Dealing with ecosystems III: Causal thickets and changing correlations

Graham Harris v3By Graham Harris

This blog is continued from Thinking Systems #9

This is a good place to stop for a while and read William Wimsatt’s (2007) book Re-engineering philosophy for limited beings: piecewise approximations to reality. Wimsatt’s goal in writing that book was to provide a guide to bounded rationalism and heuristics for a messy world.  The book draws on a wide range of sources including Andreas Wagner and one of my favourite books, Daniel Dennett’s (1995) “Darwin’s dangerous idea: evolution and the meanings of life. Dennett pointed out anyone that takes a consequentialist view whilst living in the middle of a system can only ever have partial knowledge. Continue reading

Dealing with ecosystems II: The field of myths and dreams

Graham Harris v3By Graham Harris

This blog is continued from Thinking Systems #8

At present, working either with a restricted set of values or when we claim to be totally value free (impossible in practice), we plan remediation programmes as “predict-act” schemes and then fail to deliver the goods. It’s very much like the myth of the field of dreams: “build it and they will come…” but often they don’t! [Remember the important roles of chance, necessity and 2nd order interactions.] Continue reading

Dealing with ecosystems I

Graham Harris v3By Graham Harris

This and the next few blogs on the topic of our dealings with ecosystems are longer than usual and are probably only for ecologists and environmental managers. They get complicated in places so to quote my favourite blogger (Roger Cicala) “Warning; these are Geek Level 3 blogs”. To many ecologists these will be controversial.  Continue reading

Robust distributed infrastructure

Graham Harris v3By Graham Harris

I first came across the idea of distributed infrastructure systems when we began planning the CSIRO Australia Energy Flagship in 2001-2. The full flowering of these innovations has taken more than a decade to come to fruition and, even now, for reasons I shall discuss, not all aspects of the concept have been implemented in energy networks around the world. Nevertheless, despite impediments, the basic concept is emerging rapidly. Continue reading

Robust distributed solutions – a different view of uncertainty

Graham Harris v3By Graham Harris

In a series of books and papers Andreas Wagner has explored the basis of the robustness of living organisms: his discoveries have been breaking new ground. In books like Robustness and evolvability of living systems (2005), and The arrival of the fittest (2015), he has shown how living organisms depend for their survival on genetic and metabolic networks which possess modularity and distributed robustness. Continue reading

Epistemic uncertainty is important: ask the Thanksgiving turkeys

Graham Harris v3By Graham Harris

As Dr Nick Winder has pointed out, since the 1970s we have found ourselves more and more having to comprehend and deal with recursive, open, non-stationary and evolving entities that we have come to call systems or “systems of systems.” Continue reading

Second (and third) thoughts: Second-order cybernetics and deconstruction

Graham Harris v3By Graham Harris

The old saw says “many a true word is spoken in jest.” and this has been proven by Terry Pratchett who wrote the following in one of his witty Disc World novels:

“First thoughts are everyday thoughts. Everyone has those. Second thoughts are the thoughts you think about the way you think. People who enjoy thinking have those. Third thoughts are thoughts that watch the world and think all by them selves. They’re rare and often troublesome. Listening to them is part of witchcraft.” (A Hat full of sky, 2004, Disc World novel #32, footnote 2, p. 74). Continue reading

Thinking Systems #3: Thinking about Systems Theory

Graham Harris v3By Graham Harris

It is always instructive to take a step back from the coalface occasionally and to take a look at the history of particular disciplines. More often than not it is possible to see that certain sets of ideas became the bedrock of our thinking – and that others did not. Continue reading

Thinking Systems #2: Rethinking the Enlightenment project for the 21st century

Graham Harris v3By Graham Harris

When we try to manage systems of systems with both “hard” engineered aspects and “soft” living components we often have problems in achieving desired outcomes, in obtaining evidence of system change and in getting our act together in the first place – just think of the ongoing debates about climate change! After at least two decades we are still arguing about the predictions of global warming, what the goal might be and the best way to go about emissions control. In such debates science, politics, values and beliefs are completely intertwined. Continue reading

Thinking Systems #1

Graham Harris v3By Graham Harris

Welcome to a new SMART blog topic – all about systems: about what they are, and the ways we think about them, value them, construct them in our minds and in real life, and (try to) manage them. Continue reading