| | | Newsletter: October, 2022, Vol 1:10 | | |
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| | | Message From the President During my term as President-Elect, I often wondered how I would find a topic for this newsletter contribution each month. As President, I am every day confronted with perspectives from all activities of the society. Since some of the activities have a stronger presence in my mind at any given time than others, I decided to focus each month on the most influential topic. This month my contribution to the newsletter is rather academic in nature. |
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This is our 1st Anniversary Edition |
The ISSS as we know it today, was established in 1956. This is 14 years prior to the work of Thomas Kuhn on paradigms published in 1970. |
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| | | In this Edition : Message from the President. Conference News. Celebrating your Newsletter's 1st Birthday. Programme of Online Mini-Symposia.
Upcoming SRBS & ISSS Journal Issues. September Edition of SRBS. Meet our new ISSS Member: Erik Erikson. Organisations in Focus: Saybrook University, Shell NXplorers & Operational Research Society. New Systems Books. News from the Book Club. Recent Members' Publications. Systems Conferences. Systems Science Events in October. Courses. ISSS Blog. Readers' Letters. To contribute to any of these, please see the details at the end of this newsletter.
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Today, I share some of the ideas of Kuhn on paradigms from 1970 and one idea of Karl Popper from 1994 on conversations from different paradigms which fit my ISSS experience. Many of the theoretical aspects I refer to are discussed in detail in papers by Thomas Walker (2010) and Alexander Bird (2022). Bird (2022) provides a clear description on Kuhn’s idea of a paradigm: “Kuhn claims that normal science can succeed in making progress only if there is a strong commitment by the relevant scientific community to their shared theoretical beliefs, values, instruments and techniques, and even metaphysics. This constellation of shared commitments Kuhn at one point calls a ‘disciplinary matrix’ (1970, 182) although elsewhere he often uses the term ‘paradigm’.” In our world of Systems Science, General Systems Theory is an example of such a paradigm and Critical Systems Thinking is another paradigm. There are many others. Kuhn argued “that science guided by one paradigm would be ‘incommensurable’ with science developed under a different paradigm, by which is meant that there is no common measure for assessing the different scientific theories” (Bird, 2022). This implies that the validity claims of one paradigm of knowledge creation (research paradigm) cannot be used to validate knowledge created in another research paradigm. Although this incommensurability theory has been questioned often, it has mainstream support in the academic community. The field in which I do most of my research, Management Information Systems, provides clear validity principles for four different paradigms: Positivism, Interpretivism, Critical Social Theory and Critical Social Realism. I publish in all 4 of these paradigms. Although different disciplines provide different classifications of paradigms, the work of Burrell and Morgan is often used as... |
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| | | ...the basis for the classification. I’m still contemplating, and invite you to join me, on what this means for our discussions in the ISSS. I was surprised to realise how well the following quote of Max Planck given by Kuhn describes me and my generation’s acceptance of different paradigms: “[A] new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” (Kuhn, 1970, 151). In an opposing position Popper (1994) expresses the value discussion from different paradigmatic perspectives: “A discussion between people who share many views is unlikely to be fruitful, even though it may be pleasant; while a discussion between vastly different frameworks can be extremely fruitful, even though it may sometimes be extremely difficult, and perhaps not quite so pleasant (though we may learn to enjoy it).” (Popper 1994, 34) in Walker (2010). So, while I continue to contemplate our discussions from this conditioned perspective, I am convinced of the following: we must respect different views from different paradigms; we must not apply validity claims from one paradigm to validate perspectives from another paradigm; internal validity of a paradigm requires knowledge and is of utmost importance; although sometimes unpleasant, we will make headway when respectfully presenting and receiving cases from different paradigms in the same forum. Please join me on my academic journey leading up to the conference in June 2023 in the spirit advocated by these great scholars. Roelien References: Bird, Alexander, "Thomas Kuhn", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/thomas-kuhn/>. Burrell, & Morgan, 1979 Burrell G., Morgan G. Sociological paradigms and organizational analysis. London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1979.Google Scholar Kuhn, Thomas. 1970a. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Second Edition, Revised). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Popper, Karl. 1994. The Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality, ed. M.A. Notturno. London: Routledge. Walker, Thomas C. "The perils of paradigm mentalities: Revisiting Kuhn, Lakatos, and Popper." Perspectives on Politics 8.2 (2010): 433-451. | | |
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| | | Conference News International Society for the Systems Sciences, 67th Annual Conference. More Detail Coming Soon.
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| | | | Celebrating Your Newsletter's 1st Birthday
Three members of your Newsletter editorial team celebrating its first birthday last month. Roelien and Michele in Paris, France. Roelien and John in Brighton, UK.
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| | | | Programme of Online Mini-Symposia We close our first theme on systems concepts in October, before starting a new theme in November on making sense of the landscape. For the month of October, our sessions are moving to a Wednesday/Thursday slot to easier accommodate the members in Australasia while still being accessible to others. The time slot is on a Thursday 6 AM in Sydney, and therefor 10 PM in central Europe on a Wednesday evening. We will provide specific times in different cities as part of the invitation. Some of the paper sessions will be more representative from the General Systems Theory paradigm’s perspective. The planned sessions are: 5 October: Meet and greet: Informal get together 12 October: Danila Medvedev on the practical challenge of using language and supporting tools for communicating about systems and in the systems approach. 19 October: A number of shorter GST papers speakers including Janos Korn and Shann Turnbull. Please contact me if you want to have a slot in this session. 26 October: Jamie Rose on a GST. we move back to Saturdays. Please contact me if you want to contribute to the theme of “Making sense of the systems landscape”. These talks will be on how novices can be guided through the rich variety of systems methodologies. | | |
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| | | Upcoming SRBS & ISSS Journal Issues | | |
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| | | Robert Flood and Gerald Midgley are editing a special issue of "Systems Research and Behavioral Science": a festschrift for Mike Jackson, in honour of his lifetime contribution to systems thinking. The link to the call for papers, asking for scholarly papers addressing the themes in Mike's work, is below. The deadline for receipt of abstracts is 31 December 2022, and the address to send them to is in the call. Please read the call for papers, and I hope you are inspired to contribute to this festschrift. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/sres.2905?saml_referrer | | |
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| | | September Edition of SRBS | | |
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| | | A selection of some interesting Journal Articles published in September: - Michael C Jackson (Sept 2022) Critical systems practice 3: Intervene—Flexibly executing a multimethodological intervention. Systems Research and Behavioural Science, Accessible at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/sres.2909
- Nora Bateson (Sept 2022) An essay on ready-ing: Tending the prelude to change. Systems Research and Behavioural Science, Accessible at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/sres.2896
- Shankar Sankaran and Janet McIntyre-Mills (Sept 2022) Energy justice in renewable energy projects: How learning about indigenous knowledge systems could inform systemic practice. Systems Research and Behavioural Science, Accessible at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/sres.2899
- David Blockley, Gary Smith, Patrick Godfrey, John J. Kineman (Sept 2022) Relational holon science and Popper's 3 worlds in engineering practice. Systems Research and Behavioural Science, Accessible at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/sres.2906
- Marty Jacobs, Namrata Arora, Sue Gabriele (Sept 2022) The future is humanistic: Infusing compassion in the systems thinking world—Circles, dialogue and RoundTables as levers for individual and community emancipation. Systems Research and Behavioural Science, Accessible at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sres.2894
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| | | Welcome to our New ISSS Members We sent an email to all members who joined in 2022 and the following new members participated in a fun question answer survey. We welcome you to the society. All new members who received the invite to participate are welcome to submit their detail. We will feature every month a few new members. Members select questions from a long list to tell us about themselves. To join the ISSS simply go to ISSS.org/Register/ | | |
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| | | Q How did your interest in systems develop? A With Ludwig's book back in 1989, but it was too abstract for me at the time. However, the initial concepts stayed with me, simmering in the back plate. Q Are you interested in a specific field of systems thinking - which one? A I am interested in analogy, homologues, isomorphs. Q In which industry do you work and in which role? |
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| | | A I work primarily in the security industry. But it is not the physically industry of security as one might first think. It goes much deeper. Q What are three words that best describe you? A Curious, persistent, inquisitive. Q If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be? A Right here, in San Pedro de Vazquez de Coronado, Costa Rica https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/erikderikson Q If you could share a meal with 4 individuals living or dead, who would they be? A Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther (the 95 thesis), Martin Luther King, Confucius. Q What’s the best joke you have ever heard? A What did one Jaguar say to another? How aaaaaaarrrre you? (That is my all-time favorite. Not just that my son told me that one, he picked it up in 2nd grade down here. Q You have 30 minutes of free time and could do anything, what would you do? A Save up those 30 minutes and pass it on to those that can make more of a difference. How can we reach a greater stability, buying time to make better decisions about the world. Q Is there anything you wish you knew more about? A Yes, how to buy more time for humanity, how to position more humanists in positions of power to make more humanist decisions. Q What do you wish you could tell yourself 10 years ago? A To be more humble. To be more kind to the opposition. To understand that they are just trying to get by as well. | | |
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| | | | | Saybrook University is proud to have been the school for numerous entrepreneurial graduates of the innovative Ph.D. in Managing Organizational Systems (MOS) program. This program anticipated impactful events like COVID-19 long before they emerged. In fact, this program was designed for leaders willing to stand in development, complexity, ambiguity, and the humanistic values of co-creating emergent solutions for the often-intractable situations we face globally. Current students and graduates of the program are relentlessly curious about the purpose and possibilities. Ethics and values-driven adaptive leadership are hallmarks of these life-long learners. Systems-thinking is foundational to their effectiveness in our world. We welcome our graduates to serve as guest speakers in our classes as our world of work is changing daily. We welcome potential students, ready to join other highly creative leaders engaged in building sustainable organizations and communities around our planet. To learn more about this Ph.D. MOS program: https://www.saybrook.edu/areas-of-study/leadership-and-management/ Contact & Appointments: Dr. Mary Kay Chess - calendly.com/mchess | | |
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| | | | Encouraging young people in Systems Thinking About a half-dozen yea |
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