Led by W. Ross Ashby Simulacrum
About this course
Why do well-meant policies fail, shared resources collapse and standards quietly slip? This course teaches the toolkit that answers such questions, following the plan of Donella Meadows's Thinking in Systems, the most widely read introduction to the field.
You will learn to see a system's stocks and flows, trace its feedback loops, find its delays and limits, recognise the eight recurring traps, and rank the places where a small change makes a large difference.
Each topic is taught by the scholar closest to it: W. Ross Ashby Simulacrum hosts, with Norbert Wiener on feedback, Herbert Simon on bounded rationality, the Ostromian Commons Simulacrum on shared resources, the Demingian Quality Simulacrum on targets and traps, and Buckminster Fuller on leverage.
From the first unit you choose one real system you know well, and you work it through every unit until you present it whole at the end. No software or advanced mathematics is needed.
Led by W. Ross Ashby Simulacrum
The question
W. Ross Ashby Simulacrum starts by teaching you to look beneath events to the patterns they belong to and the structures that produce them. You apply a four-part test for whether something is a system at all, see why changing a system's rules matters more than changing its members, and learn to read a system's real purpose from what it does rather than what it says. The unit ends with you choosing the home system you will study for the rest of the course.
Outcome
You can say whether something is a system, name its elements, connections and purpose, and judge its purpose by its behaviour. (Foundations)
Sub-units
Led by Norbert Wiener Simulacrum
The question
With Norbert Wiener Simulacrum you learn the two ideas everything else rests on: the stock, an accumulation that changes only through its inflows and outflows, and the feedback loop. You work the bathtub model until you can predict any stock's behaviour, see why stocks change slowly, and trace balancing loops that seek a goal and reinforcing loops that grow or collapse. You learn the course's typed diagram notation, compute doubling times with the rule of seventy, and sketch the main stock of your home system.
Outcome
You can map a system's stocks and flows and classify any feedback loop as balancing or reinforcing. (Stock-and-flow fundamentals)
Sub-units
Led by W. Ross Ashby Simulacrum
The question
Ashby takes you through the simplest structures in the systems "zoo". A thermostat shows two balancing loops competing, which is why a heated room settles below its setting. A population shows growth turning into equilibrium as one loop overtakes another. A car dealer managing stock shows how delays produce swings, and why reacting faster makes them worse, a point the Demingian Quality Simulacrum extends to any manager who adjusts after every reading. You also learn three questions for testing any forecast.
Outcome
You can predict how a single stock governed by competing loops and delays will behave, and how changing a loop or a delay alters that behaviour. (One-stock dynamics)
Sub-units
Led by Eugene Odum Simulacrum
The question
Eugene Odum Simulacrum shows what happens when growth depends on a resource. An oil industry reinvesting its profits rises, peaks and falls long before the oil runs out, and a far larger reserve buys surprisingly little extra time. A fishing fleet drawing on fish that regrow can settle, swing, or collapse the stock entirely, depending on how fast boats are added and how technology hides the decline. You finish by finding the limiting stocks your home system depends on.
Outcome
You can explain how growth behaves against renewable and nonrenewable limits, and what decides whether a resource system settles, oscillates or collapses. (Limits to growth)
Sub-units
Led by Ilya Prigogine Simulacrum
The question
Ilya Prigogine Simulacrum explains resilience, the capacity to recover from shocks, and why it is so often traded away for efficiency, and self-organisation, the capacity of systems to build their own structure. Herbert Simon Simulacrum then tells his parable of the two watchmakers to show why complex systems are built as hierarchies, and how hierarchies fail when parts serve themselves or when the top controls too much. You audit your home system for all three properties.
Outcome
You can explain what makes systems resilient, self-organising and well structured, and spot where those qualities are being lost. (Properties of well-functioning systems)
Sub-units
Led by Herbert Simon Simulacrum
The question
Herbert Simon Simulacrum works through six reasons systems confound us: explaining events by other events, nonlinear effects that shift suddenly, delays, boundaries drawn in the wrong place, limits that change as a system grows, and bounded rationality, his own idea that sensible people acting on partial information can produce outcomes nobody wants. The Goldrattian Constraints Simulacrum joins for the bottleneck. You learn to fix outcomes by changing information and incentives rather than blaming people.
Outcome
You can diagnose which source of surprise is at work when a system behaves unexpectedly, and propose a remedy that changes structure rather than people. (Sources of systemic surprise)
Sub-units
Led by Thomas Schelling Simulacrum
The question
Thomas Schelling Simulacrum introduces system traps, recurring structures that make obvious fixes backfire, starting with policy resistance, where rival goals cancel each other out, and escalation, where rivals push each other ever higher. The Ostromian Commons Simulacrum takes the tragedy of the commons and challenges the usual choice between state control and private ownership with evidence of communities governing resources themselves. The Demingian Quality Simulacrum explains how standards drift downwards. For each trap you learn the way out.
Outcome
You can recognise policy resistance, the tragedy of the commons, drift to low performance and escalation, and propose the exit from each. (System traps, first set)
Sub-units
Led by Demingian Quality Simulacrum
The question
The Demingian Quality Simulacrum leads the second four traps: systems that faithfully pursue the wrong measure, people who obey a rule's letter while defeating its purpose, and interventions that relieve a symptom while making the system dependent on them. Robert MacArthur Simulacrum then shows, from ecology, how winners gain the means to keep winning and what allows competitors to coexist. You finish by redesigning one trap in your home system so that its structure works in your favour.
Outcome
You can recognise wrong goals, rule beating, shifting the burden and success to the successful, and turn a trap's structure into an opportunity. (System traps, second set)
Sub-units
Led by Buckminster Fuller Simulacrum
The question
Buckminster Fuller Simulacrum, who called himself a trim tab, teaches the ranked list of twelve leverage points, from the weakest (numbers such as taxes and budgets) through buffers, physical structure, delays, loops, information flows and rules, to the strongest: self-organisation, goals, and the paradigms beneath them. You classify real proposals, see why the most powerful interventions meet the most resistance, and rank at least four interventions for your home system.
Outcome
You can place any intervention on the hierarchy of leverage and propose and rank interventions for a real system. (Leverage points)
Sub-units
Led by Bill Mollison Simulacrum
The question
Bill Mollison Simulacrum, who insisted on a year of watching before changing any land, closes the course with the habits of mind for acting within systems you cannot control: observing before intervening, sharing information, attending to what matters but cannot be counted, designing policies that respond to feedback, placing responsibility where decisions are made, and lengthening your time horizon. In the final sitting you present the complete account of your home system to W. Ross Ashby Simulacrum and answer his questions.
Outcome
You can act within a system with the habits systems thinking recommends, and present a complete systems analysis of a real system with a reasoned plan for intervention. (Systems practice and capstone)
Sub-units