Cookies managing
We use cookies to provide the best site experience.
Cookies managing
Cookie Settings
Cookies necessary for the correct operation of the site are always enabled.
Other cookies are configurable.
Essential cookies
Always On. These cookies are essential so that you can use the website and use its functions. They cannot be turned off. They're set in response to requests made by you, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms.
Analytics cookies
Disabled
These cookies collect information to help us understand how our Websites are being used or how effective our marketing campaigns are, or to help us customise our Websites for you. See a list of the analytics cookies we use here.
Advertising cookies
Disabled
These cookies provide advertising companies with information about your online activity to help them deliver more relevant online advertising to you or to limit how many times you see an ad. This information may be shared with other advertising companies. We are not actively using marketing cookies.
Welcome to the LoF50 website
the online home of The Spencer-Brown Society
Laws of Form 2024 Conference (LoF24)
We have received an exciting variety of proposals for LoF24 inspired by George Spencer-Brown's work and LoF24 is set to be an exciting conference.
It will be held from Wednesday 7 August 2024 to Saturday 10 August, 2024
at the Old Library, Room 115, School of the Arts
University of Liverpool
19-23 Abercromby Square
Liverpool L69 7ZG

Day 1 - Wednesday August 7
Day 2 - Thursday August 8
Day 3 - Friday August 9
Day 4 - Saturday August 10

Full Programme (1-page PDF)

Please register via our Attendance Form.

The conference celebrates the fact that in addition to Laws of Form (1969), George Spencer-Brown wrote other books. At the Laws of Form 2024 Conference, we will welcome all manner of works inspired by Spencer-Brown's thought. His 1972 book Only Two Can Play This Game includes an extension of the deepest insights from Laws of Form. For LoF24, we will explore work that reflects on themes found in Only Two Can Play This Game such as the nature of the first distinction, game play, game theory, narrative and story, poetry, cosmology, humanity, love, philosophy, mysticism, physics, logic, mathematics, and spirituality.

We look forward to seeing you there!
Facilities for giving presentations by video link will be available for those who, due to distance, are unable to attend in person. Presentations will be recorded and will be made available online, courtesy of West Den Haag. It is intended that after the conference, as with LoF50 (2019) and LoF22, the presentations will be published. Presentations from LoF50 were published as the book Laws of Form: A Fiftieth Anniversary (World Scientific Publishing Company), and presentations from LoF22 and LoF24 will be published in the journal of the Spencer-Brown Society, Distinction: Journal of Form (College Publications, Ltd).
Please email Florian Grote with any queries about the submission process.

Membership of the recently-formed Spencer-Brown Society is open to anyone who is interested in Spencer-Brown's work and its impact on different fields of study. There are no membership fees. You can view the constitution here. Joining is easy. Simply fill in the form below.

JOIN THE SPENCER-BROWN SOCIETY TODAY!
If you would like to join the Spencer-Brown Society and receive information on future conferences, please send us your details via this form.
Consent for data usage
Consent for data storage
Laws of Form conferences are free to attend, and are facilitated thanks to the generosity of sponsors, host organisations and individuals.
Voluntary donations to the costs of running the conference and making its results available are very gratefully received and may be made through SumUp via these links:

Donate £5 to the Spencer-Brown Society
Donate £10 to the Spencer-Brown Society
Donate £25 to the Spencer-Brown Society
Donate £100 to the Spencer-Brown Society

Thank you for any donation you are able to make!

Florian, Graham, Leon, Sahoo & Randy
Conference Organisers

LoF24 is being organised in cooperation with West Den Haag, an international platform for contemporary art.
The notation of a mark from George Spencer-Brown's 'Laws of Form'
Want to know how you can use Laws of Form notation in your work? Click here.
Laws of Form is the title of the seminal work of George Spencer-Brown, first published in 1969.
His book gave a new point of view on the role of distinction, markedness,
and the unmarked state in the creation of knowledge.

Laws of Form continues to inspire authors - many of whom presented at
or were present at the LoF50 and LoF22 conferences.
To browse the exciting list of their recent
publications, click here.

To submit a paper to Distinction: Journal of Form,
the journal of The Spencer-Brown Society, please
register at
DistinctionJournal.com.
Thinking the Float Tank: AUM Fiftieth Anniversary Conference
Cybernetics, Float Tanks, and Phenomenology
Commemorating 50 Years since the
1973 Esalen Institute Conference

Organised by Randolph Dible
in association with
West Den Haag

From Thursday 24 August 2023
To Saturday 26 August 2023

At West Den Haag
Lange Voorhout 102, 2514 EJ
Den Haag, The Netherlands

LoF22
The second Laws of Form conference was held
in 2022 (LoF22) at Liverpool University
from Wednesday 3 August 2022
to Saturday 6 August 2022

Thank you to all participants, remote and in-person, for making LoF22 a great success!
Videos of presentations are available at West DenHaag and via this website.
LoF50
The first Laws of Form conference commemorating the 50th anniversary
of the first publication of Laws of Form (LoF50)
was held at Liverpool University
from Thursday 8 August 2019
to Saturday 10 August 2019

Thank you to all participants for making LoF50 a great success!
Videos of presentations are available at West DenHaag
and via this website.

Just supposing (as we might) that the ultimate reality, the basic ground, as it were, that renders everything exactly as it is, is something so incredibly sensitive—like a sort of infinitely fast film—that the minutest outside probe, of any kind, obscures it so that we cannot see it. If this were so, either we should never know it at all, or we should have to find a totally different way to approach it.
George Spencer-Brown (writing under the pseudonym of James Keys)
Only Two Can Play This Game (1971), 30–31

I realized that the only 'thing' (i.e. nonthing) that would be sensitive enough to be influenced by a stimulus so weak that it didn't exist, was nothing itself. That is, nothing is the only 'thing' that is so unstable that it can 'go off' of its own accord, the only 'thing' sensitive enough to be changed by nothing
George Spencer-Brown (writing under the pseudonym of Richard Leroy)
A Lion's Teeth (2008), 148

Made on
Tilda