotheses

[David Ing]

We'll start off the year with the 106th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario, on Monday, January 9, at the usual time of 6:30pm.

This session will be more philosophical than others.  We're centered on the work of Stephen C. Pepper, and his publication of World Hypotheses (1942).

For the Zoom link, please preregister at https://root-metaphors.eventbrite.ca .  The link will show up after registration.  Please watch out for the passcode!

Pepper was a professor of aesthetics at U.C. Berkeley, and the original founder of the arts program.  He became chair of the philosophy department.  During his tenure, other professors at Berkeley included Thomas Kuhn (who gained fame in scientific revolutions and the idea of paradigm shifts), and C. West Churchman (a leader in the systems approach).

Contextualism is at the foundation of the Socio-Ecological Systems perspective from the Tavistock Institute (e.g. Eric Trist and Fred E. Emery).

World Hypotheses (1942) is a work still cited in Systems Research and Behavioral Sciences (e.g. in 2020 by Michael C. Jackson OBE, and in 2022 by Zhichang Zhu).

David Ing has spent most of December reviewing the book, and extracted content at https://wh.daviding.wiki.openlearning.cc/view/welcome-visitors/view/world-hypotheses .  David will share highlights as a guided tour.  Zaid Khan will serve as an inquiring critic, hopefully to improve understandability.  Dan Eng will serve as moderator, to queue up questions and comments from the audience. 

Welcome to 2023!