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Welcome to the LoF50 website
the online home of The Spencer-Brown Society
Call for Abstracts
Laws of Form 2024 Conference (LoF24)
Submissions for papers, panel sessions, interactive presentations, workshops, performance sessions, and creative contributions inspired by George Spencer-Brown's work and life are now open and welcomed from participants keen to contribute to LoF24 which will be held from Wednesday 7 August 2024 to Saturday 10 August, 2024 at the University of Liverpool.

In addition to Laws of Form (1969), George Spencer-Brown wrote other books. At the Laws of Form 2024 Conference, we 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 are particularly interested in exploring work that reflects on themes found in Only Two Can Play This Game such as game play, game theory, narrative and story, poetry, cosmology, humanity, love, philosophy, mysticism, physics, logic, mathematics, and spirituality.

If you wish to actively participate at LoF24, please submit an extended abstract of your presentation, outlining its content as well as its structure.

To submit, please complete the submission form here:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=lof24
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).
Deadline for submissions: Tuesday 2 April, 2024 (George Spencer-Brown's birthday)
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.
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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 Stripe via these links:

Donate £5 (or multiples thereof)
Donate £10 (or multiples thereof)
Donate £25 (or multiples thereof)
Donate £100 (or multiples thereof)

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
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.
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.

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

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