Brain of the Firm – Stafford Beer

“IF YOU WANT TO CREATE A CHANGE, you must challenge not only the models of Unreality, but the paradigms that underwrite them.”  – Stafford Beer

General Systems Theory — Ludwig von Bertalannfy

“General system theory, therefore, is a general science of wholeness” — Ludwig von Bertalannfy

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• Complicated is horrible. Complexity is beautiful. (flowingmotion.wordpress.com)

Tags: change, complexity, cybernetics, models, science, systems, Systems theory

I have not read any of Stafford Beer’s entries in the Select Bibliography included in The Heart of Enterprise, so cannot make any recommendations on the entries included here at the time this item is added to the series… it will be updated as I move forward with construction of my own “learning machine”

• Varela, Francise J., A Calculus for Self-Reference, Int. J. General Systems 1975, Vol 2. pp5-24, Gordon and Breach
• Spencer-Brown, G., Laws of Form, Allen & Unwin, 1969

Design Methods – J. Christopher Jones

“Design Methods is important reading for designers and teachers in numerous fields. It will be welcomed by engineers, architects, planners, and landscape architects, as well as by interior, graphic, product, and industrial designers. This extraordinary book will provide key insights to software designers and numerous others outside traditional design professions who are nevertheless creatively involved in design processes. It is also relevant to the teaching of cultural studies, technology, and any kind of creative project.” –  from the back cover.

The Prince — Machiavelli

“The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow.” — Niccolo Machiavelli

The often used pejorative term Machiavellian is something of a  misnomer, as it describes one who deceives and manipulates others for gain, while the thrust of  Machiavelli’s discourse is not whether the gain is personal or is not  but rather that any actions taken are only important insofar as they affect the results.



Tags: cybernetics, The Prince

I have not read any of Stafford Beer’s entries in the Select Bibliography included in The Heart of Enterprise, so cannot make any recommendations on the entries included here at the time this item is added to the series… it will be updated as I move forward with construction of my own “learning machine”

Ackoff, R.L. and Emery, F.E., On Purposeful Systems, Aldin-Atherton, NY, 1966

Miller, J.G. Living Systems, McGraw-Hill, 1978

Whyte, Lancelot Law, Internal Factors in Evolution, Tavistock Publications, 1965

Introduction to Cybernetics – Ross Ashby

“Principia Cybernetica has selected Ashby’s “Introduction to Cybernetics” as a classic book that deserved to be published again electronically. The original version has been out of print for many years. A few copies may still be found in libraries or ordered through the Amazon bookshop. However, we believe that the book is so important that it should reach as an wide audience as possible. The best medium to achieve that seemed to be the world-wide web. This publication has been made possible largely through Mick Ashby, the author’s grandson, who has convinced the copyright holders (the Ashby estate) that they should allow us to produce an electronic version.”

Tags: autopoiesis, cybernetics, Systems theory

“The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think”
— Gregory Bateson

Steps to an Ecology of Mind — Gregory Bateson

on Goodreads

Tags: cybernetics, Ecology, Gregory Bateson, mind, thinking

In “The Heart of Enterprise,” one of the classics in the field of management cybernetics, Stafford Beer includes a select bibiography for the Viable System while explaining that a supportive reading list, in a form for which a consensus of cyberneticans could be found, just wasn’t possible.  With this said he went on to construct what looks like a map, but is truly meant as model of a reading list (although as he freely admits, the map remains more artistic in nature than conforming to a scientific statement).

Tags: cybernetics, systems thinking, VSM

“Our milieu is fantastically expanded in every direction and there is crisis on every side. Our horizons for comprehension, for planning, for control, are receding faster than we can conceive. No wonder that I see red: it must be a Doppler effect.” – Stafford Beer

Yes, I know the old saw that when you point your finger there are three pointing back at yourself.

Yes, I’ve tried to think in a more forgiving way.

Tags: change, Dogma, feeling, Fundamentalism, Ideology, models, Reality, teaching