Hull Centre for Systems Studies hosts two high profile events; 2-3 June 2021

The Centre for Systems Studies at the University of Hull hosts an annual lecture by a high-profile speaker. The format is for an hour-long presentation to be followed by a dialogue with Emeritus Professor Mike Jackson. Over the last few years, hundreds of people from all over the UK have travelled to Hull to participate in these events. In 2021, the lecture will be free to access online, and will therefore be open to a much larger international audience. And, as the topic of the 2021 Lecture is so ground-breaking for Systems Thinking and Systems Science, it will be followed the next day with a mini-symposium:

 

The 2021 Lecture will take place at 1.30 to 3.30pm (BST) on 2 June. It will be delivered by Carlo Rovelli, the celebrated theoretical physicist, whose 'relational' interpretation of quantum mechanics has attracted world-wide attention. Rovelli will propose, in an accessible presentation, that the work of Alexander Bogdanov (who is increasingly being acknowledged as one of the most important early contributors to Systems Science and Systems Thinking) is compatible with his relational interpretation of quantum mechanics, and helps to confirm it. The stage is therefore set for Systems Science to move to centre-stage in the discipline of Physics.

The mini-symposium will then follow, from 8.45am to 6.30pm (BST) on 3 June. This second event (which has been co-organized by the University of Hull, the Financial University of Moscow and the UK Cybernetics Society) will be focused on the life, work and contemporary relevance of Alexander Bogdanov. Carlo Rovelli and Mike Jackson will join a panel of distinguished Bogdanov scholars, who will participate in a range of presentations and discussions.

For those of you who don't know of Bogdanov, he not only developed a 'universal organizational science' at the start of the 20th Century, but was also (with Lenin) a leader of the Bolsheviks in Russia. Bogdanov fell out of favour with Lenin due to their different political and philosophical perspectives, and his work was later suppressed by Stalin. It remained mostly unknown until the 1960s, but the subsequent decades have witnessed increasing awareness of his thinking. Now, in the 21st Century, it is time for the systems research community to fully recognize, not just the importance of Bogdanov to the history of our field, but also the contemporary relevance of his ideas.

These will be two ground-breaking events, accessible free of charge, and I would urge you to sign up for both via the link below. The link contains further details of both events as well as access to registration forms. Note that you have to sign up for each event separately (signing up for one will not give you automatic access to the other):

https://execeducation.hull.ac.uk/the-centre-for-systems-studies-annual-mike-jackson-lecture/?fbclid=IwAR2D3xDEykALKndMWjqWicZKoI91DHImsCB0toePr6J5ttU9tnDua5Q1dZk