ISRD Research
Complex systems research
ISRD investigates complex adaptive systems through Cross-System Synthesis, a non-linear, attractor-based methodology. Each program uses interactive simulators, feedback-graph modeling and AI-assisted interpretation to generate and test hypotheses.
Programs
Health Systems
Post-viral illness and brainstem attractor dynamics
Investigates ME/CFS and post-viral syndromes as emergent attractor states — conditions where the nervous system settles into a dysfunctional stable basin following viral insult. We model the population epidemiology of ME/CFS conversion,…
Program →Literary Systems
Narrative structure as a feedback system
Applies cross-system synthesis to the craft and impact of writing. Narrative is modelled as a feedback network: reader clarity, tension, and engagement are interdependent nodes. We develop a Reader-First framework that helps authors…
Program →Global Futurism
Civilisational tipping points and macro-scale attractors
Models the macro-dynamics of civilisation as a complex adaptive system — one with multiple potential attractor basins ranging from stable cooperation to system-wide collapse. We investigate how inequality, technological acceleration,…
Program →Writing With AI
Designing AI-assisted systems that scaffold expert writing practice
Investigates expert long-form writing as a complex cognitive system, and asks what a software environment looks like when it is built around the structure of that process — clarity, tension, structural revision, voice — rather than around…
Program →Reader-First Writing System
The cognitive and systems basis for reader-centered writing
The cognitive and systems basis for reader-centered instructional writing: designing documents that transfer understanding. The program treats the reader as the system being designed for, and builds a method for long-form writing around…
Program →Research reports
- Designing Toward a Theory: An AI-Assisted Writing System as Design Experiment
A case study of a thirteen-month design experiment in applied systems science: modeling the cognitive structure of expert long-form writing and building an AI-assisted environment — ISRD Writing Studio, formerly Systemic Writer — scaffolded around that structure rather than around text generation. - Regulatory Capture: How Closed Feedback Loops Get Stuck
Sets a proposed ME/CFS mechanism (sustained cortical override of the respiratory pacemaker) alongside the same bistability, feedback, and sensitive-dependence patterns already illustrated through flocking and the Lorenz attractor — and introduces two new interactive demonstrations. - Energy Envelopes and Feedback Loops
A systems-level explanation of why rest alone fails ME/CFS patients, and what the feedback dynamics of post-exertional malaise actually suggest about pacing as intervention. - Evolutionary Futurism
Applies evolutionary and complex systems science to long-range civilizational questions — not prediction, but attractor mapping of where the trajectory is heading and where the leverage points lie. - Human Spiritual Systems
Applies attractor analysis, feedback modeling, and network dynamics to why spiritual systems form, sustain themselves, and interact with health, governance, and knowledge systems — as structure, not theology. - The Attractor Engineering Framework
Synthesizes five interdisciplinary traditions — General Systems Theory, Cybernetics, Complexity Science, Systems Dynamics, and Information Systems Theory — into nine core concepts across three tiers, from the ontology of complex systems to the operators of effective intervention. - ISRD Research Foundations
Describes the research context underlying all ISRD work — five theoretical traditions in systems science, three domain research programs, and Kurt Rowley's two decades of prior published work in instructional design and educational technology. - Science & Religion: The Philosophical Divide
A systems-theoretic examination of the structural conflict between scientific and religious epistemologies — identifying where the divide is genuine, where it is constructed, and where synthesis is possible. - Are We Alone? A Cross-Domain Evidence Synthesis
Applies systems science methodology to evaluate empirical, theoretical, and anomalous evidence streams bearing on extraterrestrial life and intelligence with epistemic discipline, holding each stream to its own appropriate standard.
Research methodology and publications →
All programs are AI-integrated: language models help interpret simulation runs and surface non-obvious relationships. AI is a standard analytical tool here.