Abstract:

About fifty years ago, Jay Forrester identified four elements that formed the foundation of the field he founded, then called industrial dynamics, which we now know as system dynamics.  

But the deep foundation of the field was buried in his (and others') patterns of thought and was not identified then.  Ten years after the field began, a hint of what I sense to be the "deep foundation" appeared in a couple of articles, and it got a little play in the book Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory.  But it is still largely hidden.

After much thought, both conscious and unconscious, I think I'm ready to suggest what crucial pattern of thought underlies systems thinking and system dynamics, and which should underlie all manner of policy thinking, from the level of interpersonal relations and families to global politics.  

The DAPS talk will lay out what I'm beginning to see, push the ideas as far as I've got them so far, give some examples, and leave time for you all to add value to what I'm tussling with.