60th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences and 1st Policy Congress 

The Sir Geoffrey Vickers Memorial Award commemorates the life and works of Sir Geoffrey Vickers. His view of the human condition as fundamentally embedded in a web of value relations, and of the dilemma of human action as both rational and valuative, lead him to the formulation of the Appreciative Systems approach. The spirit of his lifework is tremendously contemporary, even though he wrote his most significant works in the early second half of the 20th century: society as evolutionarily emergent; participative and interactive communication as a creative agent; humanization as the necessary normative component of socialization — all this as part of what he called "a science of human ecology."

It is through a truly integrative and systemic approach to our humanity that Sir Geoffrey believed we can learn to navigate multi-valued choice in the ways we structure and value our situation. Being critical (without criticizing), judging (without being judgmental), and engaging in normative decision taking (without ignoring or subjugating the interests of others) — these are the challenges of a science of human ecology as he saw it.  

The realization that "Science is human"(1) derives from his assertion that we are "incorrigible valuers."(2)  Indeed, it was Sir Geoffrey's fundamental affirmation that only by learning to be appreciative systems, ourselves, will we create social structures capable of supporting the essence of our humanity.

The ISSS Vickers Award seeks to recognize promising work that advances the systems sciences toward this vision.

(1) Vickers, G. (1968) Value Systems and Social Process, Pelican Books, Middlesex, England, p.214.

(2) Ibid. 214.