Difference between revisions of "Category:Systems Thinking"

One of the most valuable skills you can take from studying the environment is that it helps you to think about systems as a whole.

General historical overview

People

Gregory Bateson In the 1970s, he served as a lecturer and fellow of Kresge College at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He was married to Margaret Meade. You can see his papers and video at Special Collections.

Stewart Brand is a systems thinker par excellence. Brand, the center hub of the human network, has a new book, Whole Earth Discipline. He's putting the whole book online for free, with annotations and a reading list link. He makes some stands that are heretical to mainstream greens (pro-nuke and GMO). Those who heard Fred Turner's plenary talk last year will have some sense of how important Brand has been and continues to be. He lobbied to get NASA to release the first picture of Earth from space, predicting its iconic power to unite and inspire. Because of his work with Gov Brown, CA uses half the energy per capita as the rest of US (comparable to EU), and he's working on a 10K year clock.

Joanna Macy is an "eco-philosopher, is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology (short video definition). A respected voice in movements for peace, justice, and ecology, she interweaves her scholarship with four decades of activism. She has created a ground-breaking theoretical framework for personal and social change, as well as a powerful workshop methodology for its application." Video on Great Turning. Coming Back to Life : Practice to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World / Joanna Macy, Molly Young Brown 1998 Location McH Stacks GF80 .M33 1998

Video

Deborah Gordon studies ant colonies in the Arizona desert. She asks: How do these chitinous creatures get down to business -- and even multitask when they need to -- with no language, memory or visible leadership? Her answers could lead to a better understanding of all complex systems, from the brain to the Web. TEDtalk video.

The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison. short video 4/10

The Big Picture, why complexity matters. Rees TEDtalk

Robert Wright: How cooperation (eventually) trumps conflict. Tedtalk

Howard Rheingold talks about the coming world of collaboration, participatory media and collective action -- and how Wikipedia is really an outgrowth of our natural human instinct to work as a group. As he points out, humans have been banding together to work collectively since our days of hunting mastodons. TEDtalk video.

Chef Dan Barber squares off with a dilemma facing many chefs today: how to keep fish on the menu. With impeccable research and deadpan humor, he chronicles his pursuit of a sustainable fish he could love, and the foodie's honeymoon he's enjoyed since discovering an outrageously delicious fish raised using a revolutionary farming method in Spain. TEDtalk****

Articles

Systems Thinker Donella Meadows has written a concise, easy to understand article on the importance of visions (pdf). This article invites us to think big and outside the box, especially regarding the sustainable world they want to create.

12 leverage point to intervene in a system by Meadows

Macy, J. and Brown, M. provide a good introduction as well, relating systems thinking to spiritual practices.

Books

Emergence by Steven Johnson review interview

The Building Blocks of Wholeness adapted from Christopher Alexander's Fifteen Properties from his Nature of Order Google book preview

Nexus Mark Buchanan. Recent talk (video) based on The Social Atom book blog

Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell Summary: sometimes change can come very quickly in unpredictable ways and from very small beginnings. (unrelated TEDtalk).

The Systems View of the World: A Holistic Vision for Our Time (Advances in Systems Theory, Complexity, and the Human Sciences) by Ervin Laszlo New York, G. Braziller [1972] S&E Stacks Q295.L37 Amazon preview)

Systems Thinking : Coping with 21st Century Problems / John Boardman, Brian Sauser (seems engineering oriented) Boca Raton, FL : CRC Press, c2008 S&E Stacks TA168 .B594 2008

Thinking Through Systems Thinking / Ion Georgiou London ; New York : Routledge, 2007 View contents online S&E Stacks Q295 .G465 2007

Systems Thinking Basics : From Concepts to Casual Loops / Virginia Anderson and Lauren Johnson Cambridge, Mass. : Pegasus Communications, c1997 McH Stacks HD30.19 .A53 1997

Systems Thinking Tools : A User's Reference Guide / by Daniel H. Kim Cambridge, MA : Pegasus Communications, Inc., c1995 McH Stacks HD31 .K55 1995

Managing Complex Systems : Thinking Outside the Box / Howard Eisner Hoboken, N.J. : John Wiley, c2005 S&E Stacks TA168 .E387 2005

The Key to Sustainable Cities : Meeting Human Needs, Transforming Community Systems / Gwendolyn Hallsmith Published Gabriola Island, B.C. : New Society Publishers, c2003 McH Stacks HT166 .H359 2003

The Web of Life : A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems / Fritjof Capra (contains an introduction to systems thinking by the author of The Tao of Physics) S&E Stacks QH501 .C375 1996

A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber (not scholarly, but does integrate environmental thinking)