Charles Geoffrey Vickers
Encyclopedia
Sir Charles Geoffrey Vickers VC (13 October 1894 - 16 March 1982) was an English lawyer, administrator, writer and pioneering systems scientist. He had varied interests with roles at different times with the London Passenger Transport Board
, Law Society
, Medical Research Council
and Mental Health Research Fund.
He also had a distinguished military career, being awarded the Victoria Cross
in World War I while serving in The Sherwood Foresters (The Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment), and in World War II he was Deputy Director General at the Ministry of Economic Warfare, in charge of economic intelligence and member of the Joint Intelligence Committee
.
He was knighted in 1946. The Sir Geoffrey Vickers Memorial Award has been presented by the International Society for the Systems Sciences
every year since 1987 in his memory.
, where his father Charles Henry Vickers ran a successful lace business, Vickers & Hine Ltd. He described his first day of school as "school introduced me to the anguish reserved both for the non-conformist who wishes to conform and the awkward who long to excel in dexterity". He attended Bramcote, a preparatory school near Scarborough and then Oundle School
; a public school
before entering Merton College, Oxford where he briefly studied Classics from 1913 until the start of war.
He later described his home as "a place of unalloyed happiness.The only stresses of the time came from the external world of school or the internal world of awakening conflict and confusion ... I remember nothing desired that was satisfied by spending money of mine and nothing that was denied for lack of money ... we moved by bicycle and bus, played in each other's gardens and stayed in farmhouses". He described his father as "the best and most lovable man I ever knew; and be seemed to combine the two superlatives without the slightest effort".
. He and his brother William Burnell Vickers volunteered for service in the army, Charles joining the Sherwood Foresters
(7th Robin Hood Battalion) and was in France before the end of 1914 first as a second lieutenant, promoted to temporary Captain in 1915 and then to Major
and as Second in Command, 1 Bn, The Lincolnshire Regiment in 1918. Explaining his thoughts about going to war, he later wrote "In August Germany invaded Belgium, we had a treaty with Belgium, so we all stopped what we were doing and went off to war. It was as simple as that". He was awarded the Victoria Cross
for action in 1915 and the Croix de Guerre
(Belgium) in 1918.
He won the Victoria Cross for his actions on the 14 October 1915 when he held a barrier across a trench in the Hohenzollern Redoubt
, France
against heavy German bomb attacks (the 'bombs' of the citation were early grenades) ordering a second barrier to be built behind him in order to secure the safety of the trench regardless of the fact that his own retreat would be cut off holding back the enemy for long enough for a second barrier to be completed.
His brother Burnell was killed in action in action in 1917.
In June 1918 he commanded a battalion in the Second Battle of the Marne
for which he was awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre.
, European history and law
in 1919. He qualified as a solicitor in 1923 and by 1926 he was a partner in the leading London law firm of Slaughter and May
. He specialised in the legal aspects of large financial operations, many of which has international dimensions. In 1930 he was one of the first to take the five day commercial flight from the UK to India and during the 1930s he was also involved in negotiating the extension of the German debt.
In 1938 he established and chaired the 'Association for Service and Reconstruction. The above initiative put him in touch with a number of people who met regularly in a group called 'The Moot' that also included Joe Oldham, Karl Mannheim
, Reinhard Niebuhr, Paul Tillich
, Middleton Murray, T. S. Eliot
, Michael Polanyi
, Sir Walter Moberly
and Adolph Lowe
. The Moot itself grew out of a conference on Church, Community and State held in Oxford in 1937.
; he was re-commissioned as a Colonel
, and was seconded as Deputy Director General at the Ministry of Economic Warfare, in charge of economic intelligence. From 1941 to 1945 he was a member of the Joint Intelligence Committee of the Chiefs of Staff
.
He was also a member of the London Passenger Transport Board
(1941–46) and of the Council of Law Society
(1944–48).
and the complex patterns of social organisation. He wrote many booking including The Art of Judgement, Freedom in a rocking Boat and Human Systems are Different. He introduced the concept of 'Appreciative Systems' to describe human activity. His work was taken-up by researchers at the Open University
in particular.
From 1946 to 1948 he was also first Legal Adviser to the National Coal Board
. At the time of creation on the 1st January 1947 when some 750,000 workers from 800 different private companies became part of the largest employer in the western world where he worked alongside E. F. Schumacher
. Afterwards he became a member of National Coal Board in charge of manpower, training, education, health and welfare (1948–55).
From 1952 until 1960 he was member of the Medical Research Council
and was chairman of the Research Committee of Mental Health Research Fund from 1951-1967. In 1977 he was president of the Society for General Systems Research, now the International Society for the Systems Sciences
.
Between 1955 and 1958 he took part in the 'Round Table on Man and Industry' a project sponsored by the School of Social Work at the University of Toronto, the conclusions of which were published in 'The Undirected society'. On the inside jacket cover he muses 'The Industrial band-wagon rolls ever faster onwards, remaking the world we live in and with it ourselves. Are we in the driving seat or merely passengers - or even under the wheels? What part does human decision making play in directing or controlling the process?'.
His second wife, and close companion died in 1972 and his manuscripts for 'Western Culture and Systems Thinking' and 'Autonomy and Responsibility' were constantly rejected for publication.
In 1977 he moved to a retirement home, on the same street in Goring on Thames on which he had lived for many years.
Geoffrey died in 1982, however the influence for his work is still alive. The International Society for the Systems Sciences presents the Sir Geoffrey Vickers Memorial Award each year in his memory. His military medals were left to the Sherwood Foresters Collection and are on display in Nottingham Castle
.
and the complex patterns of social organisation. His work was taken-up by researchers at the Open University
in particular. Vickers is regarded as a systems practitioner rather than an academic. He introduced the concept of appreciative system
s to describe human activity. He recognized that appreciation of systems requires the participation of not only the observer, but also that of the subject.
Much of his work is devoted to the analysis of judgement in terms of what he called 'appreciative behaviour': this is described most effectively in The Art of Judgement (1965). He believed that social institutions are best analysed as systems, and his published work, notably Human Systems are Different (1983), made far-reaching contributions to systems thinking in its applications to human society.
Vickers has stated:
A response by Peter Checkland
:
Geoffrey Vickers continued corresponding with Peter Checkland in the years before Vickers' death and discussed the relationship between systems ideas and real-world experience. From those discussions Checkland created the model of the appreciative process, that may be used as a basis for making sense of the world we live in. Checkland (2004) worked on numerous examples to demonstrate the way in which the model may be applied in very different situations.
World War II
Later
About Vickers
Vickers writings in Adolph Lowe Archive
For children
Poetry
Military
London Passenger Transport Board
The London Passenger Transport Board was the organisation responsible for public transport in London, UK, and its environs from 1933 to 1948...
, Law Society
Law society
A Law Society in current and former Commonwealth jurisdictions was historically an association of solicitors with a regulatory role that included the right to supervise the training, qualifications and conduct of lawyers/solicitors...
, Medical Research Council
Medical Research Council (UK)
The Medical Research Council is a publicly-funded agency responsible for co-ordinating and funding medical research in the United Kingdom. It is one of seven Research Councils in the UK and is answerable to, although politically independent from, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills...
and Mental Health Research Fund.
He also had a distinguished military career, being awarded the Victoria Cross
Victoria Cross
The Victoria Cross is the highest military decoration awarded for valour "in the face of the enemy" to members of the armed forces of various Commonwealth countries, and previous British Empire territories....
in World War I while serving in The Sherwood Foresters (The Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment), and in World War II he was Deputy Director General at the Ministry of Economic Warfare, in charge of economic intelligence and member of the Joint Intelligence Committee
Joint Intelligence Committee
The Joint Intelligence Committee is a nodal government agency in several countries, responsible for the internal and external security apparatus of the respective nations.* Joint Intelligence Committee * Joint Intelligence Committee...
.
He was knighted in 1946. The Sir Geoffrey Vickers Memorial Award has been presented by the International Society for the Systems Sciences
International Society for the Systems Sciences
The International Society for the Systems Sciences is a world-wide organization for systems sciences.- Overview :The initial purpose of the society was "to encourage the development of theoretical systems which are applicable to more than one of the traditional departments of knowledge."The idea...
every year since 1987 in his memory.
Early life
Geoffrey Vickers was born and grew up in NottinghamNottingham
Nottingham is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England. It is located in the ceremonial county of Nottinghamshire and represents one of eight members of the English Core Cities Group...
, where his father Charles Henry Vickers ran a successful lace business, Vickers & Hine Ltd. He described his first day of school as "school introduced me to the anguish reserved both for the non-conformist who wishes to conform and the awkward who long to excel in dexterity". He attended Bramcote, a preparatory school near Scarborough and then Oundle School
Oundle School
Oundle School is a co-educational British public school located in the ancient market town of Oundle in Northamptonshire. The school has been maintained by the Worshipful Company of Grocers of the City of London since its foundation in 1556. Oundle has eight boys' houses, five girls' houses, a day...
; a public school
Independent school (UK)
An independent school is a school that is not financed through the taxation system by local or national government and is instead funded by private sources, predominantly in the form of tuition charges, gifts and long-term charitable endowments, and so is not subject to the conditions imposed by...
before entering Merton College, Oxford where he briefly studied Classics from 1913 until the start of war.
He later described his home as "a place of unalloyed happiness.The only stresses of the time came from the external world of school or the internal world of awakening conflict and confusion ... I remember nothing desired that was satisfied by spending money of mine and nothing that was denied for lack of money ... we moved by bicycle and bus, played in each other's gardens and stayed in farmhouses". He described his father as "the best and most lovable man I ever knew; and be seemed to combine the two superlatives without the slightest effort".
World War I
His education was interrupted by World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. He and his brother William Burnell Vickers volunteered for service in the army, Charles joining the Sherwood Foresters
Sherwood Foresters
The Sherwood Foresters was formed during the Childers Reforms in 1881 from the amalgamation of the 45th Regiment of Foot and the 95th Regiment of Foot...
(7th Robin Hood Battalion) and was in France before the end of 1914 first as a second lieutenant, promoted to temporary Captain in 1915 and then to Major
Major
Major is a rank of commissioned officer, with corresponding ranks existing in almost every military in the world.When used unhyphenated, in conjunction with no other indicator of rank, the term refers to the rank just senior to that of an Army captain and just below the rank of lieutenant colonel. ...
and as Second in Command, 1 Bn, The Lincolnshire Regiment in 1918. Explaining his thoughts about going to war, he later wrote "In August Germany invaded Belgium, we had a treaty with Belgium, so we all stopped what we were doing and went off to war. It was as simple as that". He was awarded the Victoria Cross
Victoria Cross
The Victoria Cross is the highest military decoration awarded for valour "in the face of the enemy" to members of the armed forces of various Commonwealth countries, and previous British Empire territories....
for action in 1915 and the Croix de Guerre
Croix de guerre
The Croix de guerre is a military decoration of France. It was first created in 1915 and consists of a square-cross medal on two crossed swords, hanging from a ribbon with various degree pins. The decoration was awarded during World War I, again in World War II, and in other conflicts...
(Belgium) in 1918.
He won the Victoria Cross for his actions on the 14 October 1915 when he held a barrier across a trench in the Hohenzollern Redoubt
Hohenzollern Redoubt
The Hohenzollern Redoubt, near to Auchy-les-Mines in France, was a German fortification on the Western Front in World War I.-Introduction:The British first attacked the Redoubt on September 25, 1915, the first day of the Battle of Loos...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
against heavy German bomb attacks (the 'bombs' of the citation were early grenades) ordering a second barrier to be built behind him in order to secure the safety of the trench regardless of the fact that his own retreat would be cut off holding back the enemy for long enough for a second barrier to be completed.
His brother Burnell was killed in action in action in 1917.
In June 1918 he commanded a battalion in the Second Battle of the Marne
Second Battle of the Marne
The Second Battle of the Marne , or Battle of Reims was the last major German Spring Offensive on the Western Front during the First World War. The German attack failed when an Allied counterattack led by France overwhelmed the Germans, inflicting severe casualties...
for which he was awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre.
Inter-war years
After the war he returned to Oxford and took a pass degree in FrenchFrench language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, European history and law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
in 1919. He qualified as a solicitor in 1923 and by 1926 he was a partner in the leading London law firm of Slaughter and May
Slaughter and May
Slaughter and May is an international law firm headquartered in London, United Kingdom and a member of the 'Magic Circle' of leading UK law firms. It also has offices in Beijing, Brussels and Hong Kong....
. He specialised in the legal aspects of large financial operations, many of which has international dimensions. In 1930 he was one of the first to take the five day commercial flight from the UK to India and during the 1930s he was also involved in negotiating the extension of the German debt.
In 1938 he established and chaired the 'Association for Service and Reconstruction. The above initiative put him in touch with a number of people who met regularly in a group called 'The Moot' that also included Joe Oldham, Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim , or Károly Mannheim in the original writing of his name, was a Jewish Hungarian-born sociologist, influential in the first half of the 20th century and one of the founding fathers of classical sociology and a founder of the sociology of knowledge.-Life:Mannheim studied in Budapest,...
, Reinhard Niebuhr, Paul Tillich
Paul Tillich
Paul Johannes Tillich was a German-American theologian and Christian existentialist philosopher. Tillich was one of the most influential Protestant theologians of the 20th century...
, Middleton Murray, T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, Michael Polanyi
Michael Polanyi
Michael Polanyi, FRS was a Hungarian–British polymath, who made important theoretical contributions to physical chemistry, economics, and the theory of knowledge...
, Sir Walter Moberly
Walter Hamilton Moberly
Sir Walter Hamilton Moberly, GBE, KCB, Kt, DSO was a British academic.-Life:The son of Rev. Robert Campbell Moberly and the grandson of George Moberly, he was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford...
and Adolph Lowe
Adolph Lowe
Adolph Lowe born Adolf Löwe was a German sociologist and economist.- Major publications of Adolph Lowe :*Arbeitslosigkeit und Kriminalität, 1914....
. The Moot itself grew out of a conference on Church, Community and State held in Oxford in 1937.
World War II
Vickers served in World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
; he was re-commissioned as a Colonel
Colonel (UK)
Colonel is a rank of the British forces, ranking below Brigadier, and above Lieutenant Colonel. British Colonels are not usually field commanders; typically they serve as staff officers between field commands at battalion and brigade level. The insignia is two diamond shaped pips below a crown...
, and was seconded as Deputy Director General at the Ministry of Economic Warfare, in charge of economic intelligence. From 1941 to 1945 he was a member of the Joint Intelligence Committee of the Chiefs of Staff
Chiefs of Staff Committee
The Chiefs of Staff Committee is composed of the most senior military personnel in the British Armed Forces.-History:The Chiefs of Staff Committee was initially established as a sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence in 1923. It remained as such until the abolition of the CID upon the...
.
He was also a member of the London Passenger Transport Board
London Passenger Transport Board
The London Passenger Transport Board was the organisation responsible for public transport in London, UK, and its environs from 1933 to 1948...
(1941–46) and of the Council of Law Society
Law society
A Law Society in current and former Commonwealth jurisdictions was historically an association of solicitors with a regulatory role that included the right to supervise the training, qualifications and conduct of lawyers/solicitors...
(1944–48).
Afterwards
After the war, Vickers had a successful career in management and administration before becoming a prolific writer and speaker on the subject of social systems analysisSystems analysis
Systems analysis is the study of sets of interacting entities, including computer systems analysis. This field is closely related to requirements analysis or operations research...
and the complex patterns of social organisation. He wrote many booking including The Art of Judgement, Freedom in a rocking Boat and Human Systems are Different. He introduced the concept of 'Appreciative Systems' to describe human activity. His work was taken-up by researchers at the Open University
Open University
The Open University is a distance learning and research university founded by Royal Charter in the United Kingdom...
in particular.
From 1946 to 1948 he was also first Legal Adviser to the National Coal Board
National Coal Board
The National Coal Board was the statutory corporation created to run the nationalised coal mining industry in the United Kingdom. Set up under the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946, it took over the mines on "vesting day", 1 January 1947...
. At the time of creation on the 1st January 1947 when some 750,000 workers from 800 different private companies became part of the largest employer in the western world where he worked alongside E. F. Schumacher
E. F. Schumacher
Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher was an internationally influential economic thinker, statistician and economist in Britain, serving as Chief Economic Advisor to the UK National Coal Board for two decades. His ideas became popularized in much of the English-speaking world during the 1970s...
. Afterwards he became a member of National Coal Board in charge of manpower, training, education, health and welfare (1948–55).
From 1952 until 1960 he was member of the Medical Research Council
Medical Research Council (UK)
The Medical Research Council is a publicly-funded agency responsible for co-ordinating and funding medical research in the United Kingdom. It is one of seven Research Councils in the UK and is answerable to, although politically independent from, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills...
and was chairman of the Research Committee of Mental Health Research Fund from 1951-1967. In 1977 he was president of the Society for General Systems Research, now the International Society for the Systems Sciences
International Society for the Systems Sciences
The International Society for the Systems Sciences is a world-wide organization for systems sciences.- Overview :The initial purpose of the society was "to encourage the development of theoretical systems which are applicable to more than one of the traditional departments of knowledge."The idea...
.
Between 1955 and 1958 he took part in the 'Round Table on Man and Industry' a project sponsored by the School of Social Work at the University of Toronto, the conclusions of which were published in 'The Undirected society'. On the inside jacket cover he muses 'The Industrial band-wagon rolls ever faster onwards, remaking the world we live in and with it ourselves. Are we in the driving seat or merely passengers - or even under the wheels? What part does human decision making play in directing or controlling the process?'.
His second wife, and close companion died in 1972 and his manuscripts for 'Western Culture and Systems Thinking' and 'Autonomy and Responsibility' were constantly rejected for publication.
In 1977 he moved to a retirement home, on the same street in Goring on Thames on which he had lived for many years.
Geoffrey died in 1982, however the influence for his work is still alive. The International Society for the Systems Sciences presents the Sir Geoffrey Vickers Memorial Award each year in his memory. His military medals were left to the Sherwood Foresters Collection and are on display in Nottingham Castle
Nottingham Castle
Nottingham Castle is a castle in Nottingham, England. It is located in a commanding position on a natural promontory known as "'Castle Rock'", with cliffs high to the south and west. In the Middle Ages it was a major royal fortress and occasional royal residence...
.
Systems practice
In the later years Vickers wrote and lectured on the subject of social systems analysisSystems analysis
Systems analysis is the study of sets of interacting entities, including computer systems analysis. This field is closely related to requirements analysis or operations research...
and the complex patterns of social organisation. His work was taken-up by researchers at the Open University
Open University
The Open University is a distance learning and research university founded by Royal Charter in the United Kingdom...
in particular. Vickers is regarded as a systems practitioner rather than an academic. He introduced the concept of appreciative system
Appreciative inquiry
Appreciative Inquiry is primarily an organisational development method which seeks to engage all levels of an organisation to renew, change and improved performance. Its exponents view it as being applicable to organisations facing rapid change or growth...
s to describe human activity. He recognized that appreciation of systems requires the participation of not only the observer, but also that of the subject.
Much of his work is devoted to the analysis of judgement in terms of what he called 'appreciative behaviour': this is described most effectively in The Art of Judgement (1965). He believed that social institutions are best analysed as systems, and his published work, notably Human Systems are Different (1983), made far-reaching contributions to systems thinking in its applications to human society.
Appreciative System
Appreciative System is a term invented by Vickers in 1968 to refer to "the activity of attaching meaning to communication or the code by which we do so".Vickers has stated:
- 'I find it surprising that we have no accepted word to describe the activity of attaching meaning to communication or the code by which we do so, a code which is constantly confirmed, developed or changed by use. I have for many years referred to this mental activity as ”appreciation‘; and to the code which it uses, as its ”appreciative system‘; and to the state of that code at any time as its ”appreciative setting‘. I call it a system because, although tolerant of ambiguity and even inconsistency, it is sensitive to them and tries to reconcile them‘.
- 'I'm interested in Systems from the personal up to the very large, human, social systems, I'm also interested in systems of concepts and values through which we see all the others which I call appreciative systems.'
A response by Peter Checkland
Peter Checkland
Peter Checkland is a British management scientist and emeritus professor of Systems at Lancaster University. He is the developer of soft systems methodology : a methodology based on a way of systems thinking.- Biography :...
:
- "Vickers argues that our human experience develops within us 'readiness to notice particular aspects of our situation, to discriminate them in particular ways and to measure them against particular standards of comparison...' These readinesses are organized into an 'appreciative system' which creates for all of us, individually and socially, our appreciated world....The appreciative settings condition new experience but are modified by the new experience. Such circular relations Vickers takes to be the common facts of social life, but we fail to see this clearly, he argues, because of the concentration in our science-based culture on linear causal chains and on the notion of goal-seeking."
- "Vickers suggests replacing the goal-setting and goal-seeking with feedback models in which personal, institutional or cultural activity consists in maintaining desired relationships and eluding undesired ones. The process is a cyclical one which operates like this: Our previous experiences have created for us certain 'standards' or 'norms', usually 'tacit' (and also, at a more general level, 'values', more general concepts of what is humanly good and bad); the standards, norms and/or values lead to readiness to notice only certain features of our situations, they determine what 'facts' are relevant; the facts noticed are evaluated against the norms, a process which leads to our taking regulatory action and modifies the norms or standards, so that future experiences will be evaluated differently".
Geoffrey Vickers continued corresponding with Peter Checkland in the years before Vickers' death and discussed the relationship between systems ideas and real-world experience. From those discussions Checkland created the model of the appreciative process, that may be used as a basis for making sense of the world we live in. Checkland (2004) worked on numerous examples to demonstrate the way in which the model may be applied in very different situations.
Moral and political philosophy
Geoffrey Vickers' perspectives on moral and political philosophy can be presented through three key terms:- Our human capacity to respond aptly to our situation;
- The analysis of modern society in terms of institutions; and
- The moral importance of responsibility to the maintenance of human culture and cooperation
Publications
Geoffrey Vickers wrote several books, articles and papers:World War II
- 1941, CURRENT AFFAIRS : issue 7 : December 20, 1941 : A Background Bulletin'
Later
- 1959, The Undirected Society. Essays on the human implications of industrialisation in Canada 1959
- 1965, The Art of Judgment : A Study of Policy Making (1965 - Republished December 1995) (In Print)
- 1967, Towards a sociology of management. (1967)
- 1968, Value systems and social process (1968 - Republished 2001) (In Print)
- 1972, Freedom in a rocking boat: changing values in an unstable society (Paperback - April 1972)
- 1973, Making Institutions Work (Textbook Binding - January 1973)
- 1980, Responsibility Its Sources and Limits (Paperback - June 1980)
- 1984, Human Systems Are Different (Paperback - December 1984)
- 1994, The Vickers Papers, Edited by the Open Systems Group (Paperback - December 1984)
About Vickers
- 1987, Guy B. Adams, John Forester and Bayard L. Catron (Ed.), Policymaking, Communication, and Social Learning, (Hardcover - July 1987)
- 1991, Jeanie Vickers (Ed.), Rethinking the Future : The Correspondence Between Geoffrey Vickers and Adolph LoweAdolph LoweAdolph Lowe born Adolf Löwe was a German sociologist and economist.- Major publications of Adolph Lowe :*Arbeitslosigkeit und Kriminalität, 1914....
, (Hardcover - June 1991) - 1995, Margaret Blunden and Malcolm Dando (Ed.), Rethinking Public Policy-Making : Questioning Assumptions, Challenging Beliefs : Essays in Honour of Sir Geoffrey Vickers on His Centenary (Hardcover - September 1995). (In print)
- 2004, Ray Ison (ed.), "Geoffrey Vickers 2004: Contemporary Applications and Changing Appreciative Settings", Special Issue of Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Volume 22, Issue 4.
Vickers writings in Adolph Lowe Archive
- "Purpose and Force; The Bases of Order" (pub), 1940.
- "Incomes and Earnings–A Steady State?" (pub.), circa 1960.
- "The Management of Conflict" (pub.), 1972.
- "Towards a More Stable State" (pub.), 1972.
- Copies of Vickers-Simon Correspondence (unpub. TS), 1973.
- "Whither the Mixed Economy?" (pub.), 1973.
- "Some Implications of Systems Thinking" (unpub. TS), 1978.
- "The Poverty of Problem-Solving" (unpub. TS), 1980.
- "Autonomous Yet Responsible?" (unpub. TS), undated.
- "The Weakness of Western Culture" (unpub. TS), undated.
For children
- "The secret of tarbury tor", Oxford Basil Blackwell, circa 1926.
Poetry
- "Moods and Tenses, 'Occasional Poems of an Old Man'" (private publication), 1983
See also
- Monuments to CourageMonuments to CourageMonuments to Courage: Victoria Cross Monuments and Headstones is a two-volume book by David Harvey on the last resting places of 1,322 of the 1,350 recipients of the Victoria Cross. The 896 page book has over 5,000 illustrations and a large index enabling one to cross reference with ease. There is...
- The Register of the Victoria CrossThe Register of the Victoria CrossThe Register of the Victoria Cross is a reference work that provides brief information on every Victoria Cross ever awarded: it provides a summary of the deed, along with a photograph of the awardee and the following details where applicable or available; rank, unit, other decorations, date of...
- VCs of the First World War - The Western Front 1915
External links
Systems Theory- Video clips of Sir Geoffrey Vickers filmed in 1978 by the BBC for the Open University.
- Geoffrey Vickers Archive at the Open University
- Appreciative Systems A summary of the work of Sir Geoffrey Vickers by Dr Richard Varey
- The Appreciative System of Urban ICT Policies paper by Galit Cohen and Peter Nijkamp
Military
- Find a grave - Biographical Detail
- The Victoria Cross Awards to the Sherwood Foresters (photos, site includes other articles on SF)
- Location of grave and VC medal (Oxfordshire)
- Liddle-Hart Centre for Military Archives
- Additional detail of events of 14 October 1915