Systems Community of Inquiry

Great video, Saara-Maria. I had not gotten to it, so I appreciate your bringing it to my attention. As for your frustration, you will find ideas and authors that fit what you need at different times. Russ Ackoff had a particularly direct way of getting to the root of issues. The article by Leleur was written to an academic audience for the…[Read more]

Interesting thoughts, Caroline. Let’s see if we can put your two paragraphs together. Theorists like Miller and Holling have thought long and hard about the general principles of how things work – ecosystems, all living beings, etc. If their thinking is correct (even to some degree) then those principles will also affect the things that we…[Read more]

First, yes, you are absolutely right, this article “incubates different terms, quotes to different articles and ideas that some one else has pointed out.” Basically, you are stepping into the middle of an academic argument, trying to weave different strains of ideas together in new ways. You might note first that the article references a book…[Read more]

You are obviously a big thinker, Roman. (Welcome to the world of systems!) Please don’t try to cover all of this in your final paper for this class – or I won’t live long enough to grade it. But it is very worthwhile to see what sense you can make of some of the linkages between support and collapse. Looking at the model of complex adaptive…[Read more]

You are right, Haeyeon, there is no one, absolute or panacea model. But you have done a very nice job of summarizing three important and useful ones.

Very nicely done, Jin. You have applied the systems principles well to a very real and important topic. (And of course the real work is in designing a truly sustainable alternative, which would actually be adopted in the markets of the world.)

I think that Allenna would be very pleased with your thoughts, Daniel. (If you want to be in contact with her directly, to discuss more, let me know.)

Thank you for joining the discussion, Janne, and for sharing what looks to be some very serious work on systems ideas.

Thanks for re-posting this, Nicholas. It’s helpful to have everything in one general location.

Thank you, Haeyeon. It looks like you really got the essence of some of these very important ideas about systems.

Even though you don’t reference any of the articles, Suvi, your post is actually a very nice application of many systems ideas and principles – especially related to real questions about urban planning. There certainly are ways to try to manage or regulate people, but they ways in which people communicate, congregate, “swarm,” and so on, are…[Read more]

I am glad that you found the course to be of value, Claudia. And your points are well-taken. There are issues of survival for some people which can get lost in the interests of others. Power is always an issue in human affairs, and has come in many forms in history. Understanding power in light of what creates, sustains, or undermines systems,…[Read more]

Thank you for your thoughts, Nicholas. It seems that you made good use of the information, and the conversations, from the course. Just one point of caution. Breaking things into parts in order to understand them can mean that you miss the properties of the whole (back to the very simple example of trying to understand water by studying…[Read more]

These are intriguing thoughts, Wensi. Yes, there is a lot of value for systems thinking which comes from Confucianism and Buddhism – and other traditions as well. It is not just a matter of “how it is” (the thing that we choose to study), but also “how we are” in relation to those others, and to the whole. You might be interested in seeing…[Read more]

Steeper hierarchies are more complex, and more expensive to maintain, but they do also allow for greater specialization of the individuals involved in them. Flatter hierarchies seem more simple, and therefore more appealing in some ways, but even here context is important. When you have lots of highly concentrated sources of energy readily…[Read more]

Regarding your second post, about food, there is the well-worn saying that if you have only a hammer, everything tends to look like a nail. For engineers and scientists focused on energy, plants can be just another source (for instance corn as a source for ethanol.) You have to ask bigger questions, and draw bigger boundaries, to put food into…[Read more]