This document provides a summary of the history and evolution of science from ancient times to the present. It begins with early natural sciences and philosophers like Aristotle and progresses through major developments and shifts in paradigms. These include the scientific revolution of the 16th-17th centuries with figures like Copernicus, Galileo, Newton establishing modern science. It then discusses developments in the 19th century like Darwin's theory of evolution, germ theory, and advances in physics. The 20th century brought developments like relativity, quantum mechanics, and the growing role of science in technology and warfare. The document raises questions about the nature, goals, and social construction of science as well as critiques like those of Kuhn and Foucault regarding parad

1. @NICKWECREATE
SCIENCE FOR
CHANGE
AGENTS
NICK JANKEL, WECREATE
KAOS PILOTS
FEB 2013

2. DAY 1
THE USE AND MISUSE
OF SCIENCE

3. TODAY
A FAST FORWARD THROUGH HISTORY, PARADIGMS AND COMPETING
SCHOOLS OF SCIENCE, STARTING OUT WITH ”NATURAL SCIENCE”,
PROVABILITY/REPEATABILITY, MOVING THROUGH VARIOUS SCHOOLS/
PHILOSOPHIES LIKE POSITIVISM, BEHAVIOURISM, ENDING UP WITH
QUANTUM PHYSICS AND CHAOS-THEORY. MOVING THROUGH SOCIAL
SCIENCE, PSYCHOLOGY, ETC.
A CHOICE OF LENSES AND METHODS

4. WHY SCIENCE?
WHAT SCIENCE?
WHO SCIENCE?

5. 5

6. “Problems cannot be solved by
the same level of consciousness
that created them.”
ALBERT EINSTEIN

8. UNKNOWN
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH INTO CAUSES
COMPLEX / ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS
AR / AL / AI
SCENARIO PLANNING
ETHNOGRAPHY

11. “If we knew what we were
doing, it wouldn’t be called
‘research’.”
ALBERT EINSTEIN

12. A BRIEF
HISTORY OF SCIENCE

13. “The hunt for the origins of modern science has
long been a favourite occupation of historians. They
differ widely about the key moment which saw
science’s birth, tracing it to the philosophers of
Classical Greece, or celebrating the canonical
achievements of 17th-century heroes such as
Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, Boyle and Newton, or
insisting with great plausibility that until at least the
early 19th century, the typical institutions and
techniques of the natural sciences simply didn’t
exist. These different stories depend on widely
divergent versions of what distinguishes the
scientific enterprise, whether method, personnel,
hardware or expertise.”
SIMON SCHAFFER

14. XMAS, 1758
(53 YEARS LATER)

15. “This year the world is witnessing
the most satisfying phenomenon
that astronomy has ever provided,
an event unique to this day,
changing our doubts into
certainties, and our hypotheses
into demonstrations.”
THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

16. “Science originated from the
fusion of two old traditions, the
tradition of philosophical thinking
that began in ancient Greece and
the tradition of skilled crafts that
began even earlier and flourished
in medieval Europe. Philosophy
supplied the concepts for science,
and skilled crafts provided the
tools.”
FREEMAN DYSON

17. ARISTOTLE

18. SCHOLASTICS

19. TELESCOPE
GALILEO

20. MICROSCOPE
HOOK, LEEUWENHOEK

21. MACHINES
PENDULUMS, CALCULUS ETC.

22. “The wonder is, not that the
field of stars is so vast, but
that man has measured it.”
ANATOLE FRANCE

23. COPERNICUS

24. GIORDANO
BRUNO

25. GALILEO

26. EMPIRICAL
OBSERVATION

28. “Truth is sought for its own sake. And
those who are engaged upon the quest
for anything for its own sake are not
interested in other things. Finding the
truth is difficult, and the road to it is
rough.”
IBN AL-HAYTHAM

29. INDUCTION
FRANCIS BACON

30. “There are and can be only two ways of
searching into and discovering truth.
The one flies from the senses and
particulars to the most general axioms,
and from these principles, the truth of
which it takes for settled and
immoveable, proceeds to judgment and
to the discovery of middle axioms. And
this way is now in fashion. The other
derives axioms from the senses and
particulars, rising by a gradual and
unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the
most general axioms last of all. This is
the true way, but as yet untried.”
FRANCIS BACON

31. DESCARTES
RATIONALISM / DEDUCTION

33. CERTITUDE
AVOID BIASES OF MIND & SENSES

34. “Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in
the night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all
was light.”
ALEXANDER POPE

35. CLOCKWORK
UNIVERSE

36. “We may regard the present state of the
universe as the effect of its past and the
cause of its future. An intellect which at
any given moment knew all of the forces
that animate nature and the mutual
positions of the beings that compose it,
if this intellect were vast enough to
submit the data to analysis, could
condense into a single formula the
movement of the greatest bodies of the
universe and that of the lightest atom;
for such an intellect nothing could be
uncertain and the future just like the
past would be present before its eyes.”
PIERRE SIMON LA PLACE

37. ENLIGHTENMENT
VOLTAIRE, JEAN-JAQUES ROUSSEAU, LOCKE,
HUME ETC

38. AUTHORITY
SCIENCE & REASON
VS.
TRADITION & RELIGION

39. REASON
BECOMES MORE AND MORE LIKE
MECHANISTIC MATERIALISM

40. 19TH C
SCIENCE GETS PROFESSIONAL

41. CHEMICAL
DEMISE OF PHLOGISTON THEORY
ACCURATE MEASUREMENT

42. PERIODIC TABLE
MENDELEEV

44. ELECTRO
MAGNETISM
FARADAY & MAXWELL

46. EVOLUTION
DARWIN VS. PALEY

47. EVOLUTION
DARWIN VS. PALEY

48. FINCHES
GRADUAL CHANGE (NO LEAPS)

49. SOCIAL
DARWINISM

50. “In the long history of
humankind (and animal kind,
too) those who learned to
collaborate and improvise
most effectively have
prevailed.”
CHARLES DARWIN

51. GERM THEORY
PASTEUR, KOCH

52. “[I]t seems probable that most of
the grand underlying principles have
now been firmly established and
that further advances are to be
sought chiefly in the rigorous
application of these principles to all
the phenomena which come under
our notice…. An eminent physicist
has remarked that the future truths
of physical science are to be looked
for in the sixth place of decimals.”
ALBERT MICHELSON, 1894

53. 20TH C
SCIENCE GETS SPOOKY/ED

54. RELATIVITY
EINSTEIN

55. CHEMIST’S
WAR

56. QUANTUM
THEORY

57. ENTANGLEMENT
147 MILES

58. UNCERTAINTY
LOCATION OR MOMENTUM BUT NOT BOTH

59. INCOMPLETENESS
CONSISTENT OR COMPLETE BUT NOT BOTH

60. BIOLOGIST’S
EUGENICS: NAZI ‘SCIENCE’

61. LYSENKOISM
SOVIET ‘SCIENCE’

62. “He is responsible for the
shameful backwardness of Soviet
biology and of genetics in
particular, for the dissemination
of pseudo-scientific views, for
adventurism, for the degradation
of learning, and for the
defamation, firing, arrest, even
death, of many genuine
scientists”
ANDREI SAKHAROV

63. HOLOCAUST
INDUSTRIAL SCALE RATIONALISM

64. “Evil is the product of the ability
of humans to make abstract that
which is concrete.”
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

65. PHYSICIST’S
WAR

67. HIROSHIMA
MANHATTAN PROJECT

68. ARMY
INJECTING DISEASE IN 1950

69. COMPLEX
INDUSTRIAL-MILITARY

70. WWW
SOCIAL MEDIA, SOCIAL REVOLUTIONS...

71. WHAT IS
SCIENCE?

72. BODY
OF KNOWLEDGE

73. METHOD
ACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE

74. “Science is the systematic,
rational acquisition of new
knowledge.”
HAAPARANTA & NIINILUOTO

75. “[I]f you are going to teach
people to make observations,
you should show that
something wonderful can
come from them.”
RICHARD FEYNMAN

76. PROCESS
FIND CURIOUS PHENOMENA / QUESTIONS

78. PROCESS
FIND CURIOUS PHENOMENA / QUESTIONS
OBSERVE A LOT
MAKE UP A THEORY
DESIGN EXPERIMENT TO TEST THEORY
ANALYSE
TELL EVERYONE ABOUT IT
REPEAT (BY OTHERS)

80. “Science is an inherent contradiction —
systematic wonder — applied to the
natural world. In its mundane form, the
methodical instinct prevails and the
result, an orderly procession of papers,
advances the perimeter of knowledge,
step by laborious step… Who knows
how many scientific revolutions have
been missed because their potential
inaugurators disregarded the whimsical,
the incidental, the inconvenient inside
the laboratory?”
THE GENERAL THEORY OF LOVE

82. “Science is not formal logic - it needs
the free play of the mind in as great
a degree as any other creative art. It
is true that this is a gift which can
hardly be taught, but its growth can
be encouraged in those who already
possess it.”
MAX BORN

83. MYTHOS
LOGOS

84. “The most beautiful experience
we can have is the mysterious -
the fundamental emotion which
stands at the cradle of true art
and true science.
EINSTEIN

85. “Science is the most exquisite tool that
we’ve developed for measuring that hard,
physical, material world. Then there is the
world of ideas which is inside our head. I
would say that both of these worlds are
equally real – they’re just real in different
ways.”
ALAN MOORE

86. Mystery kidney disease in Central America

87. WHAT MIGHT YOU WANT TO OBSERVE?
WHAT DATA MIGHT YOU WANT?

88. OBSERVE
INDUCE A THEORY
DEDUCE A PREDICTION

89. THEORY
THEORY NEEDS TO CREATE HYPOTHESES TO
TEST / VERIFY

90. FALSIFICATION
SCIENCE NEEDS TESTABLE PREDICTIONS

91. DEDUCT
FROM GENERAL TO SPECIFIC

92. INDUCT
FROM SPECIFIC TO GENERAL

94. WHAT PREDICTIONS MIGHT YOUR THEORY
HOLD TRUE?
WHAT EXPERIMENTS COULD YOU RUN?

95. AVOID
SUBJECT BIAS
EXPERIMENTER BIAS
SELECTION BIAS

96. RCT

97. IN DEVPT

98. WHAT RCTS COULD YOU RUN?

99. CRITERIA
TESTABLE
REPEATABLE
OBSERVABLE
PREDICTABLE

100. CRITERIA
OBJECTIVITY
PUBLICITY
CRITICAL THINKING
SELF-CORRECTIVENESS
AUTONOMY
PROGRESSIVENESS

101. VALUE-FREE?
AGENDA-LESS?

102. “Science can (potentially at least)
explain everything because its
ways of trying to understand the
universe by asking questions of it
should not leave any areas off-
limits. The methods of openness,
inquiry, curiosity, theory building,
hypothesis testing and so on can
be adapted and developed to
explore and try to explain
anything.”
SUE BLACKMORE

103. GRAND
NARRATIVE

104. PROGRESS!

105. TELEOLOY
GEIST

106. CONTROL!
PLANET
PEOPLE

108. DEFINE!
IQ
BMI
HAPPINESS
GDP

110. EXPLOIT!
VALUE
ENERGY

112. KNOWLEDGE
POWER

113. “And God said: Let man have
dominion of the fish of the sea,
and over the fowl of the air.
and over the cattle, and over all
the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creepeth
over the earth.”
GENESIS 1, 26

114. ESSENTIAL
TRUTH / IDENTITY

115. FOUCAULT
GENEALOGY
DISCONTINUITY

116. FOUCAULT
INDUSTRIAL-MILITARY

117. “A new mode of obtaining
power of mind over mind,
in a quantity hitherto
without example.”
JEREMY BENTHAM

118. GAZE
CONSTRUCTS KNOWER AND KNOWN

119. “Which speaking, discoursing
subjects – which subjects of
experience and knowledge – do
you want to ‘diminish’ when you
say: ‘I who conduct this
discourse am conducting a
scientific discourse, and I am a
scientist’?”
FOUCAULT

120. SURVEILLANCE

121. SOUSVEILLANCE

122. HISTORICAL
VS ESSENTIAL

123. DARWIN
IMPERIALISM & DOMINATION OF NATURE

124. BIOLOGY
NOW IN CONTEXT OF CO-OPERATION &
COLLABORATION

125. EVOLUTION
REVISITED WITHIN COMPLEXITY

126. GENE
NOT ISOLATED

127. 25,000
HOW DO WE GET SO COMPLEX?

128. EPIGENETICS
DNA METHYLATION

129. SCIENCE
CONSTRUCTED
SOCIALLY

130. SSK
EDINBURGH / BATH

131. TACIT
AGREEMENTS
KNOWLEDGE

132. PARADIGM
KUHN
FOUCAULT EPISTEME

133. KUHN...
PRE-PARADIGM
PARADIGM (NORMAL SCIENCE)
ANOMALY
CRISIS
RESPONSE & EMERGENCE OF NEW PARADIGM

134. “A new scientific truth does not
triumph by convincing its
opponents and making them see
the light, but rather because its
opponents eventually die, and a
new generation grows up that is
familiar with it.”
MAX PLANCK

135. SHIFTS
PTOLEMAIC COSMOLOGY - COPERNICAN
ARISTOTELIAN PHYSICS - NEWTONIAN PHYSICS
NEWTONIAN PHYSICS - EINSTEIN’S RELATIVITY
CLASSICAL MECHANICS - QUANTUM MECHANICS
LAMARCK - DARWIN’S THEORY
STATIC BRAIN - NEUROPLASTICITY

136. REVOLUTION
INCOMENSURABILITY

137. INVISIBLE
TEXT BOOKS SHOW LINEARITY
CUMULATIVE KNOWLDEGE

138. DECLINE
EFFECT

139. RELATIVISM
AAARGH

140. MATERIALISM
STOPS BEFORE BIG BANG AS NO OBJECT /
MATERIAL

141. CRITIQUE
SCIENTISM

142. OBSERVE
SOMETHING

143. SUBJECT /
OBJECT

144. VARIABLE
SPLITS UNITY OF EXPERIENCE

145. “For is it not possible that science will create a
monster? Is it not possible that an objective
approach that frowns upon personal connections
between the entities examined will harm people,
turn them into miserable, unfriendly, self-
righteous mechanisms without charm or
humour? "Is it not possible," asks Kierkegaard,
"that my activity as an objective [or critico-
rational] observer of nature will weaken my
strength as a human being?" I suspect the
answer to many of these questions is affirmative
and I believe that a reform of the sciences that
makes them more anarchic and more subjective
is urgently needed.”
PAUL FEYERABEND

146. GOETHE
DELICATE, EMPATHIC EMPIRICISM
300 YEARS BEFORE COPENHAGEN
INTERPRETATION

147. “It is a calamity that the use of
experiment has severed nature from man,
so that he is content to understand nature
merely through what artificial instruments
reveal and by so doing even restricts her
achievements...Microscopes and
telescopes, in actual fact, confuse man's
innate clarity of mind.”
GOETHE

148. TAWHID
ISLAMIC SCIENCE

150. DISENCHANTMENT
OF WORLD

151. “The fate of our times is
characterized by rationalization and
intellectualization and, above all, by
the 'disenchantment of the world.'
Precisely the ultimate and most
sublime values have retreated from
public life either into the
transcendental realm of mystic life or
into the brotherliness of direct and
personal human relations.”
MAX WEBER, 1918

152. SCIENCE
VS PSEUDOSCIENCE

153. CARGO
CULT

155. WHAT IS
SOCIAL
SCIENCE?

156. 156

157. POSITIVISM
DESCRIBE
CONTROL
PREDICT

158. COMTE
POST-REVOLUTION

159. “From science comes
prediction; from prediction
comes action.”
COMMTE

160. CHANGE!
DISSATISFACTION WITH WHAT IS

161. ANTIPOSITIVISM
MAX WEBER

162. “[Sociology is ] ... the science whose object is
to interpret the meaning of social action and
thereby give a causal explanation of the way
in which the action proceeds and the effects
which it produces. [Never] is the 'meaning'
thought of as somehow objectively 'correct'
or 'true' by some metaphysical criterion. This
is the difference between the empirical
sciences of action, such as sociology and
history, and any kind of a priori discipline,
such as jurisprudence, logic, ethics, or
aesthetics whose aim is to extract from their
subject-matter 'correct' or 'valid' meaning.”
MAX WEBER 1922

163. HERMENEUTICS
TURN

164. GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN
NATURWISSENSCHAFTEN

165. VERSTEHEN
VS. ERKLÄREN

166. “Until we invent time-travel and
really get a handle on the multiverse,
science tells us little about history,
for example. Science may be able to
tell us why we like music, why
certain types of sound appeal more
than others, but not why Bach is the
best.”
A REALIST PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE:
EXPLANATION AND UNDERSTANDING

167. LITERARY
TURN

168. AUTHOR
IS DEAD

169. TRUTHS(S)
RELATIVISM
POST MODERNISM (IRONY)

170. TRUTH
WHO OWNS IT?
(AND WHAT DO THEY GET FROM IT?)

171. FRANKFURT
SCHOOL

172. CRITICAL
THINKING

173. “The emancipation of human
beings from the circumstances
that enslave them.”
HORKHEIMER

174. “The means of communication, the
irresistible output of the
entertainment and information
industry carry with them prescribed
attitudes and habits, certain
intellectual and emotional reactions
which bind the consumers to the
producers and, through the latter to
the whole social system. The products
indoctrinate and manipulate; they
promote a false consciousness which
is immune against its falsehood...Thus
emerges a pattern of one-dimensional
thought and behavior.”
HERBERT MARCUSE

175. 1-D
MAN

176. MARXIST
THEORY

177. “Philosophers have only
interpreted the world in
various ways; the point is to
change it.”
MARX

178. DECONSTRUCTION
DERRIDA ETC.

179. “The positivist thesis of unified
science, which assimilates all the
sciences to a natural-scientific model,
fails because of the intimate
relationship between the social
sciences and history, and the fact that
they are based on a situation-specific
understanding of meaning that can be
explicated only hermeneutically ...
access to a symbolically prestructured
reality cannot be gained by
observation alone.”
JURGEN HABERMAS

180. “No pedagogy which is truly
liberating can remain distant
from the oppressed by treating
them as unfortunates and by
presenting for their emulation
models from among the
oppressors. The oppressed must
be their own example in the
struggle for their redemption.”
PAULO FREIRE 1970

181. IS vs OUGHT

182. SOCIAL
SCIENCE
TRUE? VALUE-FREE?

183. “'It is imperative that we give up the
idea of ultimate sources of
knowledge, and admit that all
knowledge is human; that it is mixed
with our errors, our prejudices, our
dreams, and our hopes; that all we
can do is to grope for truth even
though it is beyond our reach. There
is no authority beyond the reach of
criticism.”
KARL POPPER

184. DIALOGIC
TRUTH
BAKHTIN

185. “What man needs is not just the
persistent posing of ultimate
questions, but the sense of what is
feasible, what is possible, what is
correct, here and now. The
philosopher, of all people, must, I
think, be aware of the tension
between what he claims to achieve
and the reality in which he finds
himself.”
HANS-GEORG GADAMER

186. PRAGMATISM
BETWEEN IDEALISM & EMPIRICISM

187. “In Aristotle’s words phronesis is a
‘true state, reasoned, and capable of
action with regard to things that are
good or bad for man.’ Phronesis goes
beyond both analytical, scientific
knowledge (episteme) and technical
knowledge or know-how (techne)
and involves judgments and decisions
made in the manner of a virtuoso
social and political actor.”
BENT FLYVBJERG

188. PHRONESIS
WHERE ARE WE GOING?
IS THIS DESIRABLE?
WHO GAINS AND WHO LOSES, AND BY
WHICH MECHANISMS OF POWER?
WHAT, IF ANYTHING, SHOULD WE DO
ABOUT IT?

189. MAP
NOT NECESSARILY THE TERRITORY BUT IT
CAN HELP GUIDE US PRACTICALLY

190. PRACTICAL
PHILOSOPHY

191. INTENTION KNOWLEDGE TERMS LENSES
REDUCTIONISM
EXPLANATION OF NATURALISM / REALISM EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS
KNOW ‘TRUTH’
WHAT IS PROOF INDUCTION /
DEDUCTION
PREDICT / CONTROL CORROBORATION OF EVIDENCE BASE
INSTRUMENTALISM
NATURE WHAT WORKS RCTS
SEMIOTICS
CONTEXT
APPRECIATE / UNDERSTANDING OF
HERMENEUTICS QUAL / QUANT
EMPATHISE HOW THINGS ARE
PO
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
DECONSTRUCTION
CRITICISM OF WHY STRUCTURALISM
DISEMPOWER ‘ARCHEOLOGY’
THINGS ARE POST MODERNISM
CRITICAL THEORY
SYSTEMS / CYNEFIN
INSIGHT INTO HOW TO ACTION RESEARCH
IMPROVE EMANCIPATION
CHANGE THINGS CRITICAL
CONSCIOUSNESS

192. DAY 2
SYSTEMS THINKING &
COMPLEXITY

193. 13 vs 333

194. HOW DO YOU SOLVE MY BACK ACHE?

195. “We still have not seen much
movement on... the deep systemic
issues that cause the current cluster of
crisis symptoms to be reproduced time
and again. I believe that the most
important root issue of the current
crisis is our thinking: how we
collectively think.”
C OTTO SCHARMER

196. HOW WE THINK
LINEAR, REDUCTIONIST, MECHANISTIC
SEPARATE FROM NATURE / EACH OTHER
NATURE / PEOPLE THERE TO BE USED
EXIST TO COMPETE, CONSUME, PRODUCE

197. LINEARITY
CAUSE / EFFECT
BLAME AGENTS / INTENTIONS
REALISM / SCIENTISM

198. “Reality is made up of circles, but we
see straight lines. Herein lies the
beginnings of our limitation as systems
thinkers.”
PETER SENGE

199. SYSTEM
INDIVIDUAL PARTS
PARTS AFFECT EACH OTHER
WHOLE MORE THAN SUM
PERSIST IN DIFFERENT SETTING

200. “There can be no scientific
study of society, either in its
conditions or its movements, if
it is separated into portions,
and its divisions are studied
apart.”
AUGUSTE COMTE

201. SYSTEMS
HAVE IDENTITIES WHICH RESIST CHANGE
RESPOND TO INTERVENTIONS
ATTEMPT TO SHAPE PEOPLE / PLACES
COMPLEX BEHAVIOUR
LEARN
SYMBOLIC EXCHANGES

202. SYSTEMIC
COMPLEMENTARY INTERACTIONS
TRIGGERS, DRIVERS, RESPONSES
PATTERNS EMERGE OVER TIME
SYSTEMS CAUSE BEHAVIOUR (VICE VERSA)
MUTUAL RESPONSIBILITY
INTENTIONS ARE NOT ALWAYS CLEAR

203. DIALOGIC
CONSTRUCTED & REAL
TANGIBLE & CONCEPTUAL
CREATE & CREATED

204. HARD!
TAUGHT TO ANALYSE, MECHANISE
LINEAR MODE OF THINKING (LANGUAGE)
BIASES & ASSUMPTIONS
SYSTEMS MASQUERADE AS EVENTS

205. systems images

206. CHALLENGING
TAUGHT TO ANALYSE
LINEAR MODE (LANGUAGE)
BIASES & ASSUMPTIONS
MASQUERADE AS EVENTS

207. “Unlike curiosity or empiricism, holism
takes a while to acquire and appreciate.”
NICHOLAS CHRISTAKIS

208. WHOLENESS
BIOLOGY: VON BERTANALFY

209. CONSTELLATIONS
FAMILY DYNAMICS
MUTUAL OWNERSHIP
EMPATHIC DISCOVERY

211. “Can we talk about the wholeness of life?
Can one be aware of that wholeness if the
mind is fragmented? You can't be aware
of the whole if you are only looking
through a small hole.”
J KRISHNAMURTI

213. MULTIVERSE
MANY STAKEHOLDERS / PERSPECTIVE
MULTIPLE INTENTIONS
MANY FRAMES / INTERPRETATIONS

214. INTERVENTIONS
HIGHLY CHARGED
MANY SCOPING CHALLENGES

215. MAPPING
SYSTEMS

217. SYMPTOMS
VS. ROOT ‘CAUSES’

218. WEB
OF CAUSATION
DEPENDENT ORIGINATION

220. “No effect arises without cause, yet no
effect is predetermined, for its causes
are multiple and mutually affecting.
Hence there can be novelty as well as
order.”
JOANNA MACY

221. FEEDBACK
OSCILLATIONS BETWEEN POSITIVE &
NEGATIVE LOOPS (& INTENTIONS)
THE PAST FEEDS INTO THE FUTURE

222. BOUNDARIES
WHERE?

223. “A system is anything we happen to
draw a boundary around. ”
RICHARD VERYARD

224. LAW
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
SURPRISES!

225. STATE
PREFERRED OR NOT
NOT NORMATIVE ‘RIGHT’ OR ‘WRONG’

226. “Something hit me very hard once,
thinking about what one little man
could do. Think of the Queen Mary - the
whole ship goes by and then comes the
rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the
edge of the rudder called a trim tab.”
BUCKMINSTER FULLER

228. SWEET
SPOTS

230. STATUS QUO
MAINTAINED BY OUTDATED ASSUMPTIONS

232. PLATO
CONVENIENT LIES

234. DEFENDED
BY THE GROUP THINK OF THOSE IN POWER

235. SWITCHED ON LEADERSHIPINNOVATION
BREAKTHROUGH
THE EXTENT OF
THE BREAKTHROUGH
DEPENDS ON HOW
DEEP WE ARE WILLING
TO GO INTO WHAT IS
POSSIBLE
BREAKTHROUGH
BREAKTHROUGH
© Wecreate 201

236. SWITCHED ON LEADERSHIPINNOVATION
BREAKTHROUGH
BREAKTHROUGH
BREAKTHROUGH
© Wecreate 201

237. “Jump to an answer - you might as
well jump to the river.”
RUSSIAN PROVERB

238. 238

239. 239
THE BREAKTHROUGH SWITCH
Breakthrough Opportunity
What kind of headline ideas could
Problem seize this opportunity?
What is the problem, in human terms?
Breakthrough Proposition
What proposition emerges from this
Proposition
insight?
What is the current proposition that results in
the current proposition that results
this probelm?
in this problem?
Breakthrough Insight
What is a more insightful, future-positive
Assumptions
belief?
What do we have to believe to generate
and validate this proposition?
BREAKTHROUGH
© wecreate 2012

240. 240
A BILLION PEOPLE DO NOT
HAVE CLEAN WATER -
CHOLERA EPIDEMICS KILL
HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS

241. CHOLERA
Breakthrough Opportunity
What kind of headline ideas could seize this opportunity?
Problem
What is the problem, in human terms?
The Folded Sari
A billion people do not have clean
water - cholera epidemics kill
hundreds of thousands.
Breakthrough Proposition
What proposition maximises accessibility, usability and enjoyability?
Proposition Focus investment on empowering and
enabling people (with media tools, comms etc)
What is the current proposition [product offer, business model,
org process] that leads to this problem? to use it in new ways to increase health -
Raise money to buy and deliver
virally.
equipment (drill boreholes, pumps,
lifestraws) to provide water. More
Breakthrough Insight
investment needed to maintain
technology. What is a more powerful, liberating and abundant view of
human nature /life?
Assumptions
What do we have to believe to generate and validate this proposition?
Existing equipment - the sari - can be re-
New things / technology is the best way to solve purposed to solve problems.
problems. The people welcome empowerment.
Money solves problems.
BREAKTHROUGH
The people need help.
.
© wecreate 2012

242. 242
99% OF MICROBES FILTERED
50% REDUCTION IN CHOLERA
70% STILL FILTERING 5
YEARS LATER + VIRAL
SPREAD

243. REAMP.ORG

244. PM

246. ANTS
NEITHER INDIVIDUAL NOR GROUP
BEHAVIOUR
SIGNALING
ADAPTATION TO WEATHER / ATTACK
HOW THROUGH EVOLUTION?

247. COMPLEX /
ADAPTIVE
BRAINS
HEART MUSCLE
IMMUNE SYSTEM
INSECT COLONIES
GLOBAL ECONOMY

248. “You have to be a certain kind of complex system to
adapt, and you have to be a certain kind of complex
system to coevolve with other complex systems. We
have to understand what it means for complex
systems to come to know one another — in the
sense that when complex systems coevolve, each
sets the conditions of success for the others. I
suspect that there are emergent laws about how
such complex systems work, so that, in a global,
Gaia- like way, complex coevolving systems
mutually get themselves to the edge of chaos,
where they're poised in a balanced state. It's a very
pretty idea. It may be right, too.”
STUART KAUFMANN

250. COMPLEX
NON-LINEAR COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOUR
FEEDBACK, SIGNALING & INFO PROCESSING
ADAPTATION VIA LEARNING OR EVOLUTION
HAVE A HISTORY
NESTED HIERARCHIES
SELF-ORGANISED EMERGENCE

252. WEB
OF CAUSATION

253. SELF-
ORGANISATION
ROBUSTNESS, FLEXIBILITY,
SPONTANEOUS INNOVATION.
SEMI-AUTONOMOUS
FUNCTIONING NEEDING MINIMAL
SUPERVISION

254. CONTROL
NATURAL RESPONSE TO FIX COMPLEX
PROBLEMS
BUT LOSE RESILIENCE & CREATIVE OF
SYSTEM (AND FAILS)

255. “If biologists have ignored self-organization, it is not
because self-ordering is not pervasive and profound. It
is because we biologists have yet to understand how to
think about systems governed simultaneously by two
sources of order, Yet who seeing the snowflake, who
seeing simple lipid molecules cast adrift in water
forming themselves into cell-like hollow lipid vesicles,
who seeing the potential for the crystallization of life in
swarms of reacting molecules, who seeing the stunning
order for free in networks linking tens upon tens of
thousands of variables, can fail to entertain a central
thought: if ever we are to attain a final theory in
biology, we will surely, surely have to understand the
commingling of self-organization and selection. We will
have to see that we are the natural expressions of a
deeper order. Ultimately, we will discover in our creation
myth that we are expected after all.”
STUART KAUFFMAN

256. BIRDS
STAY CLOSE
MATCH VELOCITY
AVOID OBSTACLES

257. BIRDS
STAY CLOSE (COHESION)
MATCH DIRECTION & VELOCITY
(ALIGNMENT)
AVOID COLLISION (SEPERATION)

258. WEATHER
NON-LINEAR
NON-EQUILIBRIUM

259. BUTTERFLY
EFFECT

260. CHAOS
POSITION, MASS, VELOCITY NOT ENOUGH TO
PREDICT

261. HUMANS
DO NOT OPERATE IN EQUILIBRIUMS EITHER

262. NETWORKS
C. ELEGANS
BRAIN
WEB
HOLLYWOOD
NATIONAL GRID
METABOLISM
GENE EXPRESSION

263. NETWORKS
SMALL WORLD

264. SCALE FREE
HUBS
HETEROGENOUS NODES
SELF-SIMILARITY

267. 1/n

268. RICH
GET RICHER

269. EPIDEMIOLOGY
SEXUAL HUBS IN HIV

270. RESILIENCE
EXCEPT FOR HUBS!

271. FAILURE
CASCADING

272. EDGE
OF CHAOS
MAXIMUM RATES OF GENERATION /
EVOLUTION

273. ORDER
EDGE OF
CHAOS
DISORDER

274. SWITCHED ON LEADERSHIPINNOVATION
BREAKTHROUGH
PREFERRED ORDER
CURRENT ORDER
BREAKTHROUGH
BREAKTHROUGH
© Wecreate 201
CHAOS

275. LEADERSHIP AT EDGE
OF CHAOS
AGILE
ATTENTION
EXPERIMENT
ROBUST
OPEN TO MULTIPLE POSSIBILITIES

276. MAKING
CHANGE IN COMPLEX SYSTEMS

277. “Thinking more deeply about
institutions and complexity raises major
dilemmas for development
interventions. On the one hand, tackling
poverty, achieving social justice and
protecting the environment clearly
require institutional transformation. On
the other, institutions cannot be
effectively changed in a neatly planned,
top-down manner.”
JIM WOODHILL

278. “Don’t disturb complicated systems
that have been around for a very long
time. We don’t understand their logic…
Leave it the way we found it, regardless
of scientific ‘evidence’.”
N. NICHOLAS TALEB

279. REMEMBER
DYNAMIC, RICH INTERACTIONS
DIFFERENT PEOPLE, DIFFERENT LEVELS
FEEDBACK LOOPS
NON-LINEAR, UNPREDICTABLE
EMERGENT CHARACTERISTICS
SMALL CHANGES CAN HAVE LARGE IMPACTS
HISTORY CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE

280. HUMANITY
CHANGE CAN ONLY HAPPEN WITH PEOPLE

281. RECEIVED
WISDOM DOESN’T ALWAYS APPLY

282. CYNEFIN
IBM ET. AL.

283. “Often the only way to improve a
complex system is to probe its limits by
forcing it to fail in various ways.”
KEVIN KELLY

284. The Cynefin Model
Complex Complicated
Known causes and effects
Understandable root causes
Use good practice
Use emergent practice
Focus on co-operation
(harness principles)
Focus on collaboration
Sense. Analyze. Respond
Sense. Explore. Respond
Disorder
Chaotic Simple
Predictable causes and effects
Unknowable causes / effects
Use best-practice
Use new practice
Focus on co-ordination
Focus on co-creation
Explore. Sense. Respond Sense. Categorize. Respond

285. “Part of reinventing the sacred is to heal...injuries that
we hardly know we suffer. If we are members of a
universe in which emergence and ceaseless creativity
abound, if we take that creativity as a sense of God we
can share, the resulting sense of the sacredness of all of
life and the planet can help orient our lives beyond the
consumerism and commodification the industrialized
world now lives, heal the split between reason and faith,
heal the split between science and the humanities, heal
the want of spirituality, heal the wound derived from
the false reductionist belief that we live in a world of
fact without values, and help us jointly build a global
ethic. These are what is at stake in finding a new
scientific worldview that enables us to reinvent the
sacred.”
STUART KAUFFMAN

286. CONNECT
NICK@WECREATE.CC
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