= a pattern language method developed by Tim Winton: " the patterns of nature hold the key to the principles of sustainability of any system, of any type, at any scale."

Context

1. Tim Winton:

"Nature demonstrates that integrating multiple patterns of organisation is the key to sustaining its systems. I call the ability to recognise and understand multiple patterns of organisation ‘systems thinking’. Intuitively at first, I began experimenting with using natural systems to introduce people to balancing and integrating many patterns, not just the limited amount they identified with based on their cultural conditioning. As I developed and formalised this approach into PatternDynamics™, it proved to be a powerful method for making this kind of systems thinking meaningful and therefore useful in organisational settings. In the end it allowed us to overcome many of our challenges at Permaforest Trust and to create a unique and quite special sustainability community."

(PD Workshop Workbook)

2. David Macleod:

"For Whitehead, nature (and life - all of nature is alive for Whitehead) is rhythm; and rhythm is a polarity; and a polarity is two poles with a mediating third.

So that trinitarian dynamic is there fundamentally in the basic metaphysical categories and then exemplified at every scale in nature via a relational process.

...this trinitarian dynamic is what's real, is what powers evolution even."

I work with PatternDynamics, which is a Pattern Language developed by Tim Winton, which names Rhythm and Polarity as the first two of six 1st order patterns that operate in all systems. The third pattern is Structure (I could make an argument for its role as a mediating third), and the fourth pattern is Exchange - playing the pivotal role of "relational process."

(https://footnotes2plato.substack.com/p/christianity-buddhism-and-hinduism)

Description

1. Tim Winton:

"PatternDynamics is a language of visual Patterns – a ‘Sustainability Pattern Language’– that will help you understand, communicate and design solutions at the systems level. By learning PatternDynamic you will gain a powerful new capacity as a ‘systems thinker’– a skill that is often thought to be unteachable.

With this skill you will learn to create Cultures of Sustainability and to facilitate Deep Sustainability Design: sustainability strategies that help resolve complex challenges at any level of organisation, from the community to the planetary, and in any domain, from business to governance to institutional."

(PD Workshop Workbook)

2. Integral Permaculture:

"Tim Winton, steeped in both Permaculture and Integral Theory, has deveolped a new Integral Sustainability Pattern Language to communicate principles of sustainability.

According to Winton,

PatternDynamics is a simple tool that can be learned by anyone to overcome the challenges posed by complex systems–at any scale.

Here’s how it works:

The key to complexity is systems thinking;
The key to systems thinking is Patterns; and,
The key to using Patterns is to form them into a language.

Winton’s language of visual patterns to teach systems thinking is similar to Odum’s realization that he needed a way to get people to see the big picture (he called it the Macroscope) of how energy flows in systems. Odum developed his own pattern language he called an energy circuit language.

Similar to my thinking that an Integral Permaculture will be rooted first in Ecological/Energy understanding, Winton’s Pattern Dynamics is rooted in the enduring patterns found in nature, but with the idea of effectively making these ideas meaningful to culture. Rather than pushing ‘the arrow of progress,’ Winton argues for “a shift to a more second person orientation, to build meaning, values and the culture that support effective embodiment and application.”

(https://integralpermaculture.wordpress.com/2012/07/04/the-wavepulse-of-human-history/)

Characteristics

PD Workshop Workbook:

"PatternDynamic is based on 3 simple ideas

1. Sustainable Natural Patterns:

Complex natural systems exhibit consistent general patterns of organisation that have allowed them to persist and thrive for many hundreds of millions of years. These ‘patterns of organisation’ provide us with design templates that illustrate how complex dynamics systems work. Natural patterns are like ‘keys’ that help us unlock the mysteries of working with whole systems. As such, they provide us with principles we can rely on to guide us in the creation and design of sustainable futures.

2. The Power of Language:

Language – the system of symbols we use to communicate – has a powerful role in shaping what we actually see. In each historical age people have developed symbols that help them to see, communicate about, and act on the things that are important for their collective survival and prosperity. What has become clear with regard to complex sustainability challenges is that we do not have effective languages for seeing the ‘whole system’.

3. A Sustainability Pattern Language:

Our current spoken, written and mathematical languages are excellent for analyzing the nature of ‘parts’, but they are not optimized for helping us see how these parts are connected and organized as ‘wholes’. By combining the patterns of nature with the power of language, PatternDynamics™ creates a Sustainability Pattern Language – a language of wholistic symbols designed to help us develop the systems thinking capacity needed to meet the complex challenges of creating a sustainable planetary civilization."

Pattern Dynamics

Contents