Ranulph Glanville is professor of Architecture and Cybernetics at the Bartlett, UCL; of Research Design at St Lucas, Brussels and Ghent;  of Research in Industrial Design Engineering, The Royal College of  ARt, London; and Adjunct professor of design research at RMIT  University, Melbourne. He has published more than 300 works, and has an art and design practice. He is on the editorial board of 7 journals and is an officer of 5 societies, including fellow, vice  president and president elect of the American Society for  Cybernetics. He has 2 PhDs and a DSc: his 1975 cybernetics PhD has been selected by the British Library as one of 6000 key predigital  PhDs, to be digitized.

He has published extensively in all four fields. He has taught in universities around the world. Although he took early retirement from a full time post in the UK he currently holds posts at UCL, London, UK, where he is a Professor of Architecture and Cybernetics, Sint Lucas Brussels and Gent, where he is Professor of Architectural Research, and Professor and senior visiting Research Fellow at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, Melbourne, Australia. He travels the world advising universities as a professor of odd jobs. He has consulted in a variety of areas from a mental health hospital to a bank and from universities to the creation of CAD systems for designers. He was awarded a DSc, recognising his research in cybernetics and design.

We live by a model that tells us we should understand in order to act. Yet babies do the opposite: they act in order to understand. This is the key lesson that Piaget taught us. In a more recent cybernetic interpretation, acting and understanding form a mutually dependant circularity. What is important is what happens between them (their interaction) within the mind of the agent who acts and understands. I argue this is powered by reflection, i.e., deep, contemplative thinking. I will explore how this relates to Behaviours in my own Theory of Objects; von Foerster’s recursive eigen forms; and Schoen’s reflection in action. Finally, I will bring these ideas towards Umpleby’s account of Soros’ reflexive economics.