Toronto, Ontario; Kawartha Lakes, Ontario
Cherry Street at Lakeshore Boulevard: Looking south towards Port Lands, red-and-white Cherry Street North Bridge is in place, thoroughfare to ramps are under construction. Chain link fence with dark shroud temporarily channels bicycle traffic ialong Martin Goodman Trail. Could take up to 3 years before cycle tracks are restored, the alternative could be on Mill Street, north of the CN Rail tracks. (Cherry Street at Lakeshore Boulevard, Toronto, Ontario) 20210801Victoria University: Between Emmanuel College and Northrop Frye Hall, #MaryonKantaroff (1983) Anadyomene sculpture donated by Senator #NancyRuth in honour of the women who walk here. Crabgrass flourishing as university landscaping has been reduced both due to the pandemic and summer break. United Church theological school now federated with the University of Toronto in 1890, and moved to this location in 1892. (Victoria University, Queen’s Park Crescent East, Toronto, Ontario) 20210803Kew Beach: Unexpected elevation on the beach, with dune ecosystem project @TRCA_HQ to curb shoreline erosion and provide a habitat for shoreline waterfowl. Sand south of the boardwalk, fenced mound, and then sand beyond to Lake Ontario. Unaccustomed to seeing girls in bikinis in the urban setting. (Kew Beach, Eastern Waterfront, Toronto, Ontario) 20210805Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto: Scheduled a Friday night date @MoCAToronto, including #MichaelLin (2020) Archipelago painting installation of florals inspired by Taiwanese, Indonesian and Hawaiian textiles. Relaxed couples time in a large venue with timed entries. Upstairs video installations are thought-provoking and entertaining, but too much like staying at home watching big screens. (Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, Sterling Road). 20210806Sorauren Avenue Park: Off-leash fenced area is larger than than the baseball diamond directly west. Big dogs overjoyed to be bounding across the open space with their brethern. Canines seem to want to cluster around their masters, presumably trained as to who is the alpha. (Sorauren Avenue Park, Parkdale, Toronto, Ontario) 20210812Gardiner Museum: Garniture Remix in the north window facing the next building, an ensemble of porcelain objects in the tradition of 1600s European arrangements of vases. Date night to see the ceramics collection for the first time. Strong focus on provenance, viewed large collection manufactured in Britain 1600s-1700s, influenced by bowls and dinnerware first produced in China 1000 years earlier. (Gardiner Museum, Queen’s Park Crescent, Toronto, Ontairo) 202010813L’Amoreaux neighbourhood: Couldn’t find my chain tool, got a hand to repair a break from a bad shift on the bike I bought in the spring. Research paper deadlines and job change had the wheels hanging n the garage for months. Tuning up the drivechain, couldn’t get the full range of gears, but this ride should be an improvement over my winter bike. (L’Amoreaux neighbourhood, Scarborough, Ontario) 20210815Greenwood Yard: With a capacity for 328 cars, half of the subway trains for the city are stored here overnight. Site is 61 acres on the eastern branch, surrounded by residential houses on three sides, and intercity rail to the south. Curious about the wye triangular junction underground between Donlands station to the northwest, and Greenwood station to the northeast. (TTC Greenwood Yard, Greenwood Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20210817Casement Island: Water is warm in Upper Stony Lake. Full day, driving from Toronto to Petroglyphs Provincial Park, cottage on lake for lunch, Trent University campus, Trent-Severn Waterway Lift-Lock 21, conversation in Peterborough as a private garden party, then back home after dark. Not very familiar with the Kawartha Lakes, with a childhood in Muskoka, but the granite geology looks familiar. (Casement Island, Upper Stony Lake, North Kawartha, Ontario) 20210821Edward Gardens: Returned to the fountain for the 36th time, reflecting on our time together since the last visit, and committing for another year. Annual visit is timed well, I can’t remember any rain except for the day of the wedding so many years ago. Seems like fewer people enjoying the park this year. (Edward Gardens, Lawrence Avenue East, Don Mills, Ontario) 20210824Edward Gardens: Following the annual ritual, slow stroll down the hill and over the brook. Fences diverting pedestrians away from the north bank, construction in progress. Plants unfortunately looking a little stressed with the summer heat alert. (Edward Gardens, Lawrence Avenue East, Don Mills, Ontario) 20210824Merchants Wharf: Looking southeast into the inner harbour, the schooner from the east headed for the Eastern channel, as smaller craft sailed west towards yacht clubs on Toronto Island. Water’s edge in the East Bayfront neighbourhood is still under development. Residents from the high-rise towers lounging on the walks and small green spaces as the heat warning abates. (Merchants Wharf, East Bayfront, Toronto, Ontario) 20210829
Gardiner Expressway East: August 31 will be the last day the ramp at Logan Avenue will be open. First opened in July 1966, this spur route was part of plan to connect to the Scarborough Expressway that was never built. In July 2015, Toronto City Council voted to not bring the junction of the Don Valley Parkway and Gardiner Expressway down to grade, in favour of a hybrid option continuing part of the elevated roadway. After 3 years, the drive west will be on Lakeshore Boulevard, for an onramp at Jarvis Street. (Gardiner Expressway East at Logan Avenue, East Harbour, Toronto, Ontario) 20210830
Digging into philosophies underlying the systems sciences, pragmatism seems to have been a strong historical foundation for some research streams. In ongoing discussions, Gary Metcalf and I have been approaching pragmatism from two directions. Gary has been tracking from mid-1800s forward, listening to the audiobook The Metaphysical Club, with a history of figures living through […]
The ties between systems thinking and pragmatism are apparently strong, but the breadth in the philosophy of pragmatism can be confusing. Within the tradition, one of the threads is called nonrelativistic pragmatism, proposed by systems luminaries C. West Churchman with Russell L. Ackoff, descending from the work of philosopher Edgar A. Singer, Jr. A concise […]
A luminary in the systems movement, C. West Churchman, showed some respect for Chinese philosophy, with the I Ching (Yi Jing) in particular. Deborah Hammond was encouraged by West Churchman into joining and becoming a historian of the systems movement. In her 2003 book, Hammond wrote of her conversations with Churchman, back into his days […]
The 1969 publication of Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, edited by Fred E. Emery as a Penguin Modern Management paperback, can be regarded as a milestone. The articles date from the 1940s to the 1960s, when the first wave of systems thinking was on the rise. For the June session of Systems Thinking Ontario, we stepped […]
Within the Systems Thinking Ontario community, we were fortunate to have Nenad Rava step up to explain how the Sustainable Development Goals came to be, and relate them to systems change. This May session of Systems Thinking Ontario was a quick follow-on for the March edition on Ecological Limits to Development: Living with the SDGs. […]
The book Ecological Limits to Development: Living with the Sustainable Development Goals, published in 2002 by Routledge, was released as open access in 2023 by Taylor-Francis for readers who don’t have access to a university library. For the March edition of Systems Thinking Ontario, we were honoured to celebrate the release with editor-coauthors Kaitlin Kish […]
Following the first day lecture on Philosophy of Chinese Medicine 1 for the Global University for Sustainability, Keekok Lee continued on a second day on some topics: * Anatomy as structure; physiology as function (and process); * Process ontology, and thing ontology; * Qi ju as qi-in-concentrating mode, and qi san as qi-in-dissipsating mode; and […]
The philosophy of science underlying Classical Chinese Medicine, in this lecture by Keekok Lee, provides insights into ways in which systems change may be approached, in a process ontology in contrast to the thing ontology underlying Western BioMedicine. Read more ›
In conversation, @zeynep with @ezraklein reveal authentic #SystemsThinking in (i) appreciating that “science” is constructed by human collectives, (ii) the west orients towards individual outcomes rather than population levels; and (iii) there’s an over-emphasis on problems of the moment, and…Read more ›
In the question-answer period after the lecture, #TimIngold proposes art as a discipline of inquiry, rather than ethnography. This refers to his thinking On Human Correspondence. — begin paste — [75m26s question] I am curious to know what art, or…Read more ›
How might our society show value for the long term, over the short term? Could we think about taxation over time, asks @carlotaprzperez in an interview: 92% for 1 day; 80% within 1 month; 50%-60% tax for 1 year; zero tax for 10 years.Read more ›
For the @ArchFoundation, #TimIngold distinguishes outcome-oriented making from process-oriented growing, revisiting #MartinHeidegger “Building Dwelling Thinking”. Organisms are made; artefacts grow. The distinction seems obvious, until you stop to ask what assumptions it contains, about the inside and outside of things…Read more ›
The selection of readings in the “Introduction” to Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, volume 2, Penguin (1981), edited by Fred E. Emery, reflects a turn from 1969 when a general systems theory was more fully entertained, towards an urgency towards changes in the world that were present in 1981. Systems thinking was again emphasized in contrast […]
In reviewing the original introduction for Systems Thinking: Selected Readings in the 1969 Penguin paperback, there’s a few threads that I only recognize, many years later. The tables of contents (disambiguating various editions) were previously listed as 1969, 1981 Emery, System Thinking: Selected Readings. — begin paste — Introduction In the selection of papers for this […]
In a recording of the debate between Michael Quinn Patton and Michael C. Jackson on “Systems Concepts in Evaluation”, Patton referenced four concepts published in the “Principles for effective use of systems thinking in evaluation” (2018) by the Systems in Evaluation Topical Interest Group (SETIG) of the American Evaluation Society. The four concepts are: (i) […]
How might the quality of an action research initiative be evaluated? — begin paste — We have linked our five validity criteria (outcome, process, democratic, catalytic, and dialogic) to the goals of action research. Most traditions of action research agree on the following goals: (a) the generation of new knowledge, (b) the achievement of action-oriented […]
After 90 minutes on phone and online chat with WesternUnion, the existence of the canton of Ticino in Switzerland is denied, so I can’t send money from Canada. TicinoTurismo should be unhappy. The IT developers at Western Union should be dissatisfied that customer support agents aren’t sending them legitimate bug reports I initially tried the […]
