Jessie Henshaw

Jessie Lydia Henshaw First joined 1985 Title Member Affiliation Research Natural Systems Scientist, Consultant, and Teacher at HDS natural systems design science Notable works A natural science of self-organizing system design, development, and behavior in context. Interest in SIGs (devl) ISSS SIG Chair, Natural Systems Design Sci. Degree(s) BS Physics, M.Arch, 40 years of fieldwork Field(s) of study A form of physics, a "New Physics," for studying the material designs of natural systems in-context. University(ies) St. Lawrence, Stoney Brook, Columbia, Univ. Pa. Specialization(s) fieldwork and teaching ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6341-5367 Notable Awards or Achievements finding that energy use requires organizational transformations and that evolution is also an exploratory growth process, not random. Links https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessilydia-henshaw

Jessie Lydia Henshaw Today, Jessie is an empirical systems scientist and consultant. She uses her physics to help illuminate the designs of nature in context, opening a viable path for science to begin studying self-animating systems of nature as physical subjects in context, i.e., "natural systems." Early on, she noticed that theory and data might get it all wrong, but that contrast could also illuminate the world of natural system designs too. After all, it is reading nature’s signals of design and change that we rely on to get along today, too, as humans did throughout our long evolution.

She relies on developing a sensitivity to change in environmental contexts and learning to expand on the readily observable signals of change as the weather changes, as relationships and cultures change, and as nature changes. Watching Emerging systems helps one find what signals of change in their worlds determine how they will steer their paths and transform. You see in the smoke rising above the candle a system of flow that is very organized and can abruptly become very disorganized. The tipping points for these kinds of transformations are often quite similar, so understanding one helps one understand many others.

Emerging systems all capture energy and resources to multiply their starting designs. So, how they fit or don't fit that model is the first step into real science. That burst of growth may either just fail by itself or, as an exploratory system, it may adapt to keep finding new and bigger resources. That will, of course, collide with new contexts that don't support that, but one also observes some systems that sense the approach of their limits and respond before disruptively hitting them. It's a common trait of self-organizing systems in general.

That is also what seems to be going on inside the systems that display the ubiquitous “S” curve growth path, from energetic take-off to reorganizing to achieve a smooth landing at the practical new scald for the context. The study of such behaviors draws you into a holistic awareness of their whole world behaving almost like one.

A guide to the normal sequence of tipping points, stages of growth and adaptation that punctuate emergence

Growth is an organizational, not numerical, process that begins with a “germination event” as contextual factors couple and start to reproduce. It is sometimes noticeable, like when a new game, project, or friendship takes off, but they are always implied where there’s evidence of regular proportional change: growth.

Sadly, it is some of the most innovative and successful people who become powerfully stuck on their own ideas of how things should work in nature, often long after they stop working. For example, our reliance today on regularly doubling the scale, complexity, and demands of our global economy is utterly foolhardy, but also our main quest. That could indeed cause our civilization to fully collapse and vanish if we proceed as other civilizations before us: trying to expand their powers to infinity to the end, naturally disrupting the working designs of everything they relied on. - Oops! She joined the ISSS as SGSR in 1984 and rejoined in 2020. In between, she did the research needed to fill out the new general systems science she had developed in the late 1970s based on careful fieldwork observation of the emergence of orderly energy systems and their evolving designs found in the complexly organized natural microclimates. There are so many things nature does differently than theory or lab tests; it's a wonder that more study of the working designs of nature isn't first and foremost in teaching science.

It was an unusual coincidence that let her notice and write up a complete outline of a new general systems theory of organization in nature. Its source might well have been John Maynard Keynes' repeated insistence that compound investing would destabilize civilization, as we now see. Her father, Clement Long Henshaw, an admired physics professor, and Kenneth Boulding, the co-founder of SGSR and noted economist, had been best friends as junior faculty at Colgate in the 1930s before they were married. Ken, having been a student of Keynes at Oxford, and Clem, somehow passed on a kind of marriage of physics and economics to Jessie, born several years later. She does not recall the subject ever coming up, but her first post-graduate work seemed perfectly targeted to prove Keynes' conjecture as a physical law. It went as unnoticed as the many efforts Keynes and Boulding too made to point out that devotion to seeking infinite power over nature would be a very bad idea.

So, much of Jessie's work in the interim and today has been focused on understanding the difference between abstract knowledge and experiential knowledge, the one never giving a user any hint of the things that might go wrong and the latter built layer by layer from contextual experience with how natural systems do and don't misbehave. The systems of mathematics, for example, simply never misbehave. It's only natural systems, embedded in and relying on their contexts, having multiple scales of self-organization organized to work as a whole, that rely on staying within the boundaries of their systemic resilience to avoid the risk of misbehaving when pushed too far. Her humor is expressed as anyone's would be, facing such odd discordances in everyday life, in remarks such as observing: "Infinity, most would agree, is pushing things way too far."

Personal Life

Jessie lives in New York City and is grateful for its rich culture, the generosity of the government, and the freedom she finds in retirement to explore and connect with people and perhaps start new careers.

Academia and Career

Public school in the small town of Hamilton, New York; Studying physics, math, Russian, sports, art, and theater at St Lawrence University; three years based in Brooklyn with post-college friends connected with a farm in Tennessee, group travel and experiments, and redeveloping the 1892 Earlville Opera house as rural arts and culture center, while trying out new academic and employment options. For grad school, she put physics aside, looking for something creative, and found an inspirational three years at the University of Pennsylvania Architecture and Landscape Design School, where one of the first genius voices of modern architecture, Louis I. Kahn, led the school. After graduating in a recession, she decided to travel, visiting friends and running out of money in Denver, taking work as a carpenter, then contracting some. Sharing a house gave her resources and time to do the microclimate field work that changed her life. In the '80s, she started her architectural career, paying dues for years and advancing to work on prestige jobs with fine firms: Beyer Blinder Belle, Gwathmey Siegel, Rockwell, KPF, H3., continuing new systems science at nights and weekends when the architecture wasn't taking nights and weekends.

Current

Jessie's research and consulting practice is HDS Natural Systems Design Science at: 'synapse9.com/sighals' Her main expertise is in building a context of awareness of the world in which someone's concerns are found and put in context. That involves reading "book zero" (the context without interpretation) and noticing emerging patterns and gaps as opportunities or concerns. For design work, the intent is to provide facilities for someone else's creative use and reading of the potentials of the context. Living systems both love and hate surprises, want things they can't have, and to have fun and be satisfied with trying. For science, it's identifying typical patterns of natural system designs, behaviors, and interactions that help others find and respond to those of interest in their time and place.

Above all, responding to the chaos of our world's place and time calls for us to "recover enough of our most ancient skills and understandings, still deep within us." Language is one of those ever-present places where the deepest of ancient human knowledge is often hidden in plain sight. It's the words that refer to observable common subjects, things, and experiences that date back thousands of years and come with a package of accumulated cultural perspective and wisdom.

The urgent need for better and more understandable systems science

Anyone can see why our planet is in trouble without trusting theory or facts. Follow your instincts to the great ironies. One big “tipoff” is that the smartest species ever is wholeheartedly committed to the stupidest of all possible plans for its future, growing its power to infinity! Synapse9.com/CO2.jpg

Video Presentations

Jessie's better recorded public ISSS talks are on her YouTube Channel. Some of the oldest are of talks given earlier. See the notes.

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Selected Publications

At the top of the List of papers and reports are services, email, citations, ID, and Site links.