Gregory Vigneaux

Gregory Vigneaux - Humberto Maturana’s Time: Living in the Present, Tue, Nov 18, 2025, 12:00 PM | Meetup We are thrilled to welcome Gregory Vigneaux back to the Lounge. Greg has made a deep study of the work of one of the giants in complexity theory, Humberto Maturana. Join u

Your invitation to come see me talk about time from the perspective of the giant Humberto Maturana!

www.meetup.com/complexitylo...

Hey Jim! Yes, that is definitely unintended if the reader finds that meaning. One could say that and they would be right, I had thought I had addressed that. Next time if I had not. From another perspective in complexity science you can have large islands of order amongst disorder. Thanks!

New blog post on GregoryVig: "The Stability of Instability." Likely the shortest post I have ever written, it focuses on how periods of an emergency marked by instability can be distinguished as the emergency stabilizing. Instability is the emergency stabilizing as unstable

tinyurl.com/2ssv6yhy

Sigur Rós (Iceland) with a full orchestra in Denver tonight. I might have put a little more pep in the set list, but otherwise flawless, and the rarest of rare opportunities. Will definitely keep listening. I recommend Takk... for an easy album to get into and it's celebrating 20 years!

Edgar Morin, French sociologist in Complex Thought, wrote a curriculum for complex thinking for UNESCO. It provides themes like pertinent knowledge, error and illusion, the understanding of others, human reality. Link to the PDF of this short work.
unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/p...

At the beginning of a Sigur Rós concert. Cannot believe I am here.

and the light swallowed everything, by Seirom 9 track album

For some uplifting, amazing music, listen to #Seirom.

burningworldrecords.bandcamp.com/album/and-th...

Communicating Complexity Thoughts on clearly communicating complexity to others.

I have been meaning to write this for a while, but was recently inspired to sit down and do so. A look at introducing complexity beyond technical, theoretical, and terminology-based approaches. The goal was to find a certain clearness in its communication.

www.gregoryvig.com/p/introducin...

"Das Volk" by Käthe Kollwitz is a striking woodcut that captures the somber and resilient spirit of the German people amidst hardship. The piece features haunting figures with expressive, lined faces, emphasizing themes of struggle and social injustice, central to Kollwitz's artistic and humanitarian concerns.

The People (Das Volk) https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/57364

A talk for managing through the difficult, uncertain, and unexpected times delivered from the perspective of Edgar Morin's work and personal experience. I am excited to share it. #complexity

It is on Substack as a video & podcast and is now available on Spotify.

www.gregoryvig.com/p/incidentops

I recommend Heidegger and Maturana's works, where they discuss things/objects. Thanks.

There is no way for a primordial, objective, "true," world to communicate itself to the nervous system because the nervous system is perception. Constitutive over transcedental ontology. The nervous sys. is self-referential, but it can still be perturbed by stimuli, but these are not inputs.

The second implication is that humans are not receiving "objective" information from the world processed into representations of it, but the nervous system decides on its own behalf how to respond to a changing world, largely through sensorimotor correlations.

The first implication is that the world is neither objective/subjective because the nervous system, in its state when it encounters a stimulus, brings it forth through the state it is in. It is not a model (not found in the literature), but what counts as (reality) is inseparable from the perceiver.

That is a fair question. A stimulus perturbs a sensory surface - it's a disruption or a disturbance. I agree it sends something to the sensory surface; however, the perturbation does not determine the nervous system's reaction to the disruption; the nervous system does on its own, making it closed.

Of Remembering Old Wine: Dynamics of Influencing Others What is Already Known About Behavioral Change and Product Engagement? A Look at Color Vision. Foundations for Wildfire Management et al. Volume 1, Essay Number Five.

A brief piece on human dimensions intersecting w/influence

A short (5-minute) essay beginning a miniseries on positively, ethically, and realistically influencing others and the challenges found there while interacting with human dimensions, starting with vision. #Maturana
www.gregoryvig.com/p/wine

"Technology can be lived...as a value in which all is subordinated to the pleasure lived through doing it.... Technology becomes an addiction whose presence those addicted wish to justify through rational arguments founded on the historical reality of its great expansion in modern times" -Maturana

That is awesome! I wish I could speak Spanish. Perhaps I ought to learn so I can read more of Maturana's works. You will have to keep us all updated on your findings.

"Machines differ from living systems...in their reference. The organization of machines... always has an alloreferential domain of interactions....Living systems, as a result of their basic circular organization...have a
self-referred domain of interactions" - Maturana, on AI, 1970

“That beyond death nothing should arise, and that beyond death there should be only death.....Because death is death and life without death is only emptiness” –Humberto R. Maturana.

"Language does not describe a preexisting world, but
creates the world about which it speaks" - Winograd & Flores.

Two circles, both equally great because they both exist. Just make it exist first. You can make it good later.

Just need to repost this again. Greatest productivity hack you can ever do, and good for peace of mind at the same time.

Just Create

Everything else will follow. Yes, really.

Hello everyone. This morning, I lectured on the complexity of incident operations from a natural hazards perspective, largely through the work of Morin, my own experiences, and Maturana. This talk had been in development for a while & Morin took it over the finish line

Patreon: tinyurl.com/2tmj49bn

Happy to report the Journal of Emergency Management has accepted my paper!

"Transitioning From Biological Networks To Participation In Social Networks Through Emotion And Sensorimotor Activity."

A paper on resilience and adoption.

A page and a quarter brief communication turned 11-page article.

BREAKING: Scientists are staging a “science fair” in the lobby of a Congressional building to tell elected officials about the critical knowledge the US will lose because their research grants have been canceled.

Like Maturana was openly critical about, drawing relations between non-intersecting domains is the stuff of shadow theaters. I am seeing this happen in the wildfire technology space, where comparisons are being made across domains that have nothing to do with one another. That is not helpful.

This is great! Just sent you a DM.

“Never before in the history of humanity have the responsibilities of thinking weighed so crushingly on us. Thinking about tragedy has itself become tragic” - Morin & Kern

That would be remarkable. It is certainly difficult to find. Thank you for your efforts.

Announcing my next online lecture titled "Complexity and Incident Response Operations" on July 9. An exploration of incident response from the perspective of brilliant complexity researcher (& philosopher) Edgar Morin & insights from my experience. See you there!

complexoperations.eventbrite.com