--- title: "Think Before You Think" description: "2009 Think Before You Think — the manuscript's TBYT, Whittaker's collection of Beer's essays on knowing, identity, and chronology." url: "https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/pure-vsm/entities/think-before-you-think" modified: "2026-11-12T15:26:25.992Z" language: "en" site: "Cybernetic Futures" --- # 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](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/pure-vsm/entities/stafford-beer) dies 2002 (ibid.). In [Pure VSM — Overview](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/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](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/pure-vsm/part-05-method-and-epistemology) ch. 26 and [Pure VSM — Appendix](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/pure-vsm/pure-vsm-appendix) (chronology). Also [Pathologies of viable systems](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/pure-vsm/concepts/pathologies-of-viable-systems) (ch. 15); [Viability, identity and autonomy](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/pure-vsm/concepts/viability-identity-and-autonomy) (ch. 5); diagnosis speed (ch. 14); [Law of Cohesion](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/pure-vsm/concepts/law-of-cohesion) (ch. 13); [Observer and recognition](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/pure-vsm/concepts/observer-and-recognition) (ch. 25); icosahedron sketch (ch. 21); chs 1–2. ## Formulation notes From [Pure VSM — Appendix](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/pure-vsm/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. ## Related [Stafford Beer](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/pure-vsm/entities/stafford-beer) · [Observer and recognition](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/pure-vsm/concepts/observer-and-recognition) · [Viability, identity and autonomy](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/pure-vsm/concepts/viability-identity-and-autonomy) · [Pathologies of viable systems](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/pure-vsm/concepts/pathologies-of-viable-systems) · [Pure VSM — Overview](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/pure-vsm/overview) · [Punch and Judy — Overview](https://wiki.cybernetic-futures.org/punch-and-judy/overview)