Think Before You Think

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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 Pure VSM — 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 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.

Punch and Judy

Punch and Judy (v0.5.0 draft — not canon) draws on TBYT as the source for several positions it stress-tests — System Five’s will and judgment, Beer’s observer and autopoiesis material (TBYT 2009: 149–50), and the manager’s model that ‘cannot be interrogated or tested’ (TBYT 2009: 201) — arguing in its Chapters 6 and 7 that the notation and method carry none of what Beer states in text. The charge is the authors’, and parts of this ground are marked unverified.

Stafford Beer · Observer and recognition · Viability, identity and autonomy · Pathologies of viable systems · Pure VSM — Overview · Punch and Judy — Overview