Conference Programme
Day 4: Thursday, August 13
Registration & Coffee
09:00–09:30
Leon Conrad
The Next Society Institute; The Unknown Storyteller Project; The Traditional Tutor; The Academy of Oratory
Exploring the story structures of the stories in A Lion's Teeth
In his book, A Lion's Teeth, George Spencer-Brown presents 17 stories numbered 0 to 16. The stories follow distinct yet recognisable structures. What might an analysis of these story structures reveal? Is there an unconscious bias in Spencer-Brown's approach to narrative? If so, what might it imply? This paper explores the story structures of the stories in A Lion's Teeth based on the methodology outlined in my book, Story and Structure: A complete guide, which is based on the Calculus of Indications presented in George Spencer-Brown's seminal work, Laws of Form. It aims to outline the approach taken, present a visual analysis of the 17 stories in A Lion's Teeth and share the findings and insights this analytical approach reveals, following which it is hoped that there will be an opportunity for discussion and debate based on the information presented.
In 2013, George Spencer-Brown began mentoring Leon through the process of engaging with Laws of Form on a weekly basis, following which the engagement continued through the last 3 years of Spencer-Brown's life, and resulted in a meaningful friendship. Leon has gone on to successfully apply Spencer-Brown's methodology to the practice of logic, and – most recently – to the analysis of story structures, looking at the close link between story structures and different types of problems. His book, Story and Structure: A complete guide has won 10 literary awards including IPNE Nonfiction Book of the Year and was a finalist in The People's Book Prize (2022).
More info: leonconrad.com – @leonconradstory
In his book, A Lion's Teeth, George Spencer-Brown presents 17 stories numbered 0 to 16. The stories follow distinct yet recognisable structures. What might an analysis of these story structures reveal? Is there an unconscious bias in Spencer-Brown's approach to narrative? If so, what might it imply? This paper explores the story structures of the stories in A Lion's Teeth based on the methodology outlined in my book, Story and Structure: A complete guide, which is based on the Calculus of Indications presented in George Spencer-Brown's seminal work, Laws of Form. It aims to outline the approach taken, present a visual analysis of the 17 stories in A Lion's Teeth and share the findings and insights this analytical approach reveals, following which it is hoped that there will be an opportunity for discussion and debate based on the information presented.
In 2013, George Spencer-Brown began mentoring Leon through the process of engaging with Laws of Form on a weekly basis, following which the engagement continued through the last 3 years of Spencer-Brown's life, and resulted in a meaningful friendship. Leon has gone on to successfully apply Spencer-Brown's methodology to the practice of logic, and – most recently – to the analysis of story structures, looking at the close link between story structures and different types of problems. His book, Story and Structure: A complete guide has won 10 literary awards including IPNE Nonfiction Book of the Year and was a finalist in The People's Book Prize (2022).
More info: leonconrad.com – @leonconradstory
09:30–10:00
Kim Albrecht
Folkwang University of the Arts
De–sign
The command "draw a distinction" hints towards art and design, as drawing is an aesthetic mode of making sense of the world. This talk introduces a theory I have developed, the calculus of design, which applies Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form to creative practice and computational design.
Within this framework, the operation of design is structurally identical to the operation of distinction-drawing. Form exists as reductions of space by a designer over time. The designer does not create signs but removes them — excluding possible sign propositions of space until form emerges from the unmarked. De—sign is thus an act of exclusion: the possibilities of space are crossed into form.
This mapping is not merely metaphorical. The diagrammatic notation of the cross and re-entry draws out the step-by-step procedures of design, making visible the process, structures, and perspective the designer operates from. Laws of Form, applied to design, reveals the operative logic beneath creative practice.
Kim Albrecht is a professor of information design at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, Germany, a principal at metaLAB at Harvard and Berlin and a faculty associate at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society Havard Law School. Albrecht is known for his exploration of the aesthetic properties of data.
More info: www.kimalbrecht.com/
The command "draw a distinction" hints towards art and design, as drawing is an aesthetic mode of making sense of the world. This talk introduces a theory I have developed, the calculus of design, which applies Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form to creative practice and computational design.
Within this framework, the operation of design is structurally identical to the operation of distinction-drawing. Form exists as reductions of space by a designer over time. The designer does not create signs but removes them — excluding possible sign propositions of space until form emerges from the unmarked. De—sign is thus an act of exclusion: the possibilities of space are crossed into form.
This mapping is not merely metaphorical. The diagrammatic notation of the cross and re-entry draws out the step-by-step procedures of design, making visible the process, structures, and perspective the designer operates from. Laws of Form, applied to design, reveals the operative logic beneath creative practice.
Kim Albrecht is a professor of information design at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, Germany, a principal at metaLAB at Harvard and Berlin and a faculty associate at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society Havard Law School. Albrecht is known for his exploration of the aesthetic properties of data.
More info: www.kimalbrecht.com/
10:00–10:30
Philip Franses
The Distinction That Cannot Be Distinguished
Spencer-Brown begins with a remarkable observation: Distinction itself can never appear as one of the things distinguished.
The moment we point to an object, an idea, or a person, we have already crossed the distinction that made the identification possible. What is seen is not the distinction but the result of the distinction.
The distinction itself remains hidden.
Only a wholeness can express distinction without reducing it to one of its own products.
Goethe’s study of colour does not attempt to identify an object called illumination. Instead, colour becomes a medium through which illumination may disclose itself indirectly. Light and darkness do not appear as isolated entities but as a relationship expressed through shades. The whole is not seen directly. It reveals itself through the transitions by which appearances emerge.
A compass functions in a similar way. The traveller follows multiple journeys toward a common orientation without thereby turning the destination into a fixed object. The compass for this talk is around Bortoft, Spencer-Brown, Goethe, and the wholeness that arises out of self-reference.
We show how an algebra based on colours may help address the challenge of Spencer-Brown, to describe distinction without pointing at what we are saying.
Philip Franses studied mathematics at Oxford University. Following a moment of clarity in a bookshop, Philip became a teacher of Holistic Science, author of Time, Light and the Dice of Creation (Floris Books, 2015) and The Language of Water (Synergetic Press, 2025).
More info: www.interaliamag.org/author/philipfranses/
Spencer-Brown begins with a remarkable observation: Distinction itself can never appear as one of the things distinguished.
The moment we point to an object, an idea, or a person, we have already crossed the distinction that made the identification possible. What is seen is not the distinction but the result of the distinction.
The distinction itself remains hidden.
Only a wholeness can express distinction without reducing it to one of its own products.
Goethe’s study of colour does not attempt to identify an object called illumination. Instead, colour becomes a medium through which illumination may disclose itself indirectly. Light and darkness do not appear as isolated entities but as a relationship expressed through shades. The whole is not seen directly. It reveals itself through the transitions by which appearances emerge.
A compass functions in a similar way. The traveller follows multiple journeys toward a common orientation without thereby turning the destination into a fixed object. The compass for this talk is around Bortoft, Spencer-Brown, Goethe, and the wholeness that arises out of self-reference.
We show how an algebra based on colours may help address the challenge of Spencer-Brown, to describe distinction without pointing at what we are saying.
Philip Franses studied mathematics at Oxford University. Following a moment of clarity in a bookshop, Philip became a teacher of Holistic Science, author of Time, Light and the Dice of Creation (Floris Books, 2015) and The Language of Water (Synergetic Press, 2025).
More info: www.interaliamag.org/author/philipfranses/
10:30–11:00
Coffee Break
11:00–11:30
Philippe Michelin
Aebis SAS
A Redefinition of the Notion of Reciprocity through Graphs with Laws of Form
An automatable transition from duality to reciprocity, by generating the extensional graph of a symmetric and antireflexive endorelation over any domain, through clarification of terminology by Distinction-based Reasoning.
As CEO of Aebis-BFD, a Paris-based consulting firms, Philippe Michelin has provided IT services for more than 35 years in advanced information systems, system architecture, process improvement and knowledge management.
An automatable transition from duality to reciprocity, by generating the extensional graph of a symmetric and antireflexive endorelation over any domain, through clarification of terminology by Distinction-based Reasoning.
As CEO of Aebis-BFD, a Paris-based consulting firms, Philippe Michelin has provided IT services for more than 35 years in advanced information systems, system architecture, process improvement and knowledge management.
11:30–12:00
Sandra Groll
Brand University Hamburg, Germany
Zhejiang Wanli University Ningbo, China
Zhejiang Wanli University Ningbo, China
Designing Designability
My contribution to LoF26 develops a systems-theoretical perspective on brand management by applying George Spencer-Brown’s calculus of forms to organizational branding processes. Starting from the fundamental operation of distinction, brand is conceptualized not as an object but as an operative form. Brand work thus appears as an ongoing practice of boundary drawing and re-entry operations through which the brand observes and reproduces itself within its own distinctions.
At the centre stands the argument that strong brands do not result from control but from handling a constitutive paradox: they must be stable and transformable at once. This paradox is reframed as a second-order design problem: the question of how the conditions of designability themselves can be designed.
My presentation therefore suggests understanding brand management less as communication management and more as the shaping of decision premises, and proposes the calculus of forms as an analytical tool for rendering the operative logic of organizational brand processes observable.
Sandra Groll holds the position of Professor of Design Theory and Design Research and serves as Program Director of the Master's program in Brand Innovation at Brand University in Hamburg. She is also Associate Professor of Visual Communication at the Sino-German Faculty of Branding, Zhejiang Wanli University in Ningbo, China. Her research employs a systems-theoretical approach to explore transdisciplinary design questions.
More info: www.sgroll.de/home
My contribution to LoF26 develops a systems-theoretical perspective on brand management by applying George Spencer-Brown’s calculus of forms to organizational branding processes. Starting from the fundamental operation of distinction, brand is conceptualized not as an object but as an operative form. Brand work thus appears as an ongoing practice of boundary drawing and re-entry operations through which the brand observes and reproduces itself within its own distinctions.
At the centre stands the argument that strong brands do not result from control but from handling a constitutive paradox: they must be stable and transformable at once. This paradox is reframed as a second-order design problem: the question of how the conditions of designability themselves can be designed.
My presentation therefore suggests understanding brand management less as communication management and more as the shaping of decision premises, and proposes the calculus of forms as an analytical tool for rendering the operative logic of organizational brand processes observable.
Sandra Groll holds the position of Professor of Design Theory and Design Research and serves as Program Director of the Master's program in Brand Innovation at Brand University in Hamburg. She is also Associate Professor of Visual Communication at the Sino-German Faculty of Branding, Zhejiang Wanli University in Ningbo, China. Her research employs a systems-theoretical approach to explore transdisciplinary design questions.
More info: www.sgroll.de/home
12:00–12:30
Florian Grote
CODE University of Applied Sciences, Berlin
Drawing Re-Entries:
Iconographic Syntax and the Performance of Social Observation
Forms that are re-introduced into forms are only one of the singularities of George Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form (1969). Dynamics, temporality, and recursion of cognition begin here, with re-entry. The idea appears simple, and yet closer inspection shows that Laws of Form already contains at least three distinct representations and two interpretations of it. This paper examines these representations and interpretations as a concrete iconographic syntax, against the backdrop of empirical questions concerning the performance of social observation. What socio-cognitive functions do re-entries presuppose in their respective interpretations? Which elements does a re-entry add to a distinction, both at its source and within its target space? What do multiple re-entries add to a form?
Pursuing these questions, the paper reconstructs the process of building an algorithmic implementation for drawing and processing re-entries in collaboration with large language models. This, in turn, generates a range of further questions about the application and interpretation of forms with re-entry, as well as new approaches to investigating interactive cognition under conditions of generative AI involvement.
Florian Grote is Professor of Product Management at CODE University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. He has filled design and product roles in the music technology industry, working on innovative instruments for electronic music production. His research focuses on cognitive and systemic perspectives on learning organizations with special attention to resilience and sustainability.
More info: https://fgrote.com
Iconographic Syntax and the Performance of Social Observation
Forms that are re-introduced into forms are only one of the singularities of George Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form (1969). Dynamics, temporality, and recursion of cognition begin here, with re-entry. The idea appears simple, and yet closer inspection shows that Laws of Form already contains at least three distinct representations and two interpretations of it. This paper examines these representations and interpretations as a concrete iconographic syntax, against the backdrop of empirical questions concerning the performance of social observation. What socio-cognitive functions do re-entries presuppose in their respective interpretations? Which elements does a re-entry add to a distinction, both at its source and within its target space? What do multiple re-entries add to a form?
Pursuing these questions, the paper reconstructs the process of building an algorithmic implementation for drawing and processing re-entries in collaboration with large language models. This, in turn, generates a range of further questions about the application and interpretation of forms with re-entry, as well as new approaches to investigating interactive cognition under conditions of generative AI involvement.
Florian Grote is Professor of Product Management at CODE University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. He has filled design and product roles in the music technology industry, working on innovative instruments for electronic music production. His research focuses on cognitive and systemic perspectives on learning organizations with special attention to resilience and sustainability.
More info: https://fgrote.com
12:30–13:00
Lunch Break
13:00–14:30
Spencer-Brown Society Annual General Meeting 2024
14:30–15:00
Hye Young Kim
Husserl Archives, École Normale Supérieure, Paris
Distinction, Self-Reference, and the Emergence of the We:
A Topological Interpretation of Pre-Subjectivity
George Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form begins with the act of distinction. Yet an important philosophical question remains largely unexplored: What is the ontological status of the field from which distinction emerges? Is the observer simply given with the first distinction, or does observerhood itself arise from a more primordial relational structure?
This paper addresses this question through a dialogue between phenomenology and topological models of self-reference. Drawing on Edmund Husserl’s notion of the Ur-Ich and recent developments in knot-theoretic approaches to consciousness, I argue that subjectivity is neither a self-contained substance nor the product of an isolated act of distinction. Rather, the distinction between self and other emerges within a pre-subjective relational field that I describe as the “We.”
To clarify this claim, I develop a topological interpretation of pre-subjectivity using knot structures and self-referential forms. Topological relations make it possible to model how identity and difference can arise simultaneously without presupposing independently existing subjects. In this framework, the observer is not the origin of distinction but a dynamic effect of recursive relational processes. Distinction, indication, and self-reference are therefore grounded in an ontological structure that is intrinsically relational.
This analysis contributes to contemporary discussions of observer theory, self-reference, and consciousness by proposing a phenomenological account of the conditions under which distinctions become possible. It further suggests that the emergence of subjectivity can be understood not as the separation of an individual from its surroundings but as the articulation of a relational topology in which self and other co-arise. By bringing Husserlian phenomenology into conversation with Spencer-Brown’s calculus of distinction and topological models of self-reference, the paper offers a novel perspective on the genesis of observerhood and the ontological foundations of distinction.
Hye Young Kim is Associate Researcher at the Husserl Archives, École Normale Supérieure (Paris). Her research combines phenomenology, ontology, philosophy of consciousness, intercultural philosophy, and mathematical approaches to selfhood and cognition. She is the author of We as Self (Lexington Books, 2021) and numerous articles on Husserl, Heidegger, pre-subjective selfhood, consciousness, and topological models of subjectivity. Her recent work develops relational and topological accounts of self-reference in dialogue with phenomenology, knot theory, and contemporary consciousness studies.
More info: https://ens.academia.edu/HyeYoungKim
A Topological Interpretation of Pre-Subjectivity
George Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form begins with the act of distinction. Yet an important philosophical question remains largely unexplored: What is the ontological status of the field from which distinction emerges? Is the observer simply given with the first distinction, or does observerhood itself arise from a more primordial relational structure?
This paper addresses this question through a dialogue between phenomenology and topological models of self-reference. Drawing on Edmund Husserl’s notion of the Ur-Ich and recent developments in knot-theoretic approaches to consciousness, I argue that subjectivity is neither a self-contained substance nor the product of an isolated act of distinction. Rather, the distinction between self and other emerges within a pre-subjective relational field that I describe as the “We.”
To clarify this claim, I develop a topological interpretation of pre-subjectivity using knot structures and self-referential forms. Topological relations make it possible to model how identity and difference can arise simultaneously without presupposing independently existing subjects. In this framework, the observer is not the origin of distinction but a dynamic effect of recursive relational processes. Distinction, indication, and self-reference are therefore grounded in an ontological structure that is intrinsically relational.
This analysis contributes to contemporary discussions of observer theory, self-reference, and consciousness by proposing a phenomenological account of the conditions under which distinctions become possible. It further suggests that the emergence of subjectivity can be understood not as the separation of an individual from its surroundings but as the articulation of a relational topology in which self and other co-arise. By bringing Husserlian phenomenology into conversation with Spencer-Brown’s calculus of distinction and topological models of self-reference, the paper offers a novel perspective on the genesis of observerhood and the ontological foundations of distinction.
Hye Young Kim is Associate Researcher at the Husserl Archives, École Normale Supérieure (Paris). Her research combines phenomenology, ontology, philosophy of consciousness, intercultural philosophy, and mathematical approaches to selfhood and cognition. She is the author of We as Self (Lexington Books, 2021) and numerous articles on Husserl, Heidegger, pre-subjective selfhood, consciousness, and topological models of subjectivity. Her recent work develops relational and topological accounts of self-reference in dialogue with phenomenology, knot theory, and contemporary consciousness studies.
More info: https://ens.academia.edu/HyeYoungKim
15:00–15:30
Louis H. Kauffman
Lynnclair Dennis
Robert Gray
Lynnclair Dennis
Robert Gray
Asynchronous Modulators and Imaginary Values
Research on Appendices 7, 8, and 9 of Laws of Form
We are working on a very strong line, with the help of Claude AI, that begins with a new understanding that the Mereon polyhedra geometry and dynamics is precisely based on a projection into three-dimensional space of the 600-cell decomposition of the three-dimensional sphere S^3, the recognition of the importance of the binary icosahedral group and other finite subgroups of SU(2) (and crucial properties of the McKay Correspondence) in relation to this geometry and particularly the importance of the Brieskorn manifold Sigma[2,3,5] corresponding to the singular variety x^2 + y^3 + z^5 = 0 in complex 6 space, intersected with the 5-sphere. Sigma[2,3,5] is equivalent to the quotient of S^3 by 2I (the binary icosahedral group) and also as the 5-fold cyclic branched covering of S^3 along the trefoil knot. The result of this concurrence of structure is that we can reorganize a lot of physics and chemistry in relation to these structures, all emanating from the quaternions (the coordinates making the 600-cell are all described quaternionically). The physics involved shows, so far, deep connections between Kauffman's Non-Commutative World formalism and Weber electrodynamics, and we are working on using the higher order constraints in the non-commutative worlds to work with physics, including general relativity, related to octonions and sedenions. So, this line looks like this:
Void --> Distinction --> Calculus of Indications --> Square Root of Negation --> Quaternions
--> Geometry, Gauge Theory --> Octonions, Sedenions, General Relativity and non-commutative, non-associative formulations of physics.
Louis Kauffman has a BS from MIT and PhD from Princeton in Mathematics. He is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research is in knot theory and its ramifications in other areas of mathematics and science. He is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, Editor in Chief of the Journal of Knot Theory and its Ramifications, Recipient of the Warren McCulloch and Norbert Wiener awards of the American Society for Cybernetics, the Bertalanfy Award for Complex Systems, and an ANPA Award of the Alternative Natural Philosophy Association. He works on the mathematics of form and laws of form and writes a column on Virtual Logic for the Journal Cybernetics and Human Knowing, and he is the Editor of the World Scientific Book Series On Knots and Everything.
More info: homepages.math.uic.edu/~kauffman
Research on Appendices 7, 8, and 9 of Laws of Form
We are working on a very strong line, with the help of Claude AI, that begins with a new understanding that the Mereon polyhedra geometry and dynamics is precisely based on a projection into three-dimensional space of the 600-cell decomposition of the three-dimensional sphere S^3, the recognition of the importance of the binary icosahedral group and other finite subgroups of SU(2) (and crucial properties of the McKay Correspondence) in relation to this geometry and particularly the importance of the Brieskorn manifold Sigma[2,3,5] corresponding to the singular variety x^2 + y^3 + z^5 = 0 in complex 6 space, intersected with the 5-sphere. Sigma[2,3,5] is equivalent to the quotient of S^3 by 2I (the binary icosahedral group) and also as the 5-fold cyclic branched covering of S^3 along the trefoil knot. The result of this concurrence of structure is that we can reorganize a lot of physics and chemistry in relation to these structures, all emanating from the quaternions (the coordinates making the 600-cell are all described quaternionically). The physics involved shows, so far, deep connections between Kauffman's Non-Commutative World formalism and Weber electrodynamics, and we are working on using the higher order constraints in the non-commutative worlds to work with physics, including general relativity, related to octonions and sedenions. So, this line looks like this:
Void --> Distinction --> Calculus of Indications --> Square Root of Negation --> Quaternions
--> Geometry, Gauge Theory --> Octonions, Sedenions, General Relativity and non-commutative, non-associative formulations of physics.
Louis Kauffman has a BS from MIT and PhD from Princeton in Mathematics. He is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research is in knot theory and its ramifications in other areas of mathematics and science. He is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, Editor in Chief of the Journal of Knot Theory and its Ramifications, Recipient of the Warren McCulloch and Norbert Wiener awards of the American Society for Cybernetics, the Bertalanfy Award for Complex Systems, and an ANPA Award of the Alternative Natural Philosophy Association. He works on the mathematics of form and laws of form and writes a column on Virtual Logic for the Journal Cybernetics and Human Knowing, and he is the Editor of the World Scientific Book Series On Knots and Everything.
More info: homepages.math.uic.edu/~kauffman
15:30–17:00
