SCIENCE FOR CHANGE AGENTS

@NICKWECREATE

SCIENCE FOR
CHANGE
AGENTS
NICK JANKEL, WECREATE
KAOS PILOTS
FEB 2013

DAY 1
THE USE AND MISUSE
OF SCIENCE

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

WHY SCIENCE?
WHAT SCIENCE?
WHO SCIENCE?

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

ALBERT EINSTEIN

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

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

ALBERT EINSTEIN

“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

“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

“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

MACHINES
PENDULUMS, CALCULUS ETC.

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

ANATOLE FRANCE

“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

“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

DESCARTES
RATIONALISM / DEDUCTION

CERTITUDE
AVOID BIASES OF MIND & SENSES

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

ALEXANDER POPE

“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

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

AUTHORITY
SCIENCE & REASON
VS.
TRADITION & RELIGION

REASON
BECOMES MORE AND MORE LIKE
MECHANISTIC MATERIALISM

19TH C
SCIENCE GETS PROFESSIONAL

CHEMICAL
DEMISE OF PHLOGISTON THEORY
ACCURATE MEASUREMENT

ELECTRO
MAGNETISM

FARADAY & MAXWELL

FINCHES
GRADUAL CHANGE (NO LEAPS)

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

“[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

UNCERTAINTY
LOCATION OR MOMENTUM BUT NOT BOTH

INCOMPLETENESS
CONSISTENT OR COMPLETE BUT NOT BOTH

BIOLOGIST’S
EUGENICS: NAZI ‘SCIENCE’

LYSENKOISM
SOVIET ‘SCIENCE’

“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

HOLOCAUST
INDUSTRIAL SCALE RATIONALISM

“Evil is the product of the ability
of humans to make abstract that
which is concrete.”

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

ARMY
INJECTING DISEASE IN 1950

WWW
SOCIAL MEDIA, SOCIAL REVOLUTIONS...

“Science is the systematic,
rational acquisition of new
knowledge.”

HAAPARANTA & NIINILUOTO

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

RICHARD FEYNMAN

PROCESS
FIND CURIOUS PHENOMENA / QUESTIONS

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)

“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

“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

“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

“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

Mystery kidney disease in Central America

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

OBSERVE
INDUCE A THEORY
DEDUCE A PREDICTION

THEORY
THEORY NEEDS TO CREATE HYPOTHESES TO
TEST / VERIFY

FALSIFICATION
SCIENCE NEEDS TESTABLE PREDICTIONS

DEDUCT
FROM GENERAL TO SPECIFIC

INDUCT
FROM SPECIFIC TO GENERAL

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

AVOID
SUBJECT BIAS
EXPERIMENTER BIAS
SELECTION BIAS

CRITERIA
TESTABLE
REPEATABLE
OBSERVABLE
PREDICTABLE

CRITERIA
OBJECTIVITY
PUBLICITY
CRITICAL THINKING
SELF-CORRECTIVENESS
AUTONOMY
PROGRESSIVENESS

“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

“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

FOUCAULT
GENEALOGY
DISCONTINUITY

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

JEREMY BENTHAM

GAZE
CONSTRUCTS KNOWER AND KNOWN

“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

DARWIN
IMPERIALISM & DOMINATION OF NATURE

BIOLOGY
NOW IN CONTEXT OF CO-OPERATION &
COLLABORATION

EVOLUTION
REVISITED WITHIN COMPLEXITY

25,000
HOW DO WE GET SO COMPLEX?

SCIENCE

CONSTRUCTED
SOCIALLY

PARADIGM
KUHN
FOUCAULT EPISTEME

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

“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

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

INVISIBLE
TEXT BOOKS SHOW LINEARITY
CUMULATIVE KNOWLDEGE

MATERIALISM
STOPS BEFORE BIG BANG AS NO OBJECT /
MATERIAL

VARIABLE
SPLITS UNITY OF EXPERIENCE

“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

GOETHE
DELICATE, EMPATHIC EMPIRICISM
300 YEARS BEFORE COPENHAGEN
INTERPRETATION

“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

“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

POSITIVISM
DESCRIBE
CONTROL
PREDICT

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

COMMTE

CHANGE!
DISSATISFACTION WITH WHAT IS

“[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

GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN
NATURWISSENSCHAFTEN

“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

TRUTHS(S)
RELATIVISM
POST MODERNISM (IRONY)

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

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

HORKHEIMER

“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

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

“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

“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

SOCIAL
SCIENCE
TRUE? VALUE-FREE?

“'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

“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

PRAGMATISM
BETWEEN IDEALISM & EMPIRICISM

“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

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?

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

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

DAY 2
SYSTEMS THINKING &
COMPLEXITY

HOW DO YOU SOLVE MY BACK ACHE?

“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

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

LINEARITY
CAUSE / EFFECT
BLAME AGENTS / INTENTIONS
REALISM / SCIENTISM

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

PETER SENGE

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

“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

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

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

DIALOGIC
CONSTRUCTED & REAL
TANGIBLE & CONCEPTUAL
CREATE & CREATED

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

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

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

NICHOLAS CHRISTAKIS

WHOLENESS
BIOLOGY: VON BERTANALFY

CONSTELLATIONS
FAMILY DYNAMICS
MUTUAL OWNERSHIP
EMPATHIC DISCOVERY

“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

MULTIVERSE
MANY STAKEHOLDERS / PERSPECTIVE
MULTIPLE INTENTIONS
MANY FRAMES / INTERPRETATIONS

INTERVENTIONS
HIGHLY CHARGED
MANY SCOPING CHALLENGES

SYMPTOMS
VS. ROOT ‘CAUSES’

WEB
OF CAUSATION

DEPENDENT ORIGINATION

“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

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

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

RICHARD VERYARD

LAW
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
SURPRISES!

STATE
PREFERRED OR NOT

NOT NORMATIVE ‘RIGHT’ OR ‘WRONG’

“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

STATUS QUO
MAINTAINED BY OUTDATED ASSUMPTIONS

DEFENDED
BY THE GROUP THINK OF THOSE IN POWER

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

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

RUSSIAN PROVERB

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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

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

SELF-
ORGANISATION

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

CONTROL
NATURAL RESPONSE TO FIX COMPLEX
PROBLEMS

BUT LOSE RESILIENCE & CREATIVE OF
SYSTEM (AND FAILS)

“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

BIRDS
STAY CLOSE
MATCH VELOCITY
AVOID OBSTACLES

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

WEATHER
NON-LINEAR
NON-EQUILIBRIUM

CHAOS
POSITION, MASS, VELOCITY NOT ENOUGH TO
PREDICT

HUMANS
DO NOT OPERATE IN EQUILIBRIUMS EITHER

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

SCALE FREE
HUBS
HETEROGENOUS NODES
SELF-SIMILARITY

EPIDEMIOLOGY
SEXUAL HUBS IN HIV

EDGE
OF CHAOS

MAXIMUM RATES OF GENERATION /
EVOLUTION

ORDER

EDGE OF
CHAOS

DISORDER

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

MAKING
CHANGE IN COMPLEX SYSTEMS

“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

“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

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

HUMANITY
CHANGE CAN ONLY HAPPEN WITH PEOPLE

RECEIVED
WISDOM DOESN’T ALWAYS APPLY

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

KEVIN KELLY

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

“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

CONNECT
NICK@WECREATE.CC

WECREATE.CC (THIS WILL BE UP IN FEW DAYS)
NICKJANKEL.COM

SCIENCE FOR CHANGE AGENTS

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