Publications

Recommended Books, Videotapes, & Papers

Here we list our publications as well as those by others which we recommend.

Internet:

The United Nations Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS) has published two of our papers:

"The ECOCOSM Paradox: Humanity's Tragic Dilemmas Arising from Earth's Environmental Crisis"
"Intellectual Roots and Philosophy of System Dynamics"
(see below for paper details)

Books:

"Understanding Complexity" edited by Gillian Ragsdell and Jennifer Wilby, 2001.

This book is a collection of the plenary presentations made during the World Congress of the Systems Sciences in Toronto in 2000.  It addresses subjects such as sustainability, complex systems theory, forecasting, and the future of systems science.  It includes our address entitled "The Bridge to Humanity's Future", which was also published in "Kybernetes: The International Journal of Systems and Cybernetics", 2002.

"To Govern Evolution:  Further Adventures of the Political Animal" by Walter Truett Anderson.

The message of this excellent book by Walter Truett Anderson is that the human species is gaining increasing control of its own evolution.  It discusses the signs of this haphazard transition to evolutionary governance, and appeals to the need to develop a world social and political concept to consciously and responsibly embrace and support this governance.

Videotapes:

"A System Dynamics View of Sustainability" by Willard R. Fey and Ann C. W. Lam, 1998.

This is a videotape of our plenary presentation at the ISSS 1998 annual meeting.  It includes complete audio and video of our multimedia, computer-generated presentation.  The tape running time is 33 minutes.

Papers:

"The Bridge to Humanity's Future" by Willard R. Fey and Ann C. W. Lam, 2000.

This paper describes the ECOCOSM Paradox and presents a method which can be used to solve it. We recommend this paper along with the videotape as a first introduction to our ideas.

"The ECOCOSM Paradox: Humanity's Tragic Dilemmas Arising from Earth's Environmental Crisis" by Willard R. Fey and Ann C. W. Lam, 1999.

This paper contains the complete text and diagrams presented in the videotape "A System Dynamics View of Sustainability", along with an additional explanation of the ECOCOSM Paradox. This is one of the articles published online in the United Nations EOLSS.

"Pie in the Sky: A System Dynamics Perspective of Sustainability" by Willard R. Fey and Ann C. W. Lam, 1998.

This is the more detailed paper which was published in the ISSS 1998 conference procedings.

"Organizational Change From a New Perspective: Pattern Feedback Control in Human Systems" by Willard R. Fey, 2002.

This paper was given as a plenary address to the 2002 meeting of the System Dynamics Society. It develops the thesis of earlier papers on the causes, consequences, and resolution of Earth’s environmental crisis to specifically address the difficulties and complexities of managing organizational change in human systems.

"Intellectual Roots and Philosophy of System Dynamics" by Willard R. Fey, 2001.

This paper describes the historical roots and philosophy of system dynamics, a methodology which the author co-founded at MIT, and which was used in the popular and controversial book "Limits To Growth". This is one of the articles published online in the United Nations EOLSS.

"Technology Forecasting in the ECOCOSM Paradox" by Willard R. Fey and Ann C. W. Lam, 1999.

This paper deals with the difficulties in trying to forecast the possible outcomes of the various responses to the Earth's environmental crises. It defines and describes the concept of meta-feedback loops.