Toronto, Ontario; Ottawa, Ontario; Kingston, Ontario.
Sugar Beach umbrellas and sailboats in Toronto Harbour. At 23 degrees C, a perfect August day to be at Sugar Beach under an umbrella, or on the water in a sailboat on Toronto Harbour. Appreciating comfortable climate after having spent practically all of July in humid temperatures over 30 degrees in China, Vietnam and then Jamaica. Better planning would let me stay home in the summer, and travel to other parts of the world when I’ll appreciate their climate more. (Toronto) 20130807 1823Shooting Covert Affairs in Toronto. Clapperboard said @CovertAffairs, spotted @PiperPerabo in drivers seat of car with mic and grips behind, on The Esplanade, just west of Berkeley Street. Extras on sidewalk, police blocking traffic both directions, but filming stopped to allow TTC bus to pass. Basketball players on court in far background could care less. The city retains some glamour as a media production centre. I’ll have to watch out for the episode where this car shows up. (Toronto) 20130807 1834Dow’s Lake. Canoeists learning to paddle on Dow’s Lake near central Ottawa. Appreciate the moderate summer temperature on a August weekday. (Ottawa, ON) 20130815 1309Parliament Hill. Evening stroll in Otttawa by Parliament Hill, on the south bank of the Ottawa River. Compared to Toronto, the people in Ottawa are friendlier and seem less stressed. Since I spend so much time outside of Canada, I’m getting cognitive dissonance of dealing day to day with nice people where I don’t have to think so much about how we communicate (Ottawa) 20130815 2005Kingston Portsmouth Olympic Harbour. On the route home, by Portsmouth Olympic Harbour, right beside the Kingston Penitentiary, a maximum security prison. Noting the many boats on trailers that anyone could just drive up, hook up, and tow away, without supervision or security. Does the prison next door give thieves any pause to think about potential consequences? (Kingston, Ontario) 20130816 1858Edward Gardens Fountain. On our 28th anniversary renewal of vows, the limestone lady at the Edward Gardens fountain looks freshly cleaned. DY and I queued for a wedding party to clear, and then recommitted for another year. With my retirement and AHI’s surgery, it’s been a roller-coaster year. After the big family pilgrimage to China and then Vietnam, we’re considering couples travel together. (Don Mills, ON) 20130824 1458
Control room at Bell Lightbox. Expected to see movies previewing on monitors, but largest screens were cameras watching pedestrians on outside the Bell Lightbox King Street. Signs and programs of the Toronto International Film Festival posted on many walls. Walked around the building, haven’t yet seen a movie in it. (Toronto) 20130831 1654
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 […]
