New peak wind gust at NCAR Mesa Lab in Boulder, 113 MPH about 20 minutes ago. Stronger than the peak 108 MPH gust two days ago. Like the strongest gust at this station in 10+ years (even stronger than Marshall Fire gusts). #COWX

A fun-to-write post on acting in disorder from the perspective of Morin and Morin and Kern. At the center of the post is poetry and prose, two ways of living, connected individually to order and disorder. It is a literary experiment in connecting two polarities. www.gregoryvig.com/p/acting1

Interesting and valuable categorization by Fleming. Reading to understand his definition and discussion of resilience which has taken a different direction than I assumed. Its nice to have your assumptions broken. There is some great stuff in here.

I searched "design studies" on LinkedIn this morning and was encouraged by all of the students earning grad. degrees. It was also an introduction to NC State Uni.'s Ph.D. in Design, which is interesting. Forever interested in @cmu.edu 's Design doctorate, may have to pick this up in the New Year.

Used finds at the bookstore. A gem from 1961. The physics section will be representative of the times and therefore limited, but I am looking forward to the discussion on causality.

Complexity includes certain principles that help the autonomous spirit to achieve knowledge. Whereas a program destroys the autonomy of the seeker, complexity stimulates an autonomous, responsible strategy." - Edgar Morin

"From Being to Doing: The Origins of the Biology of Cognition" is an excellent read. I highly recommend it regardless of knowledge of Maturana's work. Pörksen and Maturana have this casual conversation that teaches the reader about some of Maturana's earliest work, onward to his focus on love.

S. Kauffman & A. Roli discuss the same in their latest paper "Is the Emergence of Life an Expected Phase Transition in the Evolving Universe?" ( arxiv.org/abs/2401.09514 ). Surprisingly, the paper does not mention Maturana and Varela's circular *Autopoiesis* or Pattee's emergent *Hierarchy Theory*.🤔

autopoiesis for fun and profit

When you have storage space, you will store things you don't need. Said goodbye to an old friend this weekend. The CamelBak Hotshot, (Possibly the original model?) Bladder and hose long gone, I'm sure. I had not seen it in years, but it was still a moment to toss it. Good times with this!

Weekend additions to the bookcase. I was never a fan of Hegel until I came across this book. Exactly what I need at this stage and nothing more. An easier task than trying to read "The Phenomenology of the Mind" to start. Excited for the "Complex World" as I had been interested in it for a while.

Excited that my latest talk at the Complexity Lounge is now on YouTube. Titled "Humberto Maturana’s Time: Living in the Present," this talk explores Maturana's 2 modalities of time. This was a great project with new insights gained into how Maturana understood time. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AHY...

Impressed by this view no matter how many times I climb this mountain. Of the peaks in town, this is my favorite. Not pictured: The (partially) planned twilight descent. Fun was had by all. At Green Mountain, in Boulder, Colorado.

The latest on the blog - Cassette Mixtapes and Complex Systems. Still in the vein of "How do we communicate complexity to others?" Also aligned with general exploration in complex systems concerned with variety and the possibilities it can actualize. www.gregoryvig.com/p/mixtapes

Francisco Varela: “The only world we humans know is the one we can create together through the actions of our coexistence.”

Was able to borrow this through interlibrary loan, in exactly this shape, while preparing my talk for Maturana's time. A short read, but I do not think I captured it all. Maturana was taught Heidegger by Dreyfus and his writing started to reflect that, beginning in 1988. Worth exploring it seems.

#Audiophile listening room.

Edgar Morin's "Towards a Study of Humankind Volume 1: The Nature of Nature." I believe this is the only English translation of Morin's 12 (?) total volumes, unfortunately (very much so). But we have volume one which is, on the whole, focused on complexity and a great philosophical read.

Good morning, Saturday.

“You think that because you understand ‘One’ that you must therefore understand ‘Two’ because one and one make two. But you forget that you must also understand ‘and.’ Donella Meadows

"Only love expands intelligence. To live in love is to accept the other and the conditions of his existence as a source of richness, not as opposition, restriction or limitation" Humberto Maturana Man Looking at Woman, by Adolph Gottlieb #Art

This is one of my favorite recent blog posts. Writing about how we talk about complexity to others, especially those who have never heard of it, is so important to me. A sense of complexity seems like it's a critical part of a grander ongoing transition.

A nice shift in perceived colour between central and peripheral vision. The fixated disc looks purple while the others look blue. The effect presumably comes from the absence of S-cones in the fovea. From Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt: arxiv.org/pdf/2509.115...

"Complex systems have a history. Not only do they evolve through time, but their past is co-responsible for their present behaviour. Any analysis of a complex system that ignores the dimension of time is incomplete" - Paul Cilliers, Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems

After the settling and depletion following a big talk, there is a lull that is filled with energy and exhaustion. A potential impeded by tiredness. I hope what I have written during that time will be the beginning of my next journal publication. I am enjoying writing beyond the blog.

I gave my last planned talk of the year on November 18th at the Complexity Lounge titled "Humberto Maturana's Time: Living in the Present." I will post the YouTube link here on the platform when it becomes available. This was a great talk to research and put together, definitely a favorite.

Your invitation to come see me talk about time from the perspective of the giant Humberto Maturana! www.meetup.com/complexitylo...

New blog post on GregoryVig: "The Stability of Instability." Likely the shortest post I have ever written, it focuses on how periods of an emergency marked by instability can be distinguished as the emergency stabilizing. Instability is the emergency stabilizing as unstable tinyurl.com/2ssv6yhy

Sigur Rós (Iceland) with a full orchestra in Denver tonight. I might have put a little more pep in the set list, but otherwise flawless, and the rarest of rare opportunities. Will definitely keep listening. I recommend Takk... for an easy album to get into and it's celebrating 20 years!

Edgar Morin, French sociologist in Complex Thought, wrote a curriculum for complex thinking for UNESCO. It provides themes like pertinent knowledge, error and illusion, the understanding of others, human reality. Link to the PDF of this short work. unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/p...

At the beginning of a Sigur Rós concert. Cannot believe I am here.

For some uplifting, amazing music, listen to #Seirom. burningworldrecords.bandcamp.com/album/and-th...

I have been meaning to write this for a while, but was recently inspired to sit down and do so. A look at introducing complexity beyond technical, theoretical, and terminology-based approaches. The goal was to find a certain clearness in its communication. www.gregoryvig.com/p/introducin...

The People (Das Volk) https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/57364

A talk for managing through the difficult, uncertain, and unexpected times delivered from the perspective of Edgar Morin's work and personal experience. I am excited to share it. #complexity It is on Substack as a video & podcast and is now available on Spotify. www.gregoryvig.com/p/incidentops

A brief piece on human dimensions intersecting w/influence A short (5-minute) essay beginning a miniseries on positively, ethically, and realistically influencing others and the challenges found there while interacting with human dimensions, starting with vision. #Maturana www.gregoryvig.com/p/wine

"Technology can be lived...as a value in which all is subordinated to the pleasure lived through doing it.... Technology becomes an addiction whose presence those addicted wish to justify through rational arguments founded on the historical reality of its great expansion in modern times" -Maturana

"Machines differ from living systems...in their reference. The organization of machines... always has an alloreferential domain of interactions....Living systems, as a result of their basic circular organization...have a self-referred domain of interactions" - Maturana, on AI, 1970

“That beyond death nothing should arise, and that beyond death there should be only death.....Because death is death and life without death is only emptiness” –Humberto R. Maturana.

"Language does not describe a preexisting world, but creates the world about which it speaks" - Winograd & Flores.

Just need to repost this again. Greatest productivity hack you can ever do, and good for peace of mind at the same time. Just Create Everything else will follow. Yes, really.

Hello everyone. This morning, I lectured on the complexity of incident operations from a natural hazards perspective, largely through the work of Morin, my own experiences, and Maturana. This talk had been in development for a while & Morin took it over the finish line Patreon: tinyurl.com/2tmj49bn

Happy to report the Journal of Emergency Management has accepted my paper! "Transitioning From Biological Networks To Participation In Social Networks Through Emotion And Sensorimotor Activity." A paper on resilience and adoption. A page and a quarter brief communication turned 11-page article.

BREAKING: Scientists are staging a “science fair” in the lobby of a Congressional building to tell elected officials about the critical knowledge the US will lose because their research grants have been canceled.

Like Maturana was openly critical about, drawing relations between non-intersecting domains is the stuff of shadow theaters. I am seeing this happen in the wildfire technology space, where comparisons are being made across domains that have nothing to do with one another. That is not helpful.

“Never before in the history of humanity have the responsibilities of thinking weighed so crushingly on us. Thinking about tragedy has itself become tragic” - Morin & Kern

Announcing my next online lecture titled "Complexity and Incident Response Operations" on July 9. An exploration of incident response from the perspective of brilliant complexity researcher (& philosopher) Edgar Morin & insights from my experience. See you there! complexoperations.eventbrite.com

I listened to this recently and found it generally informative. Almost enough to make me want to reexamine a few of his titles at the local book store. Almost.

As a photographer, get weird and arty when there's bad lighting or the entire band faces their back to the crowd. I had the most fun taking photos of Dragged Into Sunlight at Damnation Fest 2024! Dragged Into Sunlight | Damnation Fest 2024 #metalsky #livemusicphotography #photography