Sense and nonsense in systems thinking https://bit.ly/2yXGImr	Pragmatic Empirical Epistemology
“Exceptionally useful” “Makes EA more powerful, coherent and usable.” “The most important work on EA and applied System Theory today.” “Way beyond any other EA/system engineering/human factors/systems theory resource.” More comments	Descriptions <create and use> <represent> Describers <observe & envisage> Phenomena
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Books and Articles	On systems thinking I have withdrawn my books on Amazon My more recent Linkedin articles are better.		On how we know what we know On the philosophy of science that underpins the description of systems.
	Copy this link to find my articles in Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamberrisford/recent-activity/articles/ Then look for the articles below Introduction · Seven kinds of system · The vocabulary of systems thinking Description and reality · Knowledge structures · Description and reality · On knowledge as a biological phenomenon Cybernetics (Weiner, Ashby) · How EA departs from Ashby's ideas · How Beer interpreted Ashby's ideas System Dynamics (Forrester, Meadows) · How Forrester extended Ashby's ideas · How Meadows re-interpreted Forrester's ideas Enterprise, business and data architecture · Conceptualizing the enterprise as a system · On enterprise business architecture · On enterprise data architecture Social systems (Rapoport, Ackoff, Senge) · How Ackoff departed from Ashby's ideas · On rules, violations and free will · On "complex adaptive systems"		Copy this link to find my articles in Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamberrisford/recent-activity/articles/ Then look for the articles below Description and reality · Knowledge structures · Description and reality · On knowledge as a biological phenomenon The philosophy of systems thinking · A triadic model of systems thinking · Where is the architecture of a system? · The philosophy of systems thinking · More on the philosophy of systems thinking More things to know · Causal analysis · Probability analysis
	Research and notes made while stumbling to the above.		Research and notes made while stumbling to the above.
	Old notes on systems thinkers · Forrester’s system dynamics · More on dynamics · Applying cybernetics to business · Ashby’s law of requisite variety · Clemson’s ideas · Beer’s ideas · Meadows’ generalizations		Old notes · for philosophy – the problem of universals · for mathematicians – where did numbers come from? · More things to know about systems · What is not a system? · Disambiguating terms · Complexity science
General	Systems	Systems thinkers	General	Information and description	Research for evolution
	Thinkers before systems thinking Systems in general Social systems thinking - intro Critical system thinking etc Systems thinking vocabulary Systems science or poetry? The physics of systems System coupling varieties	Ackoff’s ideas Bertalanffy’s ideas Boulding’s ideas Checkland’s ideas Von Foerster’s ideas Maturana’s ideas Luhmann’s ideas Snowden’s ideas		On description On types and fuzziness On information On information & communication Information feedback loops Other information theories	Mental models and how brains work The evolution of description The evolution of description The evolution of types and logic The magic number seven
System change	System change	Cybernetic ideas	Description	Research for description theory
	System change varieties System stability and change	Ashby’s cybernetics Cybernetics intro Second order cybernetics Self-organising systems Third generation cybernetics		Description and reality The 9 propositions idealism Insights from the idealism triangle System theory as idealism Philosophical position statement	Insights from description theory The psychology of description The philosophy of description Principles for a vocabulary Data and reality – after Bill Kent
More ideas	On complexity science	More sociological thinking	Types	Research for type theory
	Complexity science Complexity measurement Complex adaptive systems Complexity explained? – part 1 Complexity explained? – part 2	Bausch’s overview More sociological perspectives Ackoff’s system classes Marx and Engels’ ideas System types People types		A type theory The evolution of types Types in different disciplines How things instantiate types Types and instances	Types and meta types Taxonomies and ontologies Types and instances – analysis Set and type theory Systems as complex types
General system ideas			Philosophy	Research for philosophy
	Introducing system ideas Holism and emergent properties Encapsulation The primacy of behavior Determinism and hysteresis	Goal-directedness Hierarchical (v network) organisation Chaos and non-linear behaviour Predictability and probability Agility		The problem of universals System philosophy Types and tokens Knowledge and truth A critique of realism	Existence in space and time Relativity v quantum mechanics Ontology and phenomenology Logical positivism (Wittgenstein) About life Relevance of the above to EA
		Enterprise architecture
	The elements of systems Primacy of views Terms and concepts in system Anatomy of the reference model Formalising system description	TOGAF as applied system theory Premises of EA and TOGAF EA and philosophy Quality assurance systems (a rant)		Entities and identities Homeostasis and control Hierarchies and lattices.	Idealisation in system theory “the real machine” the eternal golden braid Abstraction varieties and typology
	The schism	More musings
	The schism in systems thinking EA, GST and social system Social entities v. social systems Actors, roles and assignments	The practical terminology challenge Enterprise state data Modelling madness. Functionality and Logicality Granularity and Modularity Composition and Generalisation Systems as abstractions UML types and instances Modelling the passage of time			ISO 42010 in a nutshell What ISO 42010 means ISO change proposal
				Terminology	References
				System thinkers dictionary - draft System thinking ontology – draft	References More references Types and sets references Laszlo and Krippner references

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