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Russell Ackoff, abridged

January 4, 2010
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In Toronto — partially in response to members of the International Society for the Systems Sciences looking for sustainable alternatives to the pattern of annual meetings outside of North America every other year — we’ve started a Systems Sciences Meetup group.  There’s a rich history of people and events in the systems sciences in Toronto, and we’ve been remiss in keeping the momentum going.

The purpose of these meetups is to enable conversations amongst like-minded people interested in (continuing to) climb the learning curve on (the) systems science(s).  Having a keynote speaker provides a centre around which the conversations can coalesce.  In November 2009, Allenna Leonard led the first meetup with a talk on “What are the Systems Sciences”.  Given the holiday season, we deferred the next meeting to January.

With the announcement of a Memorial Celebration for Russell Ackoff in Philadelphia in February, it seemed natural to prepare a session for those unfamiliar with his life and work.  Thus, for the January 6 Systems Sciences Meetup, I’ll be leading a talk on “Russell Ackoff, abridged“.  Having satisfied a personal goal to create a single double-sided page of  highlights, I’ll be relying on two maps as visual aids.

Following a style prescribed by the master himself — not just examining the system, but also its environment — the professional timeline of Russell Ackoff includes his relationships with the Tavistock Institute for Human Relations (that included Fred Emery and Eric Trist), as well as C.… Read more (in a new tab)

Evolving Styles for Learning Systems Thinking | Systems Thinking Ontario | 2025-02-13

February 18, 2025
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The 128th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario was convened in person.  The classroom was filled with current students, alumni, our regular participants, and a few curious newcomers.

Moderated by Zaid Khan, the conversation was sparked by Stephen Davies and myself (David Ing) on the evolving styles in learning systems thinking.  Stephen has been leading SFIN-6011 “Understanding Systems” since the beginning of this winter session.  I had previously taught in the course in winter 2020 (almost completing the term before the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown), and have been volunteering some time this winter with current students.

The master’s program in Strategic Foresight and Innovation was launched in 2009, with systems thinking at its core.

Our strategic innovation model … illustrates the integration of design, business, and futures thinking through systems thinking. This integration allows our students to move through an iterative design thinking process, understand the business context to ensure viability and develop deeper insights into the challenges a sector or organization might be facing through futures thinking. Systems thinking and mapping locates these complex challenges in a larger system and makes clear the patterns and interconnectedness of the issues; and visual thinking ensures more effective communication of complex data (Richards, 2015, p. 360).

In the earliest days, there were two courses listed:  (i) “Understanding Systems” in Year One, Winter semester, and (ii) “Social Systems” in Year Two, Fall semester (OCADU, 2011).

SFIN 6B02 Social Systems
In this introduction to complex systems, students will examine the dynamic arrangement of three interconnected and adaptive human systems; social, market and political.

… Read more (in a new tab)

Systems Approaches (Project Language + Literature Reviews with Generative AI) | OCADU | 2025-01-20

January 26, 2025
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The “Understanding Systems” SFIN-6011 course is a requirement in the master’s program in Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCADU.   For winter 2025, the class is now led by Stephen Davies, breaking the incremental evolving of content since 2008.  While still on faculty at OCADU, the original course designer Peter H. Jones is now a Distinguished University Professor at Tecnologico de Monterrey, spending more time in Mexico City than Toronto.  In the fall, Stephen and I discussed ways that the legacy course might be updated, since the field of systemic design has emerged and matured over 15+ years.  I was one of the instructors with Peter of SFIN-6011 in winter 2020, and have prior experiences of writing systems thinking courses in 2018 for the UToronto iSchool, and at Aalto U. in 2016, in 2011, and in 2010.

From week 3 on, groups of students will lead short presentations on some systems approaches (e.g. system dynamics, soft systems methodology, viable system model).  With short lead times to prepare literature reviews, the primary class activity for these master’s students is the facilitation of peer discussions that will surface key ideas.  They aren’t expected to become experts on these topics at this point.  They can get a sense of when and where a specific systems approach might be prioritized as useful, or deselected in favour of alternatives.  After the presentation leaders have concluded with their slides, the instructors can fill in a few blanks.… Read more (in a new tab)

Systems Theory, Systems Philosophy, Systems Methodology via Bela H. Banathy (1985)

November 15, 2024
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The International Society for General Systems Research formed circa 1956 became the International Society for the Systems Sciences in 1988.  In 1985, Bela H. Banathy organized the annual meeting on the theme of “Systems Inquiring”.  Proceedings normally are published in the year following.  In 1987, John A. Dillon summarized Banathy’s perspective in the yearbook, General Systems.  For easy reading, here’s an excerpt from the yearbook.

— begin excerpt —

EDITORIAL PREFACE

Systems Inquiring

One of the few perquisites which come to the President of the International Society for General Systems Research is that he or she can determine the theme of the Annual Conference. In 1985, President Bela Banathy selected the topic, Systems Inquiring as the focal point of the Conference.

Because his Introduction to that conference represents an excellent, concise description of the whole field of systems science, we shall begin this volume by quoting it here.

“Systems Inquiring involves both conclusion oriented disciplined inquiry or knowledge production and decision oriented disciplined inquiry, which makes use of knowledge produced by systems research and by the various disciplines. Systems Inquiring draws upon the three domains of systems scholarship: systems theory, systems philosophy, and systems methodology.

The program of the 1985 Annual Meeting of the Society embraces the entire scope of Systems Inquiry, by which:
SYSTEMS PHILOSOPHY is explicated and evolved,
SYSTEMS THEORY is defined and formulated through its continuous evolution, and
SYSTEMS METHODOLOGY is pursued as a field of study as well as implemented in a variety of contexts and through a variety of strategies and methods.… Read more (in a new tab)

Citation rankings for some systems thinkers

August 6, 2024
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I’ve been checking on the breadth of some personal research on systems thinkers.  (The list is incomplete, and may orient more towards systems scientists).  Searching on Scopus gives an h-Index that counts scholarly references (with a boost, for the first person on the list who received a Nobel prize in chemistry).

The list below is sorted first on h-index, and then the number of citations.

For me, there were a few surprises.  Others may be less surprised.

Author Documents Citations h-index
Prigogine, Ilya R. 237 9,629 50
Holling, Crawford S. 66 27,402 38
Midgley, Gerald 83 2,948 33
Checkland, Peter B. 47 3,425 27
Jackson, Michael C. 76 2,716 26
Odum, Howard T. 55 4,579 24
Ackoff, Russell L. 68 2,411 23
Wiener, Norbert 72 3,758 22
Rosen, Robert 93 1,624 21
Senge, Peter M. 34 2,186 18
Lewin, Kurt 39 9,566 17
Boulding, Kenneth E. 79 2,074 16
Trist, Eric L. 21 4,537 15
Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas 27 1,013 15
von Bertalanffy, Ludwig 35 3,285 14
Bateson, Gregory 22 962 12
Miller, James Grier 20 562 11
Meadows, Donella H. 14 684 8
Beer, Stafford 29 250 8
Emery, Frederick E. 20 2,011 7
Ashby, W. Ross 15 671 6
Churchman, C. West 23 104 5

The h-index is supposed to be better in comparing researchers in the same field.  Citations may or may not be better in the systems sciences, where we have a chemist alongside some economists.… Read more (in a new tab)

Reframing Systems Thinking for Systems Changes: Sciencing and Philosophizing from Pragmatism towards Processes as Rhythms | JISSS

February 1, 2024
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An article on “sciencing and philosophizing”, coauthored by Gary S. Metcalf and myself, has been published in the Journal of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, following the ISSS 2023 Kruger Park conference in South Africa, last July.  There’s a version cacned on  the Coevolving Commons.

This article started in a series of conversations with Gary in early 2023, as he was listening to the history of Pragrmatism as an audiobook of The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas by Louis Menand, written in 2002.  Key figures in the development of this philosophy includes William James (1842—1910) and Charles Sanders Peirce (1839—1914).  My interests have taken me backwards in time, with C. West Churchman and Russell Ackoff both students of Edgar A. Singer, Jr., who was a student of William James.  A thread looking into Stephen C. Pepper, also a student of William James and Ralph Barton Perry, was encouraged by online comments from Michael C. Jackson, OBE.  This led to a tracing of philosophical influences from the 1890s to 2000.

Institutional lineages of key figures in systems sciences and pragmatism

With my current research into Classical Chinese philosophy, I was encouraged by an 1993 interview citing Churchman having a similar interest for in exploring alternatives to classical Western philosophy for sciencing on systems.

In conversations with Churchman on the historical sources of systems thinking, he often identified the Chinese I Ching as the oldest systems approach. As an effort to model dynamic processes of changing relationships between different kinds of elements, the I Ching might be seen as a systemic approach, in contrast with the more systematic approach of rationalist Western thought, rooted in the work of Plato and Aristotle.

… Read more (in a new tab)

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