Field Guide (n): A book for the identification of animals, birds, flowers, or other things in their natural environment; (also in extended use) a book

To live in the wilderness is the beginning of creation R. S. Thomas, in the spirit of his desert theology The Cynefin Field Guide has been in the making

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. Franz Kafka, letter to Oskar Pollak, 1904 A note after Dostoevsky and before Sartre, Camus, and

Twice two makes four is no longer life, gentlemen, but the beginning of death. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground I’ve mentioned before that my

But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him." Luke 15:20 (KJV) In my last

The arrogant claim in some aspects of systems thinking, to claim that the Systems Thinker is able to see both the trees and the forest, is, after all, (in

Places a Pair of Suede Boots Can Take You: Tensegrity, Lotus, and the invisible structure of organisations  Last winter I bought a pair of

I'm pleased to welcome our latest Guest Blogger, Maritina Dimopoulou. In her own words, she is a clinical pharmacist by training. She spent two decades in

The equinox does not pause the wheel; it only marks where it turns in the spirit of Heraclitus A summary of posts since the summer solstice of 2026 The

Leopards break into the temple and drink dry the sacrificial vessels; this happens again and again; in the end it can be predicted, and it becomes part of

"And no man putteth new wine into old wineskins, else the new wine doth burst the skins, and the wine is spilled and the skins will be marred. But new

No fifteenth-century bard wrote Owain Glyndŵr a marwnad. He simply vanished after 1415, and the poets who came after him, Lewys Glyn Cothi among them,

"What is your aim in philosophy? To shew the fly the way out of the fly-bottle." Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §309 Benjamin Taylor posted

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out. Robert Frost, "Mending Wall" The bridge above is a packhorse bridge at the

The worst is not So long as we can say 'This is the worst.' King Lear, Act IV, Scene 1 Five years ago, on the twentieth anniversary, I wrote about the

“Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.” — William James, Principles of Psychology, 1890 The obvious

The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy." — William James, Talks to Teachers, 1899 Adult

How leaders make wise decisions when humans and machines think together.

Who is the genius who can see the whole and knows it is an elephant? And if there is no such genius? How do we know that there is an elephant there? Prof

Counterfeit coin spends as easily as real, until someone asks what backs it. The title is Gresham’s Law, the above is my reworking Simple is good, but too

"We have been disappointed; but disappointments will work for our good, if we make the right use of them.... Be watchful; be patient, be persevering." —

How leaders make wise decisions when humans and machines think together.

"The river is within us, the sea is all about us." — T. S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages (Four Quartets) Extending estuarine mapping to decide where AI belongs

If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there." The Cheshire Cat, in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Brian Arthur’s

The public art of the Greeks, which reached its zenith in their Tragedy, was the expression of the deepest and the noblest principles of the people's

“Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes

Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.Traveller, there is no path; the path is made by walking. Antonio Machado So there are goals in a

"The river is within us, the sea is all about us." T. S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages An estuary, tended rather than defended, salt and fresh water and storm

"The human understanding, when it has once adopted an opinion, draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number

All the excellency of their art consists in pompous gibberish, in a specious babbling, which gives you words instead of reasons, and promises instead of

“Matters concerned with conduct and questions of what is good for us have no fixity, any more than matters of health.” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book

"Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; if it is, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into

"Old wine does not set easily in new wineskins." CBI/IBM Guide to Knowledge Management, 1998 I finished the last post promising two things: an expansion

"Small wonder that Trojans and Achaeans should endure so much and so long, for the sake of a woman so marvellously and divinely lovely." Homer, Iliad,

If you want good roses, sharpen your knife and harden your heart. Patience Strong, The Glory of the Garden (1951) A second Gaping Void illustration today,

The foremost Agile conference of the region returns this 27-28 July!

So, naturalists observe, a fleaHath smaller fleas that on him prey,And these have smaller still to bite ’em,And so proceed ad infinitum. Jonathan Swift,

"So they came presently to the Lotus-eaters... and there was no thought of return." Homer, Odyssey, Book IX (trans. Samuel Butler) The introduction to

"Nor did any sight of smoke, nor any sound... reach them from that shore; only the lotus, and the wish to eat it, and, having eaten, to remain." Homer,

"Whoever ate the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus... wished to stay there forgetting all about going home." Homer, Odyssey, Book IX (trans. Samuel Butler)

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?’ — T. S. Eliot, Choruses from The Rock It is early

Fionn gained the wisdom of the Salmon of Knowledge not by seeking it deliberately, but by accident: a burnt thumb, instinctively sucked. From then on the

… whereas strong dynamic links among components (characterized as nodes) result in a “strong cluster”, weak links between strong clusters give rise to a