April 19th is the forty-sixth meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario. Please RSVP at Eventbrite.

Pathfinding under Complexity – Toward Sustainability, Health and Well-being

The systems crucial for sustaining human civilization; ecosystems, societies - and life, itself – are self-organizing, holarchic, open systems. The ongoing viability of these complex systems depends on a perpetual channeling and transformation of energy, materials and information in interdependent metabolic patterns across the full spectrum of temporal and spatial scales - from nanoseconds and nanometers to eons and even beyond the Earth's expanse. Today’s economic models and social policies are proving too simplistic and narrowly-conceived for effectively overcoming the emerging challenges that define the Anthropocene. The scale of our resource extraction, energy consumption and environmental disruption and pollution, increasingly threatens the long term stability of supporting natural ecosystems. Social harmony and personal well-being sometimes elude us at the best of times; compounding pressures anticipated from unabated resource depletion, surprising weather extremes and altered ecosystems, will render future economic and social well-being yet more elusive.

David Mallery and Stephano Menegat (PhD candidates from York U and McGill, respectively) invite you to participate in exploring new narratives for successful pathfinding toward sustainable ecosystems, vital economies and healthy lives. Integrating diverse concepts (non-equilibrium thermodynamics, hierarchy theory, autopoiesis, Rosen's relational theory), their work offers a powerful synthesis of tools and frameworks for understanding the space of future possibilities and then discovering the most promising paths forward, together. Using Giampietro and Mayumi’s innovative framework for sustainability assessment: Multi-scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM), David and Stephano challenge traditional resource accounting and offer a robust and rigorous example of post-normal science and integrated analysis.

Join us in an open discussion. Newcomers always welcomed.

In preparation, please review the following notes:

• Systems Thinking for Thermodynamics (ST-ON March and April 2017), as Primer on the history of Thermodynamics

• Policy Brief on Thermodynamics, Complexity and the Climate Crisis | David Mallery, https://fes.yorku.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/outstanding_papers_Mallery_D.pdf

• Eric D. Schneider and James J. Kay | "Life as a Manifestation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics | Mathematicaly and Computer Modelling | 1992 [search on Google Scholar]

Venue: 

• • sLab - Room 410, 205 Richmond St. West, Toronto, ON M5V 1V3

Agenda

Post-meeting artifacts:

OCADU Richmond Campus: Full house at Systems Thinking Ontario, @DaveMallery explaining thermodynamics as a foundation for ecological economics. More of a challenge than I would inflict on a grad school class, this session was organized on request by the group while I was away. As I was skimming the prereadings, I came to appreciate how much systems theory I have internalized over 20 years. (OCADU, 205 Richmond Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20170419

OCADU Richmond Campus: MuSIASEM briefing @uomo_macchina channelling @MarioGiampietro Kozo Mayumi method of accounting for analyzing socio-ecosystems, to simulate possible patterns of development. Presenting at Systems Thinking Ontario, guest visit from McGill University. Characterizing metabolic patterns of Socio-Ecological Systems. (OCADU, 205 Richmond Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20170419