This course is unlike any other graduate course you have taken. You will play games, solve puzzles, and tell stories. Each activity will create a system around you, with its own dynamics. Sometimes you will try to beat the system and discover you cannot. Other times you will discover you can change a system by changing your perspective of it. In the process, you will discover how complex patterns of behaviour can arise from simple structures and simple rules. You will draw on such insights to develop a deeper understanding of how the world works. You will start to see the systems around you in a whole new light, and you will develop a new mental toolkit for analyzing complex global issues, modeling their structure and behaviour, and understanding how and why change happens.
Along the way, you will read about the theory and practice of systems thinking, trace the history of the key ideas, and discover how they have been applied. You will explore how systems thinking provides new ways of studying the relationships between the most important global challenges of the twenty-first century, including globalization, climate change, conflict, democracy, energy, health & wellbeing, and food security.
Some similar courses at other Universities exist, and may have useful material relevant to this course:
CSC2720 Course Outline
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Seminar Topic & Notes |
Notes and Background Readings |
(1)
Tues
Jan 7, 2014 |
Introduction & Basics
- Course objectives
- Parts vs. Wholes
- Open and Closed Systems
- Holism and reductionism
- Seeing systems
- Frames of reference
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Notes:
- Three good introductory books:
- Meadows (which we'll be using as an initial text);
- Weinberg (which provides a good entry into systems thinking for people in the natural sciences);
- Walker and Salt (who provide a set of case studies showing how hard it is to understand and manage complex ecosystems)
- Activities include: Avalanche and Frames
For next seminar:
- Read Chapters 1 & 2 of Meadows "Thinking in Systems"
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(2)
Tues
Jan 14, 2014 |
Feedback Loops
- How feedback loops work
- Balancing and Reinforcing Loops
- Systems Dynamics Models
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Notes:
- Can you ascribe goals to systems? (i.e. can you ever really say a system "has" a goal?). Here's Ackoff's definitions:
- A State-maintaining System has a structure that tends to return it to the same state in response to any internal or external events (e.g. a thermostat, a compass)
- A Goal-seeking System can select among different strategies to pursue a single goal, and may even learn to improve its performance (e.g. an autopilot)
- A Purposive System can pursue different goals at different times, but has no choice over them (e.g. a computer)
- A Purposeful System can select which goals to pursue, and how to pursue them (e.g. a human)
- Causal loop diagrams. For more tips on constructing these diagrams, see Guidelines for Drawing Causal Loop Diagrams.
- Activities include: Living Loops and Postcard Stories
For next seminar:
- Read Turner, G. M. (2008).A comparison of The Limits to Growth with 30 years of reality. Global Environmental Change, 18(3), 397–411.
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(3)
Tues
Jan 21, 2014 |
Growth and Limits
- Exponential Curves
- Limits to Growth
- Population Dynamics
- Metabolism of the Anthropocene
- Limits to Growth
- Planetary Boundaries
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Notes:
- Here's the slides I used this week.
- We talked a little about the relative merits of stock and flow diagrams versus causal loop diagrams. For a detailed analysis of the weaknesses of cauls loop diagrams, see Richardson 1986.
- I showed lots of graphs of exponential growth, taken from Steffen et al's paper on the Anthropocene.
- It's hard to talk about limits to growth without joining the Impossible Hamster Club
- We talked about the original Limits to Growth study, published in 1972. There have been several updates:
- And a couple of recent papers comparing the original study with what happened, by Graham Turner: A comparison of The Limits to Growth with 30 years of reality and On the Cusp of Global Collapse?.
- You can play with the World3 model used in Limits to Growth online here.
- A different take on limits, the Planetary Boundaries work by Johan Rockstrom et al.
- Is economic growth is necessary? A good introduction to this issue is Tim Jackson's book Prosperity Without Growth
- Activity: Paper Fold
For next seminar:
- Read: Sterman, J. D. (2012). Sustaining Sustainability: Creating a Systems Science in a Fragmented Academy and Polarized World. In M. P. Weinstein & R. E. Turner (Eds.), Sustainability Science: The Emerging Paradigm and the Urban Environment (pp. 21–58). New York, NY: Springer New York.
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(4)
Tues
Jan 28, 2014 |
Accumulation
- Problems with causal loop diagrams
- Stock and flow models
- Understanding accumulation
- Climate change as an accumulation problem
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Notes:
- Understanding flow and accumulation problems. The cognitive barriers have been studied in detail by John Sterman and colleagues. See for example, the papers Cronin et al "Why don't well-educated adults understand accumulation?" and Sterman & Sweeney "Understanding public complacency about climate change: adults' mental models of climate change violate conservation of matter"
- Relationship between carbon emissions, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, and temperature change, described in the above papers. For a climate modeling study of this relationship, see Allen et al, "Warming caused by cumulative carbon emissions towards the trillionth tonne", and for a good summary of the implications of this, see "The Copenhagen Prognosis"
- The work of Damon Matthews on the difference between zero emissions and constant atmospheric composition.
- Activities: Harvest (an example of Tragedy of the Commons) and
The Accumulation Exercise from Sterman (2010), Does formal system dynamics training improve people's understanding of accumulation?
For next seminar:
- Read the paper by Warren on Why has feedback systems thinking struggled to influence strategy and policy formulation?
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(5)
Tues
Feb 4, 2014 |
Information Lags
- The Whiplash Effect
- Dynamics of Complex Systems
- Information Lags and Inertia
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Notes:
- The effects of delay in a dynamical system. If you want to dive into how engineers deal with this problem in Control Theory, take a look a Brown & Coombs, "Notes on Control with Delay"
- This is also a good time to take a look at the Systems Archetypes, which are described more fully in Meadow's book.
- Activity: Beer Game
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(6)
Tues
Feb 11, 2014 |
Systems Archetypes
- Dynamic Equilibria
- Delay and controllability
- A trip to the systems zoo
- Case Study: The climate system
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Notes:
- We began with a review of our beer game results: Left supply chain and Right supply chain.
- We also explored a number of System Archetypes
For next seminar:
- Read the paper by Manson Simplifying Complexity: A review of complexity theory
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| Tues Feb 18, 2014 |
No Seminar - Reading Week |
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(7)
Tues
Feb 25, 2014 |
Chaos and Complexity
- Chaos Theory
- Difference between Chaos and Randomness
- Complex Systems Theory
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Notes:
- We began with a case study on the climate system as a set of feedback loops.
- A very brief introduction to chaos theory
- Brief introduction to complex adaptive systems theory
- The classic long read on chaos theory is James Gleick's book Chaos
- Activity: Some of the Shodor models:
- To see practical examples of how chaos theory impacts weather and climate prediction, see this talk by Julia Slingo
For next seminar:
- Read the paper by Holling Understanding the Complexity of Economic, Ecological, and Social Systems
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(8)
Tues
March 4, 2014 |
Stability and Regime Shifts
- System Structure and Change
- Resilience
- Panarchy
- Changing Global Systems
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Notes:
- For more on resilience, I highly recommend Walker & Salt's book, "Resilience Thinking".
- The original book on panarchy is Gunderson & Hollings "Panarchy: Understanding transformations in Human and Natural Systems
- For a fascinating read on the early development of Complexity Science at the Santa Fe Institute, read Waldrup's book "Complexity
- See also Stirling's paper "Keep it Complex", where he points out that there's a tendency to over-simplify policy prescriptions when we look for science-based policymaking, and that a more pluralistic approach that is needed, one that takes the complexity seriously
- Firms must continually seek renewal to maintain their competitive advantage. Two papers that introduce the general ideas from strategic management are Leonard-Barton, 1992 "Core capabilities and core rigidities: A paradox in managing new product development"
- Activity: Space For Living
For next seminar:
- Read the chapter on Leverage Points from Meadows' book (also available here), and you might also enjoy a piece I wrote applying it to both the Occupy Movement and Climate Change.
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(9)
Tues
Mar 11, 2014 |
Leverage Points
- Identifying High and Low Leverage
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Notes:
- Some diagrams of the climate system as a set of feedback loops
- Activity: Triangles
For next seminar:
- Read Checkland's Soft Systems Methodology: A Thirty Year Retrospective
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(10)
Tues
Mar 18, 2014 |
Interpretivist Systems Thinking
- Principle of Complementarity
- Soft Systems Analysis
- Mental Models
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Notes:
- Checkland's Soft Systems Methodology
- The Principle of Complementarity
- Applying these ideas to climate change, note that climate change should not be thought of as a "problem" to be "solved", but as a dilemma, or wicked problem. There are many different ways of construing the nature of the problem, and each attempt to define the problem is open to challenge by people with different perspectives. The idea of a Wicked Problem was identifed in a classic paper by Rittel and Webber, Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning
- The danger of solutionism.
- Activity: Arms Crossed and Seeing Stars
For next seminar:
- Read Midgely et al, The Theory and Practice of Boundary Critique
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(11)
Tues
Mar 25, 2014 |
Critical Systems Thinking
- Collaborative Systems Thinking
- Boundary Critique
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Notes:
- Ulrich's Critical Systems Heuristics, particularly the 12 questions he uses to conduct boundary critique.
- We did a boundary critique on this map of climate solutions, asking what's missing, and whose interests are served by excluding those things.
- A blog post I wrote on applying boundary critique to disputes over Genetically Modified Food
For next seminar:
- Take a look at the interactive history of complexity science (note - nearly all the entries on the map are clickable). You might also want to look at the ASC timeline for cybernetics, and Robert Horn's mural (although I can only find a sketch of it online)
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(12)
Tues
April 1, 2014 |
Course Wrap up
- Mindfulness
- Course Summary
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Notes:
- Activity: TBD
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