• Course objectives
• Parts vs. Wholes
• Open and Closed Systems
• Holism and reductionism
• Seeing systems
• Frames of reference

Notes:

1. 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)
2. Here are the slides I used this week.
3. The systems games we played this week are called "Avalanche" and "Frames".

For next seminar:

1. Read: Chapters 1 & 2 of Meadows "Thinking in Systems". (Note: Readings for this course are only available from the U of T campus network. If you need access from off campus, please email me!)

• How feedback loops work
• Balancing and Reinforcing Loops
• Systems Dynamics Models

Notes:

1. Here are the slides I used this week.
2. We spent some time constructing causal loop diagrams. For more tips on constructing these diagrams, see Guidelines for Drawing Causal Loop Diagrams Note this paper uses "s" (same) and "o" (opposite) to denote what we've been labelling + and - links. Our notation is more common in the literature.
3. We ended the class with a case study on the climate system as a set of feedback loops.
4. Activities included: Living Loops and Postcard Stories

For next seminar:

1. Read: Randers, J. (2008). Global collapse—Fact or fiction? Futures, 40(10), 853–864. (access via UofT library)

• Stock and flow models
• Exponential Curves
• Limits to Growth
• Population Dynamics
• Understanding accumulation
• Climate change as an accumulation problem

Notes:

1. Here are the slides I used this week.
2. We talked about the original Limits to Growth study, published in 1972. There have been several updates:
   • 1992: Beyond the Limits
   • 2002: Limits to Growth: The 30 year update
   • 2012: 2052: a Global Forecast for the next 40 years
3. 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?.
4. You can play with the World3 model used in Limits to Growth online here.
5. I didn't have time to show this, but for an amusing take on exponential growth, you might want to join the Impossible Hamster Club
6. I used Moore's Law as an example of exponential growth. For more details on whether (and how long) Moore's Law might continue, here's a wonderfully thoughtful essay by Rodney Brooks.
7. I showed lots of graphs of exponential growth, taken from Steffen et al's paper on the Anthropocene.
8. We talked a little about the relative merits of stock and flow diagrams, but didn't get into this enough. For a more detailed analysis of the weaknesses of causal loop diagrams, see Richardson 1986.
9. We talked a little bit about economic growth and GDP, and why GDP is a flow measure, rather than a stock. Here's quick overview of what GDP means, and here's a short discussion of why GDP (a flow) cannot really assess wealth (a stock).
10. Is economic growth is necessary? A good introduction to this issue is Tim Jackson's book Prosperity Without Growth
11. 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"
12. Activity: Paper Fold and the Accumulation exercises from Cronin et al. (2009).

For next seminar:

1. Read: Steffen, W., Richardson, K., Rockstrom, J., Cornell, S. E., Fetzer, I., Bennett, E. M., … Sorlin, S. (2015). Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science, 347(6223). (access via UofT library)

• Effect of delated information
• Pilot Induced Oscillations
• Supply Chain Management!

Notes:

1. We played the beer game!
2. Here's a short article discussing the beer game and some of the lessons it demonstrates.
3. For a longer analysis of what the Beer Game reveals about mental models and decision-making in complex dynamical systems, read Sterman, J. D. (1989). Modeling Managerial Behavior: Misperceptions of Feedback in a Dynamic Decision Making Experiment. Management Science, 35(3), 321–339. doi:10.1287/mnsc.35.3.321
4. For a more theoretical account of the effects of delay in a dynamical system, dive into how engineers deal with this problem in Control Theory, with this classic paper from Brown & Coombs: "Notes on Control with Delay"
5. I mentioned this paper, briefly, which explores the limited uptake of systems thinking ideas: Why has feedback systems thinking struggled to influence strategy and policy formulation? Suggestive evidence, explanations and solutions
6. Finally, we talked a little about getting going on your presentations. Take a look at the contents of the book by Ramage and Shipp (username: systems password: thinker)

For next seminar:

1. Read: Robock, A. (2008). 20 Reasons Why Geoengineering May Be a Bad Idea. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 64(2), 14–18. http://doi.org/10.2968/064002006

• The Whiplash Effect
• Setting a Goal for Climate Policy
• Geo-engineering
• Tragedy of the Commons

Notes:

1. Here are the slides I used this week. Note that I've added missing factory data for line A (thanks Su!), so you can see all the data from the beer game now.
2. We discussed the results of the beer game. If you want the data from the game: spreadsheet for A supply line, and spreadsheet for the B supply line
3. We talked about other systems where delay causes a problem, and looked at the "fixes that fail" pattern. The example for how road building nearly always fails to solve traffic congestion is discussed in this blog post on the Cobra Effect.
4. And we talked about delays in responding to the challenge of climate change. Here's an explanation of the diagram I showed that explores the delays.
5. We talked a little about the idea of geo-engineering the artificially cool the planet. The modeling study I mentioned is Berdahl et al. 2014, and the paper on reasons why its a really bad idea is Robock, 2008. For more on geoengineering see here and here.
6. Activities included: Warped Juggle and Harvest.

For next seminar:

1. I've created a google sheet for you to declare which "thinker" you want to do a presentation on. Please add your choice before next week's class. Names already listed are taken! BTW you should work in pairs or groups of three for this.
2. Read: Kim, D. H. (1992). System Archetypes I: Diagnosing Systemic Issues and Designing High-Leverage Interventions. Toolbox Reprint Series. Pegasus Communications Inc.
3. And read: Kim, D. H. (2000). Systems Archetypes III: Understanding Patterns of Behaviour and Delay. Pegasus Communications Inc.

• Mid-course review
• Practice analysing systems
• A trip to the systems zoo

Notes:

1. I didn't have many slides today, but for what its worth, here they are
2. We discussed the system thinker presentations. Sign up here if you haven't already.
3. I've also created a google doc for your term paper abstracts. Please add a draft title and abstract (1 paragraph) to this doc before our next seminar in two weeks.
4. I mentioned my blog post on how to write an abstract in six easy steps. It might be handy.
5. We spent some time practicing drawing Causal Loop Diagrams. So it's a good time to revisit tips on constructing these diagrams in Guidelines for Drawing Causal Loop Diagrams
6. Today's game was Group Juggle. Here's one version of a causal loop diagram (drawn by Linda Booth Sweeney) to explain the behaviour seen during the game.

For next seminar:

1. Read: Manson's paper Simplifying Complexity: A review of complexity theory, and for a second perspective on Manson's use of terminology, read Reitsma's response

• Chaos Theory
• Difference between Chaos and Randomness
• Complex Adaptive Systems

Notes:

1. Here are the slides I used this week.
2. Here are Abhishek and Tahmid's slides on Donella Meadows.
3. ...and here are Kevin and Garret's slides on Horst Rittel.
4. We spent some time playing with the Shodor models Fire and the slightly more sophisticated A Better Fire. If you want to explore more of these models, take a look at:
   • Rabbits and Wolves (we didn't get time to look at this, but it's worth a play!)
   • FlakeMaker for creating simple fractals
   • Koch's Snowflake (create a snowflake from a triangle)
   • And if you had fun with those, be sure to check out Conway's Life (there's a detailed explanation on wikipedia)
5. We talked about how sensitivity to initial conditions affects weather forecasting. For a great overview of this, and where the current state-of-the-art is in weather forecasting, read Bauer et al, The Quiet Revolution of Numerical Weather Prediction.
6. We talked about Rossby Waves and the Gulf stream as an example of a chaotic system with a recognisable attractor. You can see the current state of the gulf stream on this visualization, and compare it with a comparable simulation in a rotating tank of water.
7. We talked about the logistic equation (I described it as a fish population model). You can play with the spreadsheet I used to demonstrate the attractors.
8. A very brief introduction to chaos theory
9. Brief introduction to complex adaptive systems theory
10. The classic long read on chaos theory is James Gleick's book Chaos
11. For a fascinating read on the early development of Complexity Science at the Santa Fe Institute, read Waldrup's book "Complexity"

For next seminar:

1. Read the chapter on Leverage Points from Meadows' book (also available here)

• System Structure and Change
• Self-Organised Criticality
• Identifying Leverage Points

Notes:

1. I only used a few slides this week, but here they are.
2. Here are Vincent and Rose's slides on Kenneth Boulding/
3. We explored a number of videos/demos of the kinds of stability and cascades of change that you get in self-organised criticality:
   • A sandpile experiment.
   • The Abelian sandpile model.
   • Conway's game of life.
4. The Wikipedia entry on self-organised criticality is also a pretty good introduction.
5. The examples of leverage points for the climate system were taken from several different case studies:
   • Leverage points for climate change and the financial crisis;
   • Leverage points for exploring the gender imbalance in undergrad computer science programs;
   • Leverage points for the transport system used as a running example in a paper on sustainable software design.
6. The game we played this week is called "Triangles".

For next seminar:

1. Read: Holling Understanding the Complexity of Economic, Ecological, and Social Systems

• Fractals
• Power Laws
• The Adaptive Cycle
• Panarchy Theory

Notes:

1. Here are the slides I used this week.
2. Here are Levon and Soukayna's slides on James Lovelock.
3. We played with the fractal maker at Shodor, and saw some cool gifs to illustrate self-similarity: the Mandelbrot set; fern leafs; coastlines; the Koch snowflake.
4. We explored how stock market data also exhibit some self similarity (aka self-affinity). The diagrams were from an article by Mandelbrot in Scientific American. Note that Mandelbrot is not claiming that stock market data forms a fractal pattern, just that it shares some of the statistical properties of fractals, notably that volatility in the stock market follows a power law, so that you see the same kinds of oscillation at all timescales.
5. The idea is picked up by economist Frank Ackerman, who explores its relevance to extreme risk and climate change in his new book, Worst Case Economics: Extreme Events in Climate and Finance.
6. We looked at a number of examples of multi-level systems, where the levels of the system undergo change at differing rates:
   • Shearing Layers of buildings, from Steward Brand's How Buildings Learn. The concept originates with the architect Frank Duffy (I mixed him up with Christopher Alexander, another fascinating architect).
   • The Pace Layer Diagram showing the layers of social change, described by Stewart Brand in his book "The Clock of the Long Now".
   • Spatial and temporal scales in oceanography.
   • Spatial and temporal scales in flooding events.
7. We spent some time discussing the Adaptive Cycle. The original book on panarchy is Gunderson & Hollings "Panarchy: Understanding transformations in Human and Natural Systems
8. For more on resilience, I highly recommend Walker & Salt's book, "Resilience Thinking", which also, I think, offers a clearer introduction to the panarchy model too.
9. See also, Fath et al, 2015, Navigating the adaptive cycle: an approach to managing the resilience of social systems
10. 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
11. The game we played this week is called Space for Living.

For next seminar:

1. Read: Checkland's Soft Systems Methodology: A Thirty Year Retrospective

• Principle of Complementarity
• Soft Systems Analysis
• Mental Models

Notes:

1. Here are the slides I used this week.
2. Here are the slides from Aamod, Ishita and Revathy's talk on Ludwig von Bertalanffy.
3. ...and Greg and Deeksha's talk on Norbert Weiner.
4. ...and Curtis and Sukanya's talk on Werner Ulrich.
5. I mentioned Michael Jackson's book, Systems Thinking: Creative Holism for Managers. Don't let the "for managers" in the title put you off. It's a surprisingly good overview of the main strands of systems thinking over the past half century or so. The book is expensive to buy from major online retailers, but Abe Books has plenty of used copies.
6. The idea of a Wicked Problem was identifed in a classic paper by Rittel and Webber, Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning
7. The games we played this week are called "Colour, Furniture, Flower" and "Focus!".

For next seminar:

1. Read: Midgely et al, The Theory and Practice of Boundary Critique

• Critical Systems Heuristics
• Boundary Critique

Notes:

1. Here are the slides I used this week.
2. Here are the slides from Gavin and Noah's talk on Ilya Prigogine.
3. ...and from Chetna and Amna's talk on Mary Catherine Bateson.
4. We talked a little about how universities are structured in such a way as to encourage silos of research in each discipline. I wrote a blog post about this a while back.
5. We used a mindmap of "Solving Global Warming" (from this site) as a warm-up exercise for boundary critique. The mindmap on its own is a good summary of the messages we typically hear about what we ought to do to address climate change. But an examination of what has been left out and why is interesting: this kind of message completely lets governments and corporations off the hook, and suggests it's up to us as individuals to change what we do. Which means inevitably, action on climate change is seen as a voluntary lifestyle choice, rather than a deeper systemic dilemma.
6. I mentioned a counter-point to this individualism - the idea that the most important thing we should do about climate change is to get organised politically. Here's Bill McKibben on the topic.
7. By way of introduction to Critical Systems Thinking, I talked about Stephen Toulmin's work on the structure of arguments. Here's a blog post from Ulrich tracing the philosophical roots of his thinking to Toulmin and Habermas.
8. The most readable introduction to critical systems heuristics is Ulrich's A Brief Introduction to Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH).
9. My example of boundary critique and protests about genetically modified food is from this blog post.
10. We ended on Ulrich's observation that researchers ought to trangress a boundary at least once a week. Here's a blog post in which he expands on this idea.
11. The games we played this week were Arms Crossed and 5 Easy Pieces.

For next seminar:

1. Read: Flood: Total Systems Intervention (TSI): A Reconstitution.

• Course Summary
• Intellectual history of Systems Thinking
• The Global Problematique

Notes:

1. TBD