Systems thinking Presentation

Systems Thinking

a critical skill for the 21st century

Interactive Learning WorkshopKaren Vickers January 19th, 2024

Systems MapFor Systems Thinking

Relationships

Paradigm Shift

Nodes

Emergence

Purpose

Feedback Loops

Complexity

STORY TELLING

rise of systems thinking

systems mapping

CYNEFIN FRAMEWORK

MOLECULAR

case studies

ROAN ANTELOPE AND REDUCTIONIST THINKING

world wOod web

Vitalism

MECHANISTIC

organismic biology

ROMANTIC MOVEMENT

Boundaries

GAIA THEORY

ANALYTICAL

Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

Chief Seattle

What is a

System?

WHAT IS A System?

Simply put, a system is an organized collection of parts (or subsystems) that are highly integrated to accomplish an overall goal. The system has various inputs, which go through certain processes, or have certain relationships that then produce certain outputs, which together, accomplish the overall desired goal for the system.

Systems Thinking is a Paradigm!

WHAT IS A paradigm?

In science and philosophy, a paradigm is a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitute legitimate contributions to a field. The word paradigm is Greek in origin, meaning "pattern", and is used to illustrate similar occurrences. (Wikepedia)

More on Kuhn and his theory of paradigm shifts...

WHAT IS SystemS THINKING?

Analysis Breaking down the whole into parts. Studying or examining the parts. "There is only parts, which when summed, make the whole"

Synthesis Assembling parts to understand the whole, including examining relationships between the parts. "The parts can only be understood in relationship to each each other"

Reductionism

HOLISM

Why Are We So Analytical?

One way of thinking is not better than the other, both are very helpful when applied in appropriate situations.... but historically, our scientific approach has focused on analysis and reductionism and this has left us in a bit of a pickle

“Graphic Kit.” Si Network, www.systemsinnovation.network/spaces/12188592/page. Accessed 11 Jan. 2024."

AN evolution of SHIFTING paradigms

A pendulum of movements...

VitalisM and Organicism

Mechanistic thinking

Romantic Movement

MOLECULAR Mechanism

PRESENT

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Emergence & complexity

Emergence

Emergence occurs when a complex entity has properties or behaviors that its parts do not have on their own, and emerge only when they interact in a wider whole.

Complexity

Complexity characterises the behaviour of a system or model whose components interact in multiple ways and follow local rules, leading to non-linearity, randomness, collective dynamics, hierarchy, and emergence.

CYNEFIN FRAMEWORK

If all systems were simple, then analytical thinking would take us far as the sum of the parts would create the whole with predictable outcomes. Today we are seeking solutions to complex problems which requires adaptive approaches and humility.

5 Parts of a system

• Stocks/Nodes/Events

• Relationships/Flows

• Feedback Loops

• Boundaries

• Purpose

Places to intervene in a system

the power of

Systems Mapping

To better understand it, map it

CLUSTER Mapping

Choose a topic from the list

• Graduate student life
• Procrastination
• Using Social Media
• What it means to be a GreenMatter Fellow
• A South African Braai
• Taxi drivers
• Loadshedding
• Social Justice

There's no such thing as dragons

What can we learn about systems by watching this short childrens story?

Systems mapping

An introductory crash course

Practice systems simulations

Using an interactive online tool like loopy not only helps you map the systems, but understand emergent properties through simulation.

Why do we need

Systems thinking?

reductionist thinking gone wrong

Of Roan Antelope and Old Growth Forests

While modern science and reductionism have led to incredible discoveries, they have also led to unintended negative consequences that we now have to undo. Here are two such case studies...

Between 1977-1994 Roan Antelope in the Kruger National park decreased from 450 to 45 individuals. Why?

When system is managed as machine

Artifical water provisioning had resulted in increased, year-round prey availability. This resulted in increased predator popoulations and initially they fed on easier prey like Roan. When drought hit in 1992 and predator numbers were unnaturally high, predators could take advantage of stressed prey like zebra, wildebeest and buffalo.

Roan abundance can be related to the quantity and quality of forage available...

Rainfall is variable, but 3 droughts occurred between 1980-1993.

Rainfall affects grass biomass

Disease is naturally a part of any ecological system, but drought led to large anthrax outbreaks.

Management Response: Immunization against Anthrax, but Roan continue to decline

Roan also need access to water, as do all other animals, so with fencing, migration patterns and access to water was restricted

Management Response: Roan Breeding Camps, but once released Roan continue to decline.

By 1994 there were 11 dams and 59 artificial windpump waterholes in the region.

Management Response: Artifical Waterholes, Roan decline

...but then also decreased with the 1992 drought.

As a result, other grazers like zebra, wildebeest and buffalo increased between 1977-1988

With the objective of increasing game numbers and ensuring tourists saw game, the park began putting up fences in the 1950's.

Management Response: Fences, Roan decline

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BENEATH A SINGLE PATCH of forest soil lies a vast interconnected web of life. Forest ecologist Suzanne Simard likens it to a kind of hidden intelligence. By tracking specific chemicals, she and other scientists observed how trees in the Douglas fir forests of Canada “talk,” forming underground symbiotic rela- tionships—called mycorrhizae—with fungi to relay stress signals and share resources with one another.

Exchange of goods A mass of fungal threads, or mycelium, envelops the root tips of a hub tree, feeding it nutrients from the soil in exchange for sugar, which the fungus lacks.

Douglas Fir (Hub tree)

Seasonal partners Deciduous paper birch and evergreen Douglas fir trade resources seasonally.

Douglas Fir (Young tree)

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Deep connections Weaker firs in the shaded understory tap into the network as it swells with resources. Firs can also share with other species, such as birch.

Douglas Fir (seedling)

Symbiotic fungal network

Warning Signs Through the network, trees under stress can transfer resources, such as water, and can send chemical signals that trigger defensive mechanisms in other trees. Threats like insect infestation and drought are expected to increase as the climate changes.

Excess production Taller, older trees, called hub trees, often have more access to sunlight and produce more sugar through photosynthesis than they need.

Nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, and other nutrients

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world wood web

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Understanding Systems through Story-telling

Of truffles in France and Elephants in the Kruger National Park

You can map a system just from a story and often the flaws in logic become easily apparent.

Try mapping a story!

Everyone's doing it

Systems Thinking is becoming mainstream across disciplines

This is the iceburg model

Business analysts, economists, social scientists, natural scientists, educators and more are using systems thinking to understand how to shape outcomes. We have awakened (to some degree) to the interconnectedness of the patterns we see and create (including the unintended negative ones!)

Gaia Theory

The earth as a self-regulating system

VS

Deep Ecology

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THANKS!

Lets map better future systems together!

If you have an hour to spare watch/listen to this speech on systems thinking by Dr. Russel Ackoff

paradigm SHIFTS

THE MEN behind our Mechanistic thinking

Newton

Aristotle

Descartes

Galileo

Galileo’s program offers us a dead world: Out go sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell, and along with them have since gone esthetic and ethical sensibility, values, quality, soul, consciousness, spirit. Experience as such is cast out of the realm of scientific discourse. Hardly anything has changed our world more during the past four hundred years than Galileo’s audacious program. We had to destroy the world in theory before we could destroy it in practice.”

R.D Laing cited by Fritjof Capra

THe romantic Movement (1770-1900)

"May God us keep from single vision and Newton’s sleep"

- William Blake, Mysitcal poet and painter

The German Romantic poets and philosophers returned to the Aristotelian tradition by concentrating on the nature of organic form. Goethe, the central figure in this movement, was among the first to use the term “morphology” for the study of biological form from a dynamic, developmental point of view. He admired nature’s “moving order” and conceived of form as a pattern of relationships within an organized whole—a conception that is at the forefront of contemporary systems thinking.The Romantic view of nature as “one great harmonious whole,” as Goethe put it, led some scientists of that period to extend their search for wholeness to the entire planet and see the Earth as an integrated whole, a living being. At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries the influence of the Romantic movement was so strong that the primary concern of biologists was the problem of biological form, and questions of material composition were secondary. This was especially true for the great French schools of comparative anatomy, or “morphology,” pioneered by Georges Cuvier, who created a system of zoological classification based on similarities of structural relations

Is Earth one giant living being? Explore Gaia Theory here

MOLECULAR MECHANISM

In the early twentieth century philosophical Mechanism became the foundation of a ‘new biology’ that sought to establish the life sciences on the same solid and rigorous foundation as the physical sciences, including a strong emphasis on experimentation. In the context of the times this campaign was particularly aimed at combating the reintroduction of more holistic, non-mechanical approaches into the life sciences (organicism, vitalism). In so doing, Mechanists failed to see some of the strong points of non-vitalistic holistic thinking. During these decades there was much discussion, and heated debate, about what was referred to explicitly as the mechanistic approach and about why it was or was not the best way to try to understand living organisms. These debates influenced virtually every area of biology from the then newly-born Mendelian genetics to established fields such as physiology, cell biology and even evolutionary biology.

G.E. Allen, 2005

...But then came the Vitalists and organismic biologists

Both Vitalists and Organismic biologists believe that the behaviour of a living organism as a whole cannot be understood by the study of its parts alone. The whole is more than the sum of its parts

Organismic Biology

Vitalism

Organismic Biologists believe the additional ingredient is the understanding of “organizing” or Organizing relations”. Contemporary theories of living systems state that understanding the pattern of self-organization is the key to understanding the essential nature of life.

Vitalists maintain that some nonphysical entity, force or field must be added to the laws of physics and chemistry to understand life. Essentially still the Cartesian machine analogy but with another added non-physcial element.

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Early Vitalism

The German embryologist Hans Driesch initiated the opposition to mechanistic biology at the turn of the twentieth century with his pioneering experiments on sea urchin eggs, which led him to formulate the first theory of vitalism. When Driesch destroyed one of the cells of an embryo at the very early two-celled stage, the remaining cell developed not into half a sea urchin, but into a complete but smaller organism. Similarly, complete smaller organisms developed after the destruction of two or three cells in four-celled embryos. Driesch realized that his sea urchin eggs had done what a machine could never do: they had regenerated wholes from some of their parts.

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Read more about the rise and fall of the mechanistic paradigm

The paradigm that is now receding has dominated our culture for several hundred years, during which it has shaped our modern Western society and has significantly influenced the rest of the world. This paradigm consists of a number of entrenched ideas and values, among them the view of the universe as a mechanical system composed of elementary building blocks, the view of the human body as a machine, the view of life in society as a competitive struggle for existence, the belief in unlimited material progress to be achieved through economic and technological growth...

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Donella Meadows, author of "Thinking in Systems" came up with this list of places to intervene in a system in increasing order of effectiveness, if you want to change the system

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Feedback loops

A feedback loop occurs when two parts of a system both act on or affect each other. There are two types of Feedback loops. The first is reinforcing (positive), which means that change in one direction, causes even more change in one direction so successive changes add to the previous changes and keep the changes going in a positive direction (compounding).

The second type is balancing (or negative) feedback loops where a change in one stock/node cause a change in the other in the opposite direction. Balancing loops are the "stabilizing" forces in systems because they keep the system regulated or in a steady state. Think of a thermostat or your own homeostasis mechanisms.

Watch a video on Causal Loops

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Aristotle

384-322 BCS

Aristotle was an Ancient Greek philosopher. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology and the arts. Aristotle, distinguished between matter and form linking the two through a process of development. In contrast with Plato, Aristotle believed that form had no separate existence but was immanent in matter. His philosophy and science set the groundwork for the development of modern science, dominating Western thought for two thousand years after his death, during which his authority became almost as unquestioned as that of the church.

More on Aristototle

Sir Issac Newton

1642-1726/7

The conceptual framework created by Galileo and Descartes—the world as a perfect machine governed by exact mathematical laws—was completed triumphantly by Isaac Newton, whose grand synthesis, Newtonian mechanics, was the crowning achievement of seventeenth-century science. Newton was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author who was described in his time as a natural philosopher.

Read more about Newton here

Purpose or Goal

A key to understanding any system is knowing its goal or purpose as a separate entity or in relation to a larger system of which it is a part. In human-made systems the purpose is usually explicit where as in natural or living systems it may not be so obvious or even known (science will have us believe that the purpose of a living organism is "to reproduce or maximize fitness", but not so for humans...). However, you cannot start to solve problems wiithin systems or even tryely understand them without understanding the systems purpose. Is the purpose of our human-made economic systems to grow, or to provide well-being for humans? The answer to that questions changes which stocks we need to measure and understand quite drastically!

Historically logging was conducted one tree at a time, using saws and man-power but with advanced machinery and technology, thousands of trees can now be harvested every day, leaving "clear cuts" or large swathes of bare land which gets replanted.

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Node

Nodes or stocks (sometimes also called accumulators) are anything that accumulates and can be measured at any one point in time such as savings, population, water in a bathtub etc. You can often get insightful systems information by looking at "behaviour over time" graphs of your stocks and nodes. All parts/stocks must be present for a system to function optimally.

If you are going to intervene in a system, changing stocks/nodes will have the least impact

Read an introduction to Systems Thinking here

Relationship/Flows

The relationship describes how one node/stock affects the other(s). One part of the system can have a positve, neutral, or negative effect on another. If something "flows" from one stock/node to another than we may be interested in things like understanding the rate of flow over time. Stock and Flow diagrams are common in systems thinking and can be used to model or simulate behaviour in a system.

Interveneing the relationships or flows of something between system parts has a larger impact on the system than just changing the nodes, because it shifts how the system is "organized".

These forests are made up of only a few species. While all make useful timber products, some are worth more than others economically.

Cedar

Douglas Fir

Birch

Western Hemlock

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Dr Suzanne Simard has demonstrated that it is not just competition that drives forest dynamics, but collaboration as well. Her ability to see the forest as an interconnected systems has led to a paradigm shift in forest ecology.

Boundaries

System boundaries define some “reasonable” limits of a system. They can be porous (think of your skin) or hard (think of your computer) and they can also be defined based on the angle you are looking at the system from. For example if I am looking at mapping how my computer functions, the boundary of the system would be a lot more defined than if I was mapping "things that influence the quality of how my computer was manufactured" - those are in fact, two different systems completely.

Defining system boundaries can be difficult, but is necessary for understanding the system itself and all the parts and relationships that will need to be considered within your system.

Image Source: Meuwissen et al. 2018.

Galileo Galilei

1564-1642

More on Galileo...

Galileo was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer. He was one of the first modern thinkers to clearly state that the laws of nature are mathematical. According to Stephen Hawking, Galileo probably bears more of the responsibility for the birth of modern science than anybody else, and Albert Einstein called him the father of modern science. Galileo Galilei banned quality from science, restricting it to the study of phenomena that could be measured and quantified. This has been a very successful strategy throughout modern science, but our obsession with quantification and measurement has also exacted a heavy toll. x

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Rene Descartes

1596-1650

René Descartes created the method of analytic thinking, which consists in breaking up complex phenomena into pieces to understand the behavior of the whole from the properties of its parts. Descartes based his view of nature on the fundamental division between two independent and separate realms—that of mind and that of matter. The material universe, including living organisms, was a machine for Descartes, which could in principle be understood completely by analyzing it in terms of its smallest parts.

Read more about Descartes here

Forestry in BC

With leading market share in the United States, China, Japan, and South Korea, B.C. is one of the world's largest exporters of wood products including wood, pulp, timber, lumber and other forest products. Almost 60% of British Columbia's land base is productive forest land, providing rich, diverse and abundant wood fibre. Vast timber supplies – British Columbia has 55 million hectares of productive forests that provide diverse and abundant wood fiber. These forests contain roughly 11 billion cubic metres of timber. However, in recent years, a pine beetle outbreak and large forest fires have resulted in low timber supply and caused numerous challenges for the industry. A land tenure system – Most of B.C. land is publicly owned. The provincial government issues land tenures, giving companies the right to harvest in exchange for fees and management responsibilities.

Source: Wikipedia

These forests are made up of only a few species. While all make useful timber products, some are worth more than others economically.

Cedar

Douglas Fir

Birch

Western Hemlock

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