Only connect: an annotated bibliography reflecting the breadth and diversity of systems thinking

The field of systems thinking is both broad and diverse. This paper tries to provide assistance to outsiders wishing to find out what systems thinking is and also to insiders interested in exploring areas of the systems movement other than their own. A selection of books, papers and articles is given. Each has a full reference and a brief annotation, this being an account of, and a critical comment on, its content. The selection does not aim to be definitive or authoritative and obviously displays the predilections of the authors. However, the hope is that it will convey a sense of the intellectual and practical endeavours that, to the authors, constitute systems thinking and that it may aid the exploration of the range of holistic ideas that people have found useful in thinking about and acting in the world.

Life before ‘The New Biography’: Modernist biographical methods in the Hogarth Press ‘Books on Tolstoi’ 1920-24

In the early 1920s, before Virginia Woolf wrote her now well-known essays “The New Biography” and “The Art of Biography,” the Hogarth Press published four biographies of Tolstoy. Each of these English translations of Russian works takes a different approach to biographical composition, and as a group they offer multiple and contradictory perspectives on Tolstoy’s character and on the genre of biography in the early twentieth century. These works show that Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press took a multi-perspectival, modernist approach to publishing literary lives.

A critical account of the relationship between institutional trust, risk perception, and technology acceptance with an application to genetically modified foods

This article critically reflects on the widely held view of a causal chain with trust in public authorities impacting technology acceptance via perceived risk. It first puts forward conceptual reason against this view, as the presence of risk is a precondition for trust playing a role in decision making. Second, results from consumer surveys in Italy and Germany are presented that support the associationist model as counter hypothesis. In that view, trust and risk judgments are driven by and thus simply indicators of higher order attitudes toward a certain technology which determine acceptance instead. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Elephants in pyjamas: testing the weak central coherence account of autism spectrum disorders using a syntactic disambiguation task

According to the weak central coherence (CC) account individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) exhibit enhanced local processing and weak part-whole integration. CC was investigated in the verbal domain. Adolescents, recruited using a 2 (ASD status) by 2 (language impairment status) design, completed an aural forced choice comprehension task involving syntactically ambiguous sentences. Half the picture targets depicted the least plausible interpretation, resulting in longer RTs across groups. These were assumed to reflect local processing. There was no ASD by plausibility interaction and consequently little evidence for weak CC in the verbal domain when conceptualised as enhanced local processing. Furthermore, there was little evidence that the processing of syntactically ambiguous sentences differed as a function of ASD or language-impairment status.

Greek printing outside Greece, from the 15th century to e-books

An exhibition of rare Greek printed books, with printed items dating from 1488 to recent decades, and rarely seen in one setting. This exhibition focuses on the typographic continuity of Greek literary culture.

The Earls of Kildare and their books at the end of the Middle Ages

The two surviving inventories of the library of the Fitzgerald Earls of Kildare bear witness to a particularly large and diverse collection of books in the Earls' castle at Maynooth, Co. Kildare. Between them, the lists record well over one hundred separate items in four languages: Latin, French, English and Irish. This paper traces the history of the library and analyses the Fitzgeralds' particular interests as book collectors and as readers. It provides the first full published set of suggested identifications and bibliographical details for the books at Maynooth. It also includes a fresh transcription of the library lists and a discussion of the manuscript context in which they are preserved. Sources like the Kildare library lists provide valuable evidence for the potential circulation of a wide range of non-native manuscripts and prints in late-medieval Ireland.

Vocabulary acquisition in young children: the role of the story

Sharing storybooks with babies increases their future achievements in literacy, especially in reading (Hall, 2001; Moore and Wade, 1997, 2003; Scarborough et al., 1991; Wade and Moore, 1998; Wells, 1985). This study, focusing on case studies of two 20-month-old children, attempts to identify the role the storybook plays in children’s vocabulary acquisition. Their mothers adopted a regime of daily reading of specific picture books over a six-week period, and recorded the children’s acquisition of new vocabulary, in order to explore what specific contribution these texts made to the children’s speech. The findings demonstrate that storybooks form one source of children’s newly-acquired vocabulary. Factors that might account for this were more difficult to determine through a study of this scale.

An open book: what and how young children learn from picture and story books

Looking at and listening to picture and story books is a ubiquitous activity, frequently enjoyed by many young children and their parents. Well before children can read for themselves they are able to learn from books. Looking at and listening to books increases children’s general knowledge, understanding about the world and promotes language acquisition. This collection of papers demonstrates the breadth of information pre-reading children learn from books and increases our understanding of the social and cognitive mechanisms that support this learning. Our hope is that this Research Topic/eBook will be useful for researchers as well as educational practitioners and parents who are interested in optimizing children’s learning. We conceptually divide this research topic into four broad sections, which focus on the nature and attributes of picture and story books, what children learn from picture and story books, the interactions children experience during shared reading, and potential applications of research into shared reading, respectively.

Future, Fortune, and the graphic design of information

This is a study of graphic information designed for Future Books/Future magazine (UK) and Fortune magazine (USA) in the years immediately after the Second World War. It highlights work made by the Isotype Institute for Future, which is then situated against contributions by Abram Games and F. H. K. Henrion. Similar work in Fortune under the art editorship of Will Burtin is discussed in a parallel account, drawing on examples by him and by others including György Kepes, Matthew Liebowitz, Alex Steinweiss and Ladislav Sutnar. Attention is drawn to links and relationships between to the two periodicals and the graphic information published in both. Further comparisons are made between underlying editorial and design strategies pursued by Otto Neurath (Isotype Institute) and Will Burtin. An argument is made for recognising the little-known innovations of Future alongside the long-acknowledged innovations of Fortune.

Everything is about to happen: an ongoing archive of artists’ books

Group exhibition of artist's books including Frozen Tears I - III (2003-7) curated by Gregorio Magnani.

Everything is about to happen: an ongoing archive of artists’ books, as part of The Library Vacine

Group exhibition of artists books curated by Gregorio Magnani, including Frozen Tears I - III (2003-7). Including books by Kasper Andreasen, Linus Bill and Adrien Horni, blisterZine, Daniel Gustav Cramer, Arnaud Desjardin, Michael Dean, Karl Holmqvist, Louis Luthi, Sara MacKillop, Dan Mitchell, Kristen Mueller, Sophie Nys, Simon Popper, Preston is my Paris, Alessandro Roma, Karin Ruggaber, John Russell, Erik Steinbrecher, Peter Tillessen, Erik van der Weijde

The buck passing account of value: assessing the negative thesis

The buck-passing account of value involves a positive and a negative claim. The positive claim is that to be good is to have reasons for a pro-attitude. The negative claim is that goodness itself is not a reason for a pro-attitude. Unlike Scanlon, Parfit rejects the negative claim. He maintains that goodness is reason-providing, but that the reason provided is not an additional reason, additional, that is, to the reason provided by the good-making property. I consider various ways in which this may be understood and reject all of them. So I conclude that buck-passers cannot reject the negative claim.