Subject: Causal Loops with 'AND'

Posted by Karl North on 11/27/2009
In Reply To:Causal Loops with 'AND' Posted by Bill Braun on 11/27/2009

Message:

Bill Braun's contribution in his short post is extremely useful to my teaching because of its focus on finding the right language to convey understanding of systems science concepts. And by saying "I hope this is a distinction with a difference." he nailed the point about language home with a paraphrase of the definition of 'information' from my favorite anthropologist and systems science pioneer Gregory Bateson.

Bateson defined information as "a difference that makes a difference", thus bringing usefully under the same conceptual umbrella of mental process both the often unconscious accumulation of cultural habits and the accumulation of genetic coding in biological evolution, in addition to the conscious acquisition of knowledge that we conventionally associate with the word 'information'.

By the way, I encountered similar benefits all through my reading of Thinking in Systems by Donella H. Meadows.

Time and time again I find that effective teaching of a new paradigm turns on creating the language, often a new language and meaning, that is unambiguous enough to keep learners from slipping back to interpretations based on the old frame of reference. The now sacred SD axioms, "all models are false, some models are useful" and the implicit (to me) corollary "All boundaries are false, some boundaries are useful" are still creating powerful ripple effects in how I see the world.

If there are other ST old hands out there with useful linguistic gems to offer, let them hold forth.

Karl North