A global community connected through systems science and practice
"To gain knowledge, we must learn to ask the right questions; and to get answers, we must act, not wait for answers to occur to us."
ISSS Past President Anatol Rapoport
The ISSS is a community of researchers, learners, and practitioners who are devoted to transdisciplinary inquiry into the nature of complex systems and the application of systems approaches for transformative change.
Conceived in 1954, the ISSS advances systems science theory and application by connecting and enabling researchers and practitioners, and disseminates the knowledge of systems to a global audience.
Calendar
Open Mic: Conducting debates in this or another forum
Wednesday, December 1, 2021
3pm to 5pm
Past President Delia Pembrey would like to see more structured debate on important topics relevant to the society (personal communication). A structured or formal debate means following some protocols (c.f.,...
William Reese - Dec. 4/8 - Something re: ecological footprint but TBD
Saturday, December 4, 2021
10am to 12pm
William Rees is a human ecologist, ecological economist, Professor Emeritus and former Director of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning in Vancouver, Canada, where his research and teaching focused on the biophysical prerequisites for sustainability in an era of accelerating ecological change. Within this envelope developed a special interest in ecologically-relevant metrics of sustainability and their interpretation in terms of complexity theory and behavioural ecology. Prof Rees is perhaps best known in ecological economics as the originator and co-developer of ‘ecological footprint analysis’.
Bill Reese's talk will mark the end of this series The Systems View of the Global Problematique
Daniel Ari Friedman - Dec. 11/15 Title: Systems Engineering and Active Inference for Online Teams
Saturday, December 11, 2021
10am to 12pm
Systems Engineering and Active Inference provide distinct yet complementary frameworks for the modeling and design of a broad range of systems. In recent and ongoing projects, we are integrating these two frameworks to model and design online teams. We utilize the formalism of communication among nested Markov blankets to capture diverse cyberphysical systems, and present the FONT model for remote collaboration (Formal documents, Ontology, Narrative, Tools). Learn more about this via our 2020 publication: https://zenodo.org/record/4021163 and Active Inference Lab: http://activeinference.org/ .
Membership
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ISSS President
The ISSS President for 2021-2022 is George Mobus PhD. ISSS News Articles
ISSS Board of Directors is meeting on December 13th, at 12 noon Pacific Time.
Posted on Nov 29th, 2021
Please be advised that the ISSS Board of Directors is meeting on December 13th, at 12 noon Pacific Time.
Duration: 1 hour
Location: Zoom
Meeting Chair: George Mobus
1. Call to Order- George Mobus
2. Approval of August BoD Meeting Minutes-George Mobus
3. Authorisation of Special Integration Groups-Jennifer Makar
· Marty Jacobs- Diversity and Inclusion
· Jamie Rose- Math
· Robert Johannson- Holistic Systems
4. President’s Update- George Mobus
5. Nominating Committee Chair Update- Delia MacNamara
New Business
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Springer Handbook of Systems Sciences
Posted on Jul 8th, 2020
The Springer Handbook of Systems Sciences will be ready in early 2021
Editors: Gary Metcalf, Professor Emeritus Kyoichi Kijima and Professor Hirsohi Deguchi
Gary says "Let me simply say that organizing the writing of 50 chapters into a book of over 1000 pages has been challenging. It has taken much longer than I expected, but we are now in the final phases". Well done Gary Jim and Hiroshi.
Read More >>
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Blog
Posted on November 8, 2021 3:10 PM
Posted on July 15, 2021 9:00 PM
Posted on July 10, 2021 6:00 PM
Activities
ISSS members are engaged in a number of activities around the world. Read more at https://www.isss.org/activities/
Many member activities are collaborative in nature and also involve partnerships and collaborations with other organizations:
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) Systems Science Working Group
Systems Literacy
Systemic Action at the Village Level to encourage and support sustainable development.
Conference 2021 The Art and Science of the Impossible: July 8-13 Online
The Conference is now over. If you are an ISSS Member you can see all the recordings here https://www.isss.org/online-2021-members/
The 65th Annual Meeting and Conference was online. For more information, click here.
World of Systems
The ISSS is one of the oldest organizations dedicated to the study, development and application of systems science, systems thinking, cybernetics and complexity science.
We are assembling lists of organizations, social network pages and groups, and also maps of the evolution of the field of systems and cybernetics. Here are some examples
Please email me with comments, additions or corrections. Peter D Tuddenham peterdtuddenham at gmail.com
Meeting Proceedings
We Remember
We Remember
Ralph Stacey 1942 - 2021
Steven E Wallis July 29, 2021
James Robert Simms, December 5, 1924 - Saturday, May 22, 2021
Humberto Maturana 1929 - May 2021
Mary Catherine Bateson 1939 - 2 January 2021
Charles Bocage died 21 August 2020
Peter Caws May 25, 1931 - April 20, 2020 (ISSS President 1966)
Joe Simpson - June 2020
Jack Ring - April 2020
Enrique Herrscher 2019
Charles Francois 2019
Systems Science & Applications Spotlight
Members of ISSS are researching and applying Systems Science in a variety of situations and circumstances. we are creating a temporary Editorial Board to decide what new research and application by ISSS Members to feature here. For more information please email webadmin@isss.org
AAAS Affiliate
In 1954 the founders of the current ISSS met at meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). They decided to start the Society for General Systems Theory later renamed Society for General Systems Research and now called the International Society for the Systems Sciences. One of the early group of founders and first presidents of our society in 1957, Kenneth Ewart Boulding was President of AAAS in 1980