Welcome

“Humanity is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your life unravelling it, don’t say you’ve wasted your time.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Most of humanity’s problems, such as war, poverty, and climate change, are self-inflicted. Sustainable, long-term solutions can only be found by unravelling Dostoevsky’s mystery of humanity. But this can only be done through an honest, rational, objective, and scientific understanding of human nature. I will post one article a week on a Wednesday morning (GMT). These articles will discuss human nature from the ground floor up. They include, therefore, articles on evolution and systems science. The topics that I have covered to date, and will cover in the future, are listed on the Index page. I would recommend reading them in the order listed, as each article builds on those previously published. You can also see the articles in my Quora space at rational-understanding.quora.com.  If you would like to receive articles by email, please click the subscribe button. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, I will be pleased to hear from you. My email address is email@johnachalloner.com.


Most Recent Posts

Foundations of Systems Science: Key Researchers

I have recently been developing a new series of course modules introducing the work of some of the researchers who have made important contributions to the foundations of systems science. The first five modules cover Ludwig von Bertalanffy, W. Ross Ashby, Alexander Bogdanov, Ilya Prigogine and Roy Bhaskar. Together they introduce important ideas concerning systems…

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Foundational Causality

New paper and course modules: Foundational Causality Causality is fundamental to systems thinking, explanation, diagnosis and intervention. Yet causal relationships are often represented in highly compressed form: A → B. My latest General Systems Theory paper, Foundational Causality, asks what lies behind that arrow. Beginning with processes and physical transfers of matter, energy and embodied…

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An Imagined Conversation Between Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Roy Bhaskar

The following is, of course, an imaginary conversation, but one I suspect might have taken place had Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Roy Bhaskar ever met. Bertalanffy: For many years I have argued that science has become fragmented into isolated disciplines. We need a General Systems Theory capable of describing organised wholes wherever they occur. Bhaskar:…

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Here are five simple questions for you to meditate upon:

  1. How confident are you that you know the problems of humanity?
  2. To what extent do you care about those problems?
  3. How confident are you that you understand why these problems exist?
  4. How confident are you that you know the solutions to these problems?
  5. How empowered do you feel to make a difference?

If you would like to reply to these questions (and only these questions) in a 90 second, anonymous questionnaire, click here https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/S2CQBGL.

When sufficient people have responded I will publish the results here.