Here are 100 books that The Systems View of Life fans have personally recommended if you like
The Systems View of Life.
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One way I bring lightness and wonder to my life is through the joy of observing something new around me in this world. The new thing might be the forty Heavenly Blue morning glories that bloomed one morning for my father and me, finding an ancient fossil shell in a skirt of fallen shale at the bottom of a cliff or hearing Balinese gamelan music for the first time. But each time one of these wonders lights up my day, I am reminded of how limited our ability to observe is. Each of these books gave me a view into a world I had not even dreamed about.
All my life I’ve loved looking closely at the natural world to see as much as possible: Why is that leaf broken? Was a chipmunk digging here? Is that a different kind of mushroom? But no matter how closely I looked, I was unaware of the overwhelming complexities and sophistication of the fungal world.
Sheldrake shows the interconnections, not metaphysical ones but actual physical and chemical connections, between fungi, plants, and even living, moving animals. If that chapter about ants doesn’t change how you see the world, I don’t know what will. Fungi own the world, and we are just lucky to live in it.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “brilliant [and] entrancing” (The Guardian) journey into the hidden lives of fungi—the great connectors of the living world—and their astonishing and intimate roles in human life, with the power to heal our bodies, expand our minds, and help us address our most urgent environmental problems.
“Grand and dizzying in how thoroughly it recalibrates our understanding of the natural world.”—Ed Yong, author of I Contain Multitudes
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—Time, BBC Science Focus, The Daily Mail, Geographical, The Times, The Telegraph, New Statesman, London Evening Standard, Science Friday
I have been intrigued by the stranger, lesser-known parts of the natural world for as long as I can remember and have been continuing to explore those themes in my own work. I love that humans haven’t learned all there is to know about the natural forces that have ruled this planet for longer than we’ve been here. I enjoy books that peel back a layer into these mysteries by writers who have an appreciation for their existence, their ingenuity, and their importance. I have dedicated much of my career to synthesizing big topics into accessible, engaging, and fun information that creates curiosity and a desire to understand the world around us.
I found this bookto be a fascinating journey into realms of the world below the surface I had never thought about or even known existed. Cave diving is my worst nightmare, so one particular section stands out about the wild, terrifying, and utterly unrelatable passion of cave divers and the perils one faces when stuck very, very underground.
The mixture of purely natural environments and human-created ones, such as underground tunnels and cities, all held my attention as pieces of information I had read very little about in the past, all collected into one unifying theme. Having such a broad but specific topic all in one read was a fun, dynamic journey.
In Underland, Robert Macfarlane delivers an epic exploration of the Earth's underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself. Traveling through the dizzying expanse of geologic time-from prehistoric art in Norwegian sea caves, to the blue depths of the Greenland ice cap, to a deep-sunk "hiding place" where nuclear waste will be stored for 100,000 years to come-Underland takes us on an extraordinary journey into our relationship with darkness, burial, and what lies beneath the surface of both place and mind.
Global in its geography and written with great lyricism, Underland speaks powerfully to our present…
I love businesses and have been lucky enough to work for and with some great ones in my career in senior leadership positions. For me, leadership is an extraordinary privilege, so we have a responsibility to do it well and keep learning and improving ourselves and the organisations we lead. My journey into more conscious leadership began over 30 years ago, well ahead of the current movement, and it has progressively become the passion driving my work to help leaders and organisations contribute to building a better world. This passion also drives my service with a number of spiritual communities, including Sundial House and the Community of Living Ethics.
Wheatley took me into the world of interconnectedness and systems in leadership and organisations on a relational level long before systems became a hot topic in leadership and organisations. She described the world of work I could see but didn’t yet live in.
Though published more than 30 years ago, its strategies and practical advice for leaders are as powerful and relevant now as they were surprising and challenging in terms of the accepted wisdom of the leadership of that time.
Though science isn’t my thing, I love how Wheatley blends science–insights from chaos theory, quantum physics, and biology–to open up an understanding of organisational dynamics and emergence. I love the note of optimism running through the book that would surely stir all but the most ‘set in their ways’ leaders to different action.
The new edition of the bestselling, acclaimed, and influential guide to applying the new science to organizations and management. In this new edition, Margaret Wheatley describes how the new science radically alters our understanding of the world and how it can teach us to live and work well together in these chaotic times.
We live in a time of chaos, rich in potential for new possibilities. A new world is being born. We need new ideas, new ways of seeing, and new relationships to help us now. New science—the new discoveries in biology, chaos theory, and quantum physics that are…
Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks…
As an innovation expert for over 30 years, I've been cautioning about
the "dark side" of innovation and emphasized the importance of
sustainability. Though in light of the urgency of our planet's
situation, we need to shift our focus from sustainability to
regeneration. The unprecedented complexity and
connectedness of today’s world demand thinking in systems,
and the kind of innovation that leads to the transformation of our
current social and economic systems so we can live in harmony
with nature. This requires us to question who we collaborate
with, what we value, and how we create value. We need to work
together differently, with different leadership, and to change our own ways of thinking.
If the first two books provide the general context and rationale for systemic approaches, the following three will offer some guidance for the other necessities for thriving in the 21st century: achieving transformational change, shifting towards urgently needed regeneration, and the twin path of developing as a person and as a leader in order to facilitate the transformational change we need.
By now (almost) everyone will have realized: we cannot continue on the trajectories we are currently on, there is just not enough planet left. But how do we go about introducing the transformative change we so urgently need?
We all know how challenging change is, be it at the personal or organizational level. Otto has developed a systemic approach that is based on collaboration and co-creation, considers systems and has been proven to work (which he illustrates through case studies from around the world).
Access the deepest source of inspiration and vision
We live in a time of massive institutional failure that manifests in the form of three major divides: the ecological, the social, and the spiritual. Addressing these challenges requires a new consciousness and collective leadership capacity. In this groundbreaking book, Otto Scharmer invites us to see the world in new ways and in so doing discover a revolutionary approach to learning and leadership.
In most large systems today, we collectively create results that no one wants. What keeps us stuck in such patterns of the past? It’s our blind spot, that is,…
In 2009, I opted out of a career in consulting to pursue a PhD in Sociology and to research women who opt out of successful careers to live and work on their own terms. I was convinced that it wasn’t a women’s issue but a contemporary one and I later went on to research men opting out. As I collect stories of people who opt out and in, it becomes clear that opting out is a symptom of contemporary organizational cultures and the way we are expected to work. I’m on a mission to change working life as we know it and these books have been enormously helpful to me.
I was impressed by this book because it so clearly explains why the way we think about business, work, and organizations has to change and it shows us how everything is connected.
The system we have known for as long as we can remember is no longer working. On the contrary, it’s harming us, our health, our wellbeing, our planet, and our future. Only by rethinking the way we lead and organize can we secure a future for ourselves and our planet.
The book is visually beautiful, it is life-affirming and full of examples of organizations that are already doing things differently, and it also works as a handbook for becoming a regenerative leader.
This book by leadership and sustainability experts Giles Hutchins and Laura Storm provides an exciting and comprehensive framework for building regenerative life-affirming businesses. It offers a multitude of business cases, fascinating examples from nature’s living systems, insights from the front-line pioneers and tools and techniques for leaders to succeed and thrive in the 21st century.
Regenerative Leadership draws inspiration from pioneering thinking within biomimicry, circular economy, adult developmental psychology, anthropology, biophilia, sociology, complexity theory and next-stage leadership development. It connects the dots between these fields through a powerful framework that enables leadership to become regenerative: in harmony with life, building…
As an innovation expert for over 30 years, I've been cautioning about
the "dark side" of innovation and emphasized the importance of
sustainability. Though in light of the urgency of our planet's
situation, we need to shift our focus from sustainability to
regeneration. The unprecedented complexity and
connectedness of today’s world demand thinking in systems,
and the kind of innovation that leads to the transformation of our
current social and economic systems so we can live in harmony
with nature. This requires us to question who we collaborate
with, what we value, and how we create value. We need to work
together differently, with different leadership, and to change our own ways of thinking.
It is clear, at least to me, that significant, indeed transformation change is necessary if we are to preserve the beauty of our planet.
Well, not only the beauty, its ability to sustain life.
For such transformation to happen, we need to start with ourselves – most people will be familiar with the quote by Mahatma Gandhi: be the change you want to see in the world.
In her book Dorothea shares her own story, which is a journey of integrating the innovation and sustainability agendas for Philips, and of realizing the connectedness of the own personal development journey and the journey of developing as a leader.
Inspired by the WBCSD Vision 2050 in which "all people live well within the limits of the planet", this book asks how do we achieve this bold ambition? Telling a story of personal growth and corporate transformation, it provides insights and tools for anyone driving sustainable development within their organizations and in their own lives. Discover how you can consciously use your professional role as a source of change. Learn how the consistent use of few, yet meaningful visuals, enables generative dialogue and communication for aligned problem solving within multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder teams. See how personal mastery can guide you…
Everybody knows that all animals—bats, bears, sharks, ponies, and people—start out as a single cell: the fertilized egg. But how does something no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence give rise to the remarkable complexity of each of these creatures?
I have always been interested in the overview, the joined-up, the patterns, trends, and directions rather than the details of things. As a biologist, this led me to study animal behaviour rather than molecules. Great things come from the cross-overs between disciplines. Bridges are there to be made between islands of knowledge. Both my books (Wild Health and Another Self) are books that bridge a huge divide between knowledge acquired from reductionist research and that gained by experience. We humans use both.
I loved the way Guy Claxton joined the dots between so many separate scientific disciplines.
He is (I believe) a professor of linguistics, yet he dove into human biology with clarity and gusto, presenting an accessible description of an extremely complex concept—that intelligence incorporates our whole body, not just our brain.
An enthralling exploration that upends the prevailing view of consciousness and demonstrates how intelligence is literally embedded in the palms of our hands
If you think that intelligence emanates from the mind and that reasoning necessitates the suppression of emotion, you'd better think again-or rather not "think" at all. In his provocative new book, Guy Claxton draws on the latest findings in neuroscience and psychology to reveal how our bodies-long dismissed as mere conveyances-actually constitute the core of our intelligent life. From the endocrinal means by which our organs communicate to the instantaneous decision-making prompted by external phenomena, our bodies…
I have always been interested in the overview, the joined-up, the patterns, trends, and directions rather than the details of things. As a biologist, this led me to study animal behaviour rather than molecules. Great things come from the cross-overs between disciplines. Bridges are there to be made between islands of knowledge. Both my books (Wild Health and Another Self) are books that bridge a huge divide between knowledge acquired from reductionist research and that gained by experience. We humans use both.
I loved Sally Adee’s journalistic approach to a scientific topic that has been ignored by biologists for too long. She has a relaxed voice that allows her to personalize the question of why physicists, medics, and biologists are not communicating sufficiently about our electrical properties.
It's a wonderful joining up of scientific reluctance with the bloody obvious.
I’m a geoscientist and writer, and ever since my childhood explorations of the ponds, creeks, cliffs and forests of my native Ontario I’ve been fascinated with the natural world. During my PhD studies and subsequent academic career I’ve been fortunate to experience the thrill of experiment and discovery, and I’m passionate about communicating the wonders of science to others. I try to do that in my own books. Those I’ve recommended here, in my opinion, do it superbly.
This book is a collection of essays, letters, and lectures about the intrinsic value, importance, and beauty of science by one of its most talented and passionate communicators. Dawkins’s clear and often witty treatment of complex scientific issues is a breath of fresh air in this time of misinformation and ‘fake news.’ He writes primarily about biology, his own specialty, but ranges widely from ecology to evolution to genetics and even life beyond planet earth. Throughout, his incisive prose conveys the thrill and wonder of scientific discovery.
Richard Dawkins - author of The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, and The God Delusion - is one of science's greatest communicators. This anthology of more than forty pieces is a kaleidoscopic argument for the power and the glory of science.
Breathtaking, brilliant and passionate, these essays, journalism, lectures and letters make an unanswerable case for the wonder of scientific discovery and its power to stir the imagination; for the practical necessity of scientific endeavour to society; and for the importance of the scientific way of thinking - particularly in today's 'post-truth' world.
Citizen Scientist begins with this extraordinary statement by the Keeper of Entomology at the London Museum of Natural History, “Study any obscure insect for a week and you will then know more than anyone else on the planet.”
As the author chases the obscure Western red-bellied tiger beetle across New…
I was once an academic philosopher, but I found it too glamorous and well-paid so I became a novelist and private intellectual mentor instead. I wroteYou Are Herebecause I love whatscience knows, but an interest in howscience knows drew me into the philosophy of science, where a puzzle lurks. Scientists claim that the essence of their craft is captured in a 17th Century formula, “the scientific method”... and in a 20th Century litmus test, “falsifiability.” Philosophers claim that these two ideas are (a) both nonsense and (b) in any case mutually contradictory. So what’s going on?
There are many short, accessible introductions to what current philosophers of science spend their time arguing about; this is one of the best. It wisely doesn’t cover everything, but instead uses Francis Bacon’s crucial break with the authority of Aristotle as a point of entry into current debates on half a dozen core issues such as inductive inference, progress, and realism.
Few can imagine a world without telephones or televisions; many depend on computers and the Internet as part of daily life. Without scientific theory, these developments would not have been possible.
In this exceptionally clear and engaging introduction to philosophy of science, James Ladyman explores the philosophical questions that arise when we reflect on the nature of the scientific method and the knowledge it produces. He discusses whether fundamental philosophical questions about knowledge and reality might be answered by science, and considers in detail the debate between realists and antirealists about the extent of scientific knowledge. Along the way, central…
