Think Before You Think

2009 (Wavestone Press). Abbreviation: TBYT. Think Before You Think: Social Complexity and Knowledge of Knowing, ed. David Whittaker. Texts “from 1974 onwards” with one exception (TBYT 2009: 16). stafford-beer dies 2002 (ibid.).

In overview, TBYT supplies the epistemological strand (ch. 26): cybernetics as transdisciplinary (TBYT 2009: 24); autopoiesis and identity; paradigms; “learning an outlook”. Whittaker’s “Threads From a Life” (TBYT 2009: 352–361) is the chronology source. Not project canon.

Where it is drawn on

Heaviest in pure-vsm-part-v-method-and-epistemology ch. 26 and pure-vsm-appendix (chronology). Also pathologies-of-viable-systems (ch. 15); viability-identity-and-autonomy (ch. 5); diagnosis speed (ch. 14); law-of-cohesion (ch. 13); observer-and-recognition (ch. 25); icosahedron sketch (ch. 21); chs 1–2.

Formulation notes

From pure-vsm-appendix: viability as “capability for independent existence as a recognizable identity” (TBYT 2009: 107), against BOTF “intends to survive” and DTS’s OED gloss.

Related

stafford-beer · observer-and-recognition · viability-identity-and-autonomy · pathologies-of-viable-systems · overview