New Books Network
Systems and Cybernetics
Systems and Cybernetics February 8, 2021

The Hidden Power of Systems Thinking

Governance in a Climate Emergency

Ray Ison and Ed Straw

Hosted by Kevin Lindsay
The Hidden Power of Systems Thinking: Governance in Climate Emergency (Routledge, 2020) is a persuasive, lively book that shows how systems thinking can be harnessed to effect profound, complex change.  …

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Systems and Cybernetics January 18, 2021

Network Origins of the Global Economy

East vs. West in a Complex Systems Perspective

Hilton L. Root

Hosted by Tom Scholte
Twenty-eight years after Francis Fukuyama declared the “end of history” and pronounced Western-style liberalism as the culmination of a Hegelian narrative of progress, pundits and academics of all stripes find …
Medicine December 17, 2020

Unraveling

Remaking Personhood in a Neurodiverse Age

Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer

Hosted by Claire Clark
Twentieth-century neuroscience fixed the brain as the basis of consciousness, the self, identity, individuality, even life itself, obscuring the fundamental relationships between bodies and the worlds that they inhabit. In Unraveling …
Systems and Cybernetics December 16, 2020

Small Arcs of Larger Circles

Framing Through Other Patterns

Nora Bateson

Hosted by Kevin Lindsay
“To be a participant in a complex system is to desire to be both lost and found in the interrelationships between people, nature and ideas.” Nora Bateson writes these words …
Systems and Cybernetics November 25, 2020

Systems Practice

How to Act In Situations of Uncertainty and Complexity in a Climate-Change World

Ray Ison

Hosted by Tom Scholte
While various systems theories have received rigorous treatments across the literature of the field, reliable and robust advice for systems practice can be somewhat harder to come by. Ray Ison …
Science, Technology, and Society November 4, 2020

Systems Thinking for a Turbulent World

A Search for New Perspectives (Part 2)

Anthony Hodgson

Hosted by Kevin Lindsay
This is the second episode of a two-part conversation with Hodgson, and in it we pick up our conversation on anticipatory systems and the role they play in ‘decision integrity’ …
Science, Technology, and Society October 7, 2020

Systems Thinking for a Turbulent World

A Search for New Perspectives

Anthony Hodgson

Hosted by Kevin LIndsay and Tom Scholte
In the view of Anthony Hodgson, fragmentation of local and global societies is escalating, and this is aggravating vicious cycles. To heal the rifts, Hodgson believes we need to reintroduce …
Architecture August 20, 2020

Design Cybernetics

Navigating the New

T. Fischer and C.M. Herr

Hosted by Tom Scholte
Those who have followed this podcast in the past, and those who follow developments in cybernetics in the present, will be no strangers to the name Ranulph Glanville. This brilliant …
Economics January 21, 2020

Loonshots

How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries

Safi Bahcall

Hosted by Curiosity Daily
Safi Bahcall's Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries (St. Martin's Press, 2019) reveals a surprising new way of thinking about the …
Chinese Studies January 2, 2020

Information Fantasies

Precarious Mediation in Postsocialist China

Xiao Liu

Hosted by Tom Scholte
International and transnational historiography has given us vivid glimpses of the development and impact of cybernetics on a national scale in such countries as the Soviet Union, Chile and, of …
Anthropology July 4, 2019

Bowen Theory’s Secrets

Revealing the Hidden Life of Families

Michael E. Kerr

Hosted by Eugenio Duarte
A pivotal development in the history of psychology was the invention of family systems theory by psychiatrist Murray Bowen. He was among the first to observe families in a naturalistic …
Philosophy June 10, 2019

Representation in Cognitive Science

Nicholas Shea

Hosted by Carrie Figdor
In order to explain thought in natural physical systems, mainstream cognitive science posits representations, or internal states that carry information about the world and that are used by the system …
Architecture June 4, 2019

Codify

Parametric and Computational Design in Landscape Architecture

Bradley Cantrell and Adam Mekies

Hosted by Tricia Keffer
Landscape architecture has a long history of innovation in the areas of computation and media, particularly in how the discipline represents, analyses, and constructs complex systems. Bradley Cantrell and Adam …
Science, Technology, and Society May 10, 2019

Cybernetics and Systems

Social and Business Decisions

Raul Espejo

Hosted by Tom Scholte
Regular listeners of this podcast will, no doubt, be familiar with the name of Raul Espejo, former Director of Operations of Stafford Beer’s famed Cybersyn Project under the Chilean government …
Systems and Cybernetics March 20, 2019

Philosophy, Processes, Practice

Philosophy, Processes, Practice

Mary C. Edson, Pamela Buckle Henning, and Sankar Shankaran

Hosted by Tom Scholte
Like a number of the books discussed on this podcast, A Guide to Systems Research: Philosophy, Processes, Practice (Springer, 2017), was intended to fill gaps in a field that, through …
Anthropology February 4, 2019

Social Systems and Design

Gary Metcalf

Hosted by Tom Scholte
In the opening chapter of his edited volume, Social Systems and Design, out from Springer in 2014, Gary Metcalf asks if it is possible to establish ethical “first principles” for …
Science January 2, 2019

Principles of Systems Science

George E. Mobus and Michael C. Kalton

Hosted by Tom Scholte
Of the many barriers to a more robust presence for systems approaches in the academy, the relative scarcity of sufficient introductory textbooks in the field stands out as a particular …
Psychology November 19, 2018

Doing Research on Purpose

A Control Theory Approach to Experimental Psychology

Richard S. Marken

Hosted by Tom Scholte
Listeners familiar with our recent podcasts exploring the remarkable legacy of William T. Powers revolutionary Perceptual Control Theory of human behaviour, including its contribution to cognitive behavioural therapy through the …
Psychology October 26, 2018

A Transdiagnostic Approach to CBT using Method of Levels Therapy

Distinctive Features

Warren Mansell, Timothy A. Carey, Sara J. Tai

Hosted by Tom Scholte
To many, the title, A Transdiagnostic Approach to CBT using Method of Levels Therapy: Distinctive Features (Routledge, 2012) , may seem incongruous with a podcast channel called "New Books in …
Anthropology October 4, 2018

Upside-Down Gods

Gregory Bateson's World of Difference

Peter Harries-Jones

Hosted by Tom Scholte
The work of polymath Gregory Bateson has long been the road to cybernetics travelled by those approaching this trans-disciplinary field from the direction of the social sciences and even the …