Stockton Callinghas become a regular annual multi-venue music festival, with a focus on providing support for North East bands. Saturday this Easter weekend is the 3rd I’ve attended. Going to post thoughts in reverse order from the top – the day didn’t quite go to plan thanks to Northern Rail cancellations – so a bit of a random, hurried selection of who to watch, where, once I’d checked-in at The Arc – and didn’t see any of the official headliners – spent the latter half of the evening in The Georgian.
Avalanche Partywere the band I was there to see, again. Energy-packed stampeding beast of a performance as we’ve come to expect, this home gig effectively the finale of their promotional European album-tour. As others commented, the sound has suffered recently. Hurried sound check seems to be about the band being able to hear what they need through their monitors, with the audience experience set at everything turned-up to eleven. Lost something of the dynamic interest in the varied instrumentation between guitar, keyboard, sax and multiple vocals. Hard to pick any one of them out of the wall of sound so it ends up a bit monotonous, even when you recognise the opening riffs and choruses
Home Counties were the best act on the day. Fantastic energetic delivery and presence from the front pair and the conventional guitars, keyboard, bass and drums augmented by the male lead and the bassist doubling-up on synths. Heavy delivery with synth sub-bass lines and an 80’s disco twist compounded by the male lead looking like a cross between the young Marc Almond and Dave Gahan back in the day. Found myself standing in front of the rhythm guitarist who seemed to leading much of the choppy drive and direction. Very entertaining all round. Hope to see them again.
Swannekwere the biggest surprise of the day. A laid-back jazzy-soul collective led by Findlay Hewitson didn’t auger well for my usual tastes. Electric piano, tenor sax and cello used sparingly and effectively (take note AP), but it was the vocals that wowed. Mollie Birmingham (a name which Google struggles with) accompanied by a reggae / ska / toaster vocalist for the first couple of numbers, soaring and gravelly by turns, she commanded attention from audience and apologetic photographers throughout, couldn’t get enough of her. Courageous therefore for the band to finish on an instrumental to showcase their musicians. One to watch, they were actually promoted by the local “BBC Introducing”. Will seek out again.
Before these a mixed-bag. I only just caught the last number and a half of SISTER MADDS – heavy and probably fun, but for me she was trying a bit too hard to be the bad girl. CASINO a bit too laid back funky soul with little else to commend performance-wise. Suspect from their audience there may be more in their songs? WALDO’S GIFT – weird to say the least, even their drummer had to admit, doing his best to engage the audience. No songs, all instrumental numbers led by their nerdy-persona virtuoso guitarist(*) and an impressive board-full of effects and loops. Notable to me that Carl, the lead guitar of Middle Management, was there in the audience to appreciate him (though they weren’t on the bill) and that Waldo’s bassist and drummer were chilling – as I was – in The Kopper Keg after Avalanche Party.
(*) Not a bad thing in itself – I’m off to see Joe Satriani & Steve Vai next month.
Part of the “problem with the problem” we’re dealing with – a meta-problem – is that we’re talking about “life, the universe and everything” and therefore “talking about everything all at once”. It takes effort and good-faith to avoid such dialogue seriously straining and breaking the limits of language, and it makes destructive-critique and disagreement much easier than creative-agreement – a topic in its own right for my writing project(s).
Also, talking about literally everything, we’re also talking about all types (classes, categories, forms) of everything at several levels of abstraction, every-meta-thing(s) as well as every-particular-thing(s).
And, once we’ve accepted science isn’t everything, then the ground we stand on, our chosen metaphysics, cannot simply be physical science. Metaphysics isn’t very fashionable in the 21st C, but these kinds of meta-talking about everything in the abstract are the bread-and-butter of philosophy.
Whatever ground we stand on and however explicitly we expose our metaphysics, we are creating our ontology, a meta-model of that everything, all those things and meta-things that may exist in the world and all their properties, processes and relations, and an epistemology of all that we can know about this “everything”, what everything means and thus every other branch of philosophy too. We’re talking about everything on many levels & dimensions.
(In my own metaphysics, my epistemology and my ontology are so closely tied that I’ve been calling it an epistemological-ontology … but I don’t want to talk here about that meta-model of everything – everything all at once.)
So, as I say I just want to mention one point here:
The Word “Systems”
In the previous post I already alluded to the fact that Seddon was limiting himself to the complication of particular systems. Named systems – human and technology – that were part of particular organisations and operations.
Boulton’s focus (like mine) is complexity – Embracing Complexity / The Dao of Complexity – and her interest (like mine) is well beyond the organisational management perspective of that previous dialogue. But she used the word “system” in this phrase: “when things don’t stabilise into so-called systems as when they do, and what makes them unravel”. She too is using system in the particular – so-called, things, they, them.
For me, as I’ve expressed many times but this is my first exchange with Boulton, systems is actually “Systems Thinking (and Doing)” as a response to real-world complexity. I’m using systems at the meta (as well as the particular) levels, simply viewing that “everything” in terms of their functional ontology. Seeing everything in the world in terms of their dynamic relations with other part & whole & eco-system things at any level on any dimension. A choice of how to view the (whole) world. Part of our metaphysical choice.
For me Systems is simply a response to Complexity, a useful way of viewing it all in all its complexity, not an alternate competing view.
In this systems view all such systems are always dynamic, patterns in flux on any & all levels & dimensions, evolving, and like everything else in the natural world, some such particular systems hang-around – emerge, stabilise, some by human choice, some by the active processes of life – reify-long-enough to be usefully given a name – speciation by any other name. But they’re all viewable as systems, even if they don’t.
Complexity camp or Systems camp, we can all use both words without pitting one against the other?
Yes, despite appearances, I really am progressing the writing at last. Essentially, what little reading I am still doing is simply proving to be confirmation and reinforcement, adding new references, so lots of drafts, mental and physical, have already taken their shape.
I wrote-up the Iain McGilchrist / Oxford trip, but haven’t done so for the John Seddon / Mike Jackson Hull lecture nor for the British Library visits. So below, this is just a round-up of those.
John Seddon – gave this year’s annual Mike Jackson lecture at Hull Uni / Centre for Systems Studies (CSS) last Thursday, 10th April. In his 70’s with many decades of war stories under his belt as management consultant to leaders in commercial industry as well as assorted ministerial civil servants – health, prisons, etc. Pretty liberal with his opinions of named public people & politicians and their (very costly and ineffective) mistaken approaches to systems management systems. For him, his systems were all complicated but not complex, in the sense that he limited his interest to those management systems (procedures and tools) designed – made complicated – by humans, for a well defined purpose that could be seen as closed from any wider human or ecosystem complexities. Fair enough. Even then, most of his stories were of the “you get what you manage” variety. Systems designed to serve the needs of – fix the problems of – individual “customers” but which invariably ended-up managing the efficiencies of quantifiable compliance within the system itself, ultimately dominated by handling all the failure cases, especially via support and referral call-centres. The experts should be answering the phones, not hidden away behind multi-layered inexpert filtering processes. Hence “Vanguard” branded methodology / approach. (eg A good front-line triage nurse is the one with the experience, not the junior with a checklist.) So not rocket science, but boy could he talk, for a full 75 minutes before Mike Jackson as host could pause for 10 minutes of dialogue to close. (Dave Snowden also there, making copious notes. My focus is unashamedly the complex, the wider societal context of open systems, and his Cynefin approach is about assessing whether you are dealing with Simple / Complicated / Complex / Chaotic regimes to start with, and choosing methods & actions accordingly. I wasn’t really therefore the audience for Seddon’s focus on the Complicated.)
I mentioned in the footnotes to my recent Iain McGilchrist post, my own history with the British Library. I did have reading-room membership back in the days of my London-weekly-commute-working, but the BL had a massive cyber-attack back in 2023 from which they are only partially recovered. User records lost as well as losing the capability of ordering books via their electronic cataloguing. Like the US Library of Congress, in principle they have at least one copy of, every version of, everything ever published. For a book like McGilchrist’s “Against Criticism” there is only one Faber & Faber 1982 hardback edition and they had two copies catalogued, one in London and one in Boston Spa / Thorpe Arch nr Wetherby. However, the one in Yorkshire appeared to be lost (valuable, stolen?), so as well as re-registering in person, I had to make a second trip yesterday to see the London copy brought closer to home.
It proved to be worth it. Even though in 4 hours I could only selectively skim read and make notes and selected image copies, it was both fascinating in content and a wonderfully written read. [I’ll will of course, say more.] Two things arose.
Firstly, I was reminded that Coleridge’s “Biographia Literaria” is a recurring reference in so much of my reading. The archetypal source of the romantics, both British and German, that it’s been on my must-read list for some time. As I was in the Library and logged-in to their cataloguing I searched in order to request it for the reading room. Well, unlike McGilchrist, there are many, many published editions and versions of Coleridge, so just doing that selection is a piece of research in its own right. Long story short, using Amazon as well as the BL, I’ve ended-up with a Kindle copy of the 1817 edition. There were plenty of later used versions out there at reasonable prices too, unlike the sole $2000 dollar used copy of McGilchrist, and there are quite a few modern editions. Coleridge is well referenced by others, so I really need only a reference version myself – so with Kindle I get the added bonus of searchability for the context of of other people’s quotes. Job done.
Secondly, Jean Boulton – is embedded in my memory for some reason, despite checking mail and social-media records showing that I’ve only known of her for a matter of months? Some LinkedIn exchanges with Dave Snowden over the last year or two and a debate with Mike Jackson (I missed) back in February this year (hat tip to Ben Taylor). Anyway I bought a copy of her (2024) “Dao of Complexity” – “sense-making in turbulent times” – like every man and his dog these days – a veritable meme of memes. Can’t comment yet on the quality of her writing or arguments, but it is chock-full of so much of my own content and 21st C sources … no Pirsig and no Snowden, but lots of Maturana, Mazzucato, Temelkuran, McGilchrist, Rovelli and Whitehead … and Pragmatism and Mary Parker-Follett(!) We obviously have a lot in common. Wondering if it was the MPF connection where we’ve crossed paths before? [More later, below.]
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Post Notes:
The recording of the Jean Bolton and Mike Jackson conversation noted above (hat tip Ben Taylor again):
Remember when I first saw the talk advertised, bridling at that awful click-bait title – obviously they’re compatible – they’re co-dependent in fact. This is just about finding the right level of common description – through dialogue (as opposed to critique).
I already mentioned her book above – still that familiarity listening to her, presumably from the obvious common ground – weird feeling though. Mike’s book, I already reviewed (and also read and listened to him many more times), and I’ve summarised his position as essentially “pragmatism plus requisite variety (diversity)” … “There are more things in heaven and earth, etc.” Can’t argue.
She starts with “metaphysics” – unusual for a physicist – and this is recurring for me. Once a science-literate person accepts that “there is more than science“, recognising one’s metaphysics is an unavoidable necessity. “The ground on which we stand.” – Good. And recognising agenda / purpose, not simply detached objectivity, also unusual for a scientist – Good. “Ontological Resonance” between humanities and sciences – Good. “Reflective interaction” in any (eco)-system. Stable “patterns” emerge. Becoming more than being. “Things” are always evolving dynamically even if patterns are (at some level) relatively stable. “Intrinsic indeterminism” … “not frightening the horses” is an expression I often use too when it comes to communicating on a broad front. All very good, and well established in my own work. We diverge in that her agenda is still essentially management consulting in organisations (like Snowden)? – “organisational change strategy” is where I started this journey in my Masters back 1988/91- whereas my 21stC agenda is the human thinking and decision-making ecosystem in the widest “global” sense, for the good of the world – that shared metaphysical (meta-)model or framework, in my case. Neither of us are focussed on methods or specific / individual models. Stop reading / listening, and get on with the writing ….?
Mike’s agenda – really about helping people who have already been immersed in or subjected to the many different traditions of systems thinking (and complexity, and OR), sciences, theories and methods – a pragmatic route map out of the confusions of subject-matter complexity.
Both “in” their own journey’s in their own writings … me too. Systems view is more epistemological, Jean’s more ontological – mine already claimed as “an epistemological ontology” … so all good.
Yep, stop reading / listening, and get on with the writing.
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Still to write-up … (above) McGilchrist’s “Against Criticism” …
As a Pirsigian originally, I’ve naturally seen Aristotle as part of the problem that systematising everything scientifically and logically has led inevitably to the dominance of science in the world of knowledge and applied knowledge in action. Extreme forms in that, say, anything seen as rhetorical is thus described pejoratively, or that seeing science as the only credible form of knowledge being a dogma known as scientism. It’s a no-brainer that Aristotle himself was obviously far more nuanced than that.
I’ve dipped into Aristotle often enough to follow-up the context of quotes by others, but I wouldn’t say I’d read more than 10% of Aristotle’s own writings. I’m familiar with his Organon, the systematic way he organises and categorises everything and every topic in the world, the lesson learned in the taxonomy of any number of ontologies since. Any given organon or ontology is or course “deemed”, it’s the consistent and comprehensive systematisation that represents the lasting pragmatic value. The fact that our post-Galilean word “science” derives from “scientia” is part of the problem too, that we’ve taken the term that signified knowledge of all kinds and turned it into the word for just the one kind.
The “best-available one-volume Aristotle” I have (~1500 pages) is “The Basic Works of Aristotle” constituted out of the definitive Oxford translations and in print as the Random House hard-back for over 80 years, as edited by Richard McKeon. He of course was the bogeyman, the professor or Chairman of the Ancient Greek philosophy course that Pirsig bumps up against in Chicago in his first book (ZMM). I have the 2001 Modern Library Classics paper-back version. As well as McKeon’s biographical notes on Aristotle and his original Preface to the whole volume, the 2001 edition includes an introduction by C.D.C. Reeve. Although thoroughly signposted by Aristotle in his own chapter and subject headings, there is sadly no alphabetical topic index in the individual books or the overall volume. Those 3 introductory sections by McKeon and Reeve are actually quite illuminating about what is or isn’t science in Aristotelian terms.
After labelling pretty much all of Aristotle’s topics as “sciences” theoretical, practical and productive – even theology, philosophy, ethics, arts and crafts (with rhetoric as one of those “arts”) – Reeve says this :
“Of these [sciences] the theoretical ones are the Aristotelian paradigm, since they provide us with knowledge of necessary universal truths. The extent to which ethics [and others] fit the paradigm is less clear. One reason for this is that a huge part of these [Ethics & Rhetoric] has to do [NOT] with universal principles of the sort one finds in physics, but with particular cases whose near infinite variety cannot easily be summed-up in formulae. [eg] The knowledge of what justice is may well be scientific knowledge, but to know what justice requires in a particular case one also needs equity, which is a combination of virtue and an eye [trained by experience]. Perhaps then we should think of the practical [and productive] sciences as having something like a theoretically scientific core, but as [NOT] being reducible to it.”
That latter sentence is pretty much the core of my own thesis these last 20+ years, even though I read it only yesterday. Fascinating.
My last visit to Oxford was a cold, dark, immediately post-Covid February three years ago, the same day Putin invaded Ukraine I recall, so it was a pleasure to visit again on these two bright and mild days in early-April.
Given this wasn’t a promotional “new book” publishing tour I had imagined the Friday session at which he was originally advertised simply as the speaker might be a call-to-action or an update lecture on “Where to next?” with his now well-established hemispheric social hypothesis agenda. That first session was in fact conducted as a conversational style interview with Charles Foster in the chair. Foster has written about and much referenced McGilchrist’s work – as he did at last year’s Annual Mike Jackson Lecture at the Hull Centre for Systems Studies. (Aside – I’m at this year’s MJ Lecture in Hull on Thursday this week.)
Disappointingly for me, the content was almost entirely a summary of his work to date, which I already know very well. The poor amplified acoustics of the Sheldonian and the obvious fact that Iain was in a hurry to get away afterwards, didn’t add to the experience.
Can only assume from his introduction to the Saturday session that the reason he was in a hurry Friday was to meet for the first time his guest for that session. This was more interesting for me, with tables-turned. Iain was introducing us to the work of Catalan philosopher Jordi Pigem with whom he had established by correspondence, had a parallel and complementary agenda about the world being led astray by our left-brain dominant use of 24/7 comms technology. Pretty much my own agenda in fact, so it was interesting to hear someone voicing the same issues and ideas. Sadly for now, Pigem is published only in Catalan and Spanish.
Apart from the obvious ancient wisdom “the problem (eg. motorcycle) you are working on is yourself” angle, tending your own garden, changing the world one person – yourself – at a time, my anticipated question for the Friday session was actually asked by someone at this session. “What is the suggested strategy for getting Iain’s message for a better future out there in widespread practice?” Any wiser answer came there none. Everyone should read and act on Iain’s thesis for themselves. Essentially the same “hopeful pessimist” message from the Friday session.
Anyway, I enjoyed the two bright, mild days in Oxford walking the streets, at least 5 miles, between landmark pubs and specialist second-hand bookshops, pausing again at the recommended “Art Café” for both breakfast and lunch. Christ Church College Green is close to both the “Head of the River” and “St. Peter’s Books”, the first place I stopped to search for Iain McGilchrist’s “Against Criticism”. It’s an out of print first book of his that I’ve mentioned before and was actually referenced multiple times in the Friday session. Not to be found anywhere, despite that. [Amazon UK] [Amazon US] [Book Finder](*)[British Library](*)
But I did learn some things new to me:
Last time we were there, “The Eagle and Child” (aka “Bird & Baby”) was boarded-up with a planning permission notice pinned to the front door. This time it was fully shrouded in 3 storeys of scaffolding and sheeting as the work was clearly now taking place. The other “Inklings-adjacent” pub, “The Lamb and Flag” across the road was open however and had an Inklings-themed beer.
Having walked north out of the centre, I continued to pay my first visit to No.2 Polstead Road, the long-term family home of T.E. Lawrence, as a child and as a student in Oxford as well as an archaeologist and a first world war army officer. What might have been, had Lawrence had lived to meet the Inklings on his way in and out of the university (although by later in his short life he was leading a solitary existence out at Clouds Hill, Dorset)? Not much to see besides the blue plaque, much more in the Ashmolean of course.
The Bodleian is not so much a library as a collection of specialist libraries. As well as the “old school” libraries and the Sheldonian already mentioned, there’s the huge modern Weston Library which was set-up together with Blackwells as the centre of activities and books for the OxLitFest itself. A kid in a sweetshop, but they’d never heard of “Against Criticism” either.
And not quite finally, the venue for Iain’s Saturday session was the Oxford Martin School, which boasted some very impressive multi-disciplinary “mission statements” towards “finding solutions to the world’s most urgent challenges”. Why else were we here?
And finally having been at the Bodleian/Blackwell LitFest and having visited a handful of used book shops, I couldn’t fail to buy some books, even though I couldn’t find the one I was looking for.
Bronowski’s book on Blake “A Man Without a Mask” I already have a copy and have mentioned before, but this copy had an original first edition dust cover(!) I mentioned earlier Bronowski having taught at Hull University when I attended the previous Mike Jackson lecture.
Barfield’s was one I hadn’t been aware of before, it’s a collection of previously published essays and talks, published in 1966 but originally delivered between 1944 and 1961. His main works are de-rigueur for Pirsig scholars – “Poetic Diction“, “History in English Words” and “Saving the Appearances” – but this collection does as it says on the cover, with Goethe as the archetype of all the Romantics, and has much explanation of the importance Barfield placed on Rudolf Steiner and his Anthroposophy, something interesting thought-wise if perhaps a bit scarily “cultish” as a form of teaching practice in the 21st C. Clearly Barfield was responding to sceptical criticism of his relationship with Steiner and had to explain himself.
Successfully re-registered(**) in person at the British Library (Boston Spa / Thorpe Arch facility nr Wetherby in Yorkshire). Iain’s “Against Criticism” shows-up with catalogued copies existing in both London and Yorkshire. Because any book (up to six a day) may be in either location, generally there’s 48 hours notice to get them to the local reading room. Since there were two copies, one at each, in principle if it’s in one of the manually accessible stores, the librarian can get it for you while you wait.
It was, so they did. Except, the one in Boston Spa is “Lost / Missing” from the shelf, so I’ll have to wait until my next visit for the London copy. Given the only second hand copy I could find at Book Finder or Abe Books was priced over $2000, I wonder what missing actually means?
[(**) I say successfully re-registered because , as you may be aware, the British Library suffered a massive denial-of-service cyber-hacking attack which they are still only partly recovered from 2 years later. Some of the manual services are still better / faster than the electronic ones 🙂 Anyway I was previously registered in that period when I was weekly commuting to work in London – all records lost / inaccessible. A fresh start.]
This is the next and final instalment of the general Wisdom vs Science thread that has been running since I documented last year’s ISSS workshop. It contains first level general agreement & immediate corollaries. I say final instalment, because if this truly reflects our general agreement, then any new threads will involve new topics that are specific next-level details in their own right.
We’re talking here within relatively sophisticated groups – concerned with systems & complexity, sciences, philosophies and management expertise & experiences, in contrast with our real target audience: Leaders who can effect desired global changes, and their public constituencies.
Agreement
We’ve ended up discussing the two words Science and Wisdom for short-hand, but let’s not forget these are standing in for a long list of different words about Explicit and Implicit forms of knowledge and processes. Fortunately, we’ve ended-up with a general (and obvious) agreement at a very basic level:
“Whatever the definitive properties, differences and relations between (so-called) Science and Wisdom, they are distinct things.”
That is, aka in my original terms, “There’s a #GoodFence between them”. A distinction we shouldn’t simply ignore or lose sight of, whatever our future intent & aspirations, tactical & strategic.
Corollaries
And there are corollaries of this simple agreed statement. As systems (thinking and doing) people:
We are interested in both, we value both.
We recognise many relations and overlaps between the two, so neither is independent of the other, and neither is simply a sub-set or super-set of the other. Our knowledge of the world is the complex combination of both.
And we therefore need to be careful if we use the language of one, that we are not accidentally dismissing or overlooking the other. We need inclusive language.
This was very explicitly my immediate workshop / presentation aim, based on just a couple of years of ISSS presentations and conversations (on top of 50+ years of wider experience and research). That we don’t let the language of one become conversation killers of the other (*1).
Conclusion
THE END. That would be “mission accomplished” as far as my original workshop intent. As a sophisticated group, with the above understandings in mind, our ongoing and future dialogues will all help evolve better models and processes to achieve our combined aims?
One thing we clearly need next, beyond the general agreement above, is next level detail, better, more definitive descriptions and understandings of those properties, differences and relations between the Science / Explicit and the Wisdom / Implicit knowledge of and processes in the world(*2).
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Notes:
(*1) At one point I also unfortunately introduced the language of “camps” either side of that #GoodFence. For a sophisticated group as ourselves, this is clearly not a real division, not a dichotomy. We do actually understand and generally appreciate both. But, there has been a history of science vs post-modernism and science vs ideologies “wars”, which can remain history within our sophisticated groups, yet remain relevant in responses to the language we choose externally. Conversely, outside in our target audience, there is a very strong cultural expectation for argument and justification based on the explicit even when argued rhetorically and politically. Worse still, a significant number of those whose explicit focus is the science exhibit a strong and “scientistic” tendency against anything that doesn’t meet their (objective, logical, repeatable, quantifiable) scientific standards.
(*2) This is “all our projects” and involves every sphere of management, organisation, process, procedures, methods, models, frameworks, meta-models, sciences and philosophies, including ontology, epistemology, ethics and even metaphysics. My own focus on elaboration are (a) an architectural, perspective, about models, meta-models, frameworks that represent (b) an epistemology of that combined knowledge about the world that guide our actions in the world. Since that combined knowledge is more than physical science, a metaphysics is inescapable. (Further elaboration here is more than one thread of correspondence, for me it’s my whole research and writing project(s). This is why my original workshop aim was just one very small point of general linguistic agreement, but I’m obviously happy to respond to any specific queries about the epistemological architecture I have in mind, given that agreement. And indeed, I will anyway pick-up separate threads prompted by responses so far – they are grist to my project for which I am grateful.)
I really am avoiding reading as I focus on the writing. It’s not as if it’s any kind of crime not to have read all the writers and books on any given topic and with such a broad and inter-disciplinary topic as mine, there are literally millions of things to read, fictional narratives as well as would-be factual treatises. I took my lead initially from Pirsig, whose psychiatrist told him to just write something, even as a therapy to escape the numberless frustrations between the life-experienced and the words of received-wisdom already “out there”. Reading lists are never-ending to start with and counter-intuitively they grow the more you read. It was Eco that cemented the idea that even books acquired for one’s library could remain unread on the shelf – his “library of unread books”.
Re-shelving several half-read / un-read books recently, I have accidentally slipped into reading mode just occasionally, but yesterday I stumbled upon a writer and a book in that unread library that I had studiously avoided reading for a some time. In fact I only acquired in in guilty response to some very personally directed criticism that I didn’t feel the need to know Gregory Bateson’s work, given my clear interest in Macy and Cybernetics. He was part of those foundations, I already knew that, but you can’t read everyone and everything.
I was prejudiced against Bateson, from very negative opinions of Quine (Gavegai?) and Dennett about Bateson’s, and his first wife Margaret Mead’s, early anthropological work on “tribal” language evolution and development. And frankly, as I’ve said elsewhere, any systemic study of human organisational processes is anthropology by any other name – it’s where I’d started long ago in my 1988/91 Master’s work. So, Bateson wasn’t for me it seemed.
I’ve absorbed plenty of his “Ecology of Mind” ideas by osmosis from other sources I’ve read as part of the Psybertron project, but still hadn’t read his original collection of “Steps to an Ecology of Mind”. I can pretty surely say his ideas in this area are consistent with plenty of my own. I’m not reading him not because I reject his work, but because – see priorities – it feels like more reinforcement of the track I’m already firmly on.
But what of that earlier prejudice? Clearly Nora Bateson, his daughter (b.1968) with his third wife is very active in this cybernetics / systems / complexity space in the 21st C developing and promoting his thinking. Mary Bateson his daughter (b.1939-d.2021) with Margaret Mead was also a strong supporter, co-authoring later in his life, picking-up his unfinished work after his death and in providing a (1999) foreword to the second edition of his (1971/72) “Steps”.
In his own 1971 foreword he says:
“My first anthropological field work among the Baining [tribe] of New Britain [Bali & Papua New Guinea] was a failure, and I had a period of partial failure in research with dolphins. Neither of these failures has ever been held against me.”
Mary’s 1999 foreword acknowledges the failure of his early anthropological work, though widely read suggests he was misunderstood in the context of his wider work which didn’t yet exist, that he was in some sense both ahead of and behind his time. Hard to be sure now, but relieved to find I didn’t imagine that his failure really had been held against him.
Lots of good stuff in the foreword texts and the chapter titles, so good that I may uses some as titles of my own “Pathologies of Epistemology” and “Metalogues” for example but also so many topics already considered here, William Blake, Versailles and more. Not actually that impressed with his writing, none of the chapters I skimmed hooked me – many transcripts of talks? – however good his ideas, so back on the shelf for if-and-when needed.
If he says anything you think I’ve missed, let me know.
Mapping the trajectory of cohesion vs division – “We vs I” on multiple measures across four main areas – over the past century and a bit. One key message is that rather than seeking to learn lessons from the 1960’s when “we never had it so good” (and it’s been all downhill since), we should be looking at late 1800’s early 1900’s for lessons for how the upswing in cohesion was last generated, especially initiatives by people who were young at that time.
Compelling stuff, and there’s a discussion that follows the talk that I’ve not digested yet (See footnotes). Some key takeaways already from my perspective.
Time Axis – Yes, one reason my researches have been so focussed on the causes of what was happening in the 1920’s – responses to “the world in crisis”. (Aside, maybe fascinating also, to compare Kondratiev cycles to this double wave-length cycle.)
Youth / Bottom-Up – Yes, one reason my focus – as an oldie – is meta, the frameworks, the enablers, the environment of “creative constraints” rather than any actual projects, plans, applications. They’ve gotta come from people that will actually live them.
DEI Backlash – I’ve banged on about both sides of Woke / Anti-Woke (a pox on both their houses, etc), but whilst ridding ourselves of the degenerate aspects of identity politics ideology that became attached to these, we mustn’t forget equality and inclusivity of diversity as one of those fundamental enablers. Babies not to be thrown out with the bathwater.
I shall be interested to pick-up on the dialogue following the talk.
Post Note: Fascinating that “love” becomes the topic at the end following a question from a charity leader from Hartlepool(*). And two of the panel admit that despite its importance and involvement in their activities, the word doesn’t actually appear anywhere formally. I recalled using the word 4 times in my last two posts about wisdom. And it can’t go un-noticed that changing the subject from I/We/I to Love puts the “summer of love” at the peak in those graphs 🙂
(*) – And an interesting discussion around the content of this post with Jonathan, here on Facebook relevant to local issues, the kind discussed in local pubs 🙂 Also references this Borders vs Business post, the point being that we need practical constituencies to cohere around, to identify with. National identities – and their boundaries – come with legal jurisdictions enforcing “our” values, so we need to take them seriously for purely practical reasons, ditto all kinds of intra- and supra-national constituencies. That way we can fairly tax rich entities who would otherwise “offshore” their identities (and responsibilities).
I’m focussed on this one very small – linguistic technicality – point for now, not because it represents the object of my work, or any inherent or general pedantry – indeed vagueness is a virtue – but because not having some basic shared understanding here undermines the value of further dialogue about systems knowledge generally. And indeed Yiannis Laouris also shared more excellent contributions to that wider dialogue, to add to other previous materials already captured from him, Janet, Jessie and Gary – which I am just itching to develop and talk about.
And, let’s not forget from an ISSS perspective, all of this is follow-up to my workshop at DC 2024. It’s all connected and I owe some responses.
The Content – Small and Simple?
My topic is for the moment, as I say, this linguistic technicality. In my last post on this, I reduced the whole of the preceding dialogue to 4 simple statements the last of which was:
… this simple question is the point of the workshop & posts:
“IS WISDOM MORE THAN SCIENCE OR ISN’T IT?“
(And if it is, shouldn’t we be more careful in how we use those two words, Science and Wisdom?)
The objection – to the question – is that I called it simple, but in reality it’s not. The definitions and understandings of science and wisdom, and how well these can be captured in symbolic language anyway, are massively complex questions. The relations & similarities, dependencies & differences between Science and Wisdom are therefore another order more complex still. Sure, tell me about it 🙂 #ItsComplicated
My point, again, is that despite that undoubted complexity and uncertainty on so many levels, it is still a simple question with a simple – even a given – answer.
My answer is clearly “Yes” (Wisdom IS #MoreThanScience). And in fact the more complex those other aspects, the clearer and simpler the question and answer are.
I embarked on an ontological / taxonomic exercise, in symbolic (logical and graphical) language – in some draft visual / dynamic slides, hierarchical, heterarchical, holarchical systems network or set-theory diagramming based on some I’d prepared and used in earlier lives – remember this used to be my day job before I saw the error of our ways 😉 But, do we really want to go there just now? Let’s just stick to the natural language of human interactions for a while longer.
The Question Again
Let’s rephrase my question negatively and see if the point is clearer:
Is there any conceivable world – a whole world over all evolved times and domains – in which we can (ever, usefully or truthfully) say:
Wisdom <is identical with> Science ?
Surely not, “No”? Whatever their complexities of definitions & understandings, overlaps & relations in good & bad examples of linguistic & physical process embodiments, can the answer ever be “Yes”?
Made it clear since the turn of the year that I am positively avoiding reading to concentrate on the writing with mental breaks embodied through live performance interludes and walks in the wild(ish) outdoors. I just posted a diary of planned in-person interludes – in the side-bar if you’re on a tablet or PC, in the footer if you’re on your phone – largely to get a grip on how many I’m committing to. If you want to talk in person, you’ll know where to find me.
My writing agenda is as wide as this blog is long-lived, with 2 or perhaps 3 well-defined projects in hand, but one single item has become a stumbling block – a conversation killer – to establishing the language needed to be taken seriously by the intended audience. I’ve tagged that blockage #MoreThanScience in several dialogues, with ISSS members, with Dave Snowden, with Teesside-SitP and with others. Essentially, if we don’t value resources that are not scientific, don’t recognise that there is more to understanding (and acting in) the world than scientific knowledge and processes, then we’re letting the world down badly. Few would actually deny understanding that, but I am always left with so then WHY? label everything we do as science or sciences – systems science, complexity science, social sciences generally? It denies, or at least disadvantages by obscuring, use of non-scientific contributions in the languages of wisdom, love, intuition et al. Another instalment of that conversation in a following post, where I can rephrase my assertion as a negative question that ought to be easier to answer. I think I understand those motivations “why?” and would really love to move the dialogue on to challenging my own motivations and objectives in erecting that #GoodFence
Although I am indeed not actually reading any new material right now, I am nevertheless noticing new materials reminding me of old materials generally and this long-standing stumbling block in particular. Impossible to ignore. These for example:
(I’ve been immersed in “systems thinking” for the whole of this 25 year research project because I was immersed in it my entire career since the late 1970’s – but it was only through contact with Anatoly Levenchuk and Rob Black as INCOSE advocates that I noticed since 2010 the wider formality of “Systems” in day-job contexts, in parallel with my “Psybertron” research, and the Rovelli / Mach / Bogdanov trigger as recently as 2020/21 above made it the explicit / active topic of my research. There are so many global “systems” initiatives in every topic area from general management to wider business, government and civil society that I can’t list them, so apart from my ISSS membership, I effectively treat Ben Taylor as the hub or custodian of the network of systems networks of over 40,000 people.)
Jean-Pierre DUPUY – The same is true of Jean-Piere Dupuy’s (2009, MIT Edition) “On the Origins of Cognitive Science” – a republication of his (2000) “Mechanisation of the Mind” with a new preface following the death of Heinz von-Foerster. Another highly recommended read. Having lent my copy to the local pub book club, I recovered the 2009 edition to read the new preface – pushing the agenda that continues as my own.
(All systems are dynamic but those involving (evolved / emergent) life are distinct even if not dichotomous #GoodFences, and where that living complexity includes humanity, the human condition (after Arendt) is more to do with love (**) than science. Rehabilitating the initial failure of Cybernetics with the more humanistic Macy-Conferences interpretation originally intended by Wiener, Bateson, Varela, Foerster and more – something I’ve tagged #Psybernetics in recent years– systems thinking where the psychological complexity of humanity and the ecosystems we inhabit, are a given.)
Sara IMARI-WALKER (ASU / Santa Fe) – I obtained her (2024) “Life As No-One Knows It – the Physics of Life’s Emergence”(*). (Been a fan recently of her active research work, as well as Paul Davies, Jessica Flack, Lee Cronin, Kevin Mitchell and more.) On the shelf for a future read, but the blurbs and the initial “What is Life?” opening also reflecting on the possibility, rejected by Dupuy and Arendt above, that the living may be no different to the dead – that “Life does not exist.” – as she puts it.
Onwards and upward.
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(*) “No-One Knows” is of course the spur for my underlying agenda – what does it mean to know anything? And, it’s also the Josh Homme title / lyric / chorus of a QOTSA number – seeing the connection? (Also the connection from Hull-CSS to ISSS via Dennis Finlayson at a local gig. Small world.)
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Post Note: And an admission, I did this weekend also choose to re-read to completion “Leonard and Hungry Paul” (2019) by Ronan Hession, by independent publishers Bluemoose Books. Very good, gently funny study on life, love, family and friendship. No funerals and one wedding, maybe. (PS – never did find out explicitly why Hungry Paul has that name. Presumably his older sister’s nick-name for him from his time as a needy infant, but never even mentioned, unless I missed it?)
