Dedication - For the people of Japan and the Haiku’s focus on the inevitable transformation of seasons.
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 08:56PM The moment two bubbles
are united, they both vanish.
A lotus blooms.
--Murakami, Kijo (1865-1938)
The questions of recent natural and unnatural disasters rising from the earthquake affecting Japan and the world are rooted in both design choices and our collective perspective that technology is outside of us--an external force, beyond our control, like Mother Nature (and even God).
At the 2010, Society for Design and Process Science and its sister the Software Engineering Society (SDPS/SES)[1] meeting in Dallas, TX, discussions throughout the week flowed from questions about the relationship between humanity, technology, art, business, science, and engineering. Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg (Physics) gave the opening address and inspired conference-long discussions about the “civilizing effect” of science. The week’s discussions were guided by a constant re-asking of questions about how we can harvest “the collective wisdom of humanity”—to make design choices about human expression of technology for the good of humanity.
NEXT GENERATION 2010, THE SOCIETY FOR DESIGN & PROCESS SCIENCE
From the First SDPS Conference 1999
“Many of you have recognized the feasibility that now is the time to start a new professional society to foster, to identify and to extend a core of science that deals with design and processes across a broad spectrum of human, technological and economic endeavors.”--Dr. George Kozmetsky, Keynote Address, First SDPS Conference, December 1995, Austin, Texas
NEXT GENERATION - THE SOCIETY FOR DESIGN & PROCESS SCIENCE
After listening to SDPS/SES leaders, participants collectively identified the following themes of reflection for a workshop titled the “Next Generation.” The task I was given was to lead the group in expressing what is next for SDPS/SES. The topics of reflection for the next generation of SDPS/SES include:
- the civilizing effect of science,
- concentration,
- creativity,
- compassion, and
- one.
The workshop was designed to facilitate the expression of what is next for SDPS 2.0—the transition of the mantle of responsibility and leadership in this academic and professional society dedicated to the practice of transdiscipline (innovation, integrated systems design, and process science).
Civilizing Effect
Social thought generates
ideas and connectivity
to change the world now.
Education and
knowledge have a power when
transdisciplinary.[4]
Love is
commitment to
each other. Beauty
is adaptation to
the world.
Concentration
Listen to people,
promote communication,
be more tolerant.
Understand people
Embrace other perspectives
Help bring awareness
Preserve your culture
Understand other cultures
Cheer diversity
Creativity
Compassion, help, lover,
listen and respond to act,
respect shall follow.
Obstacles appear.
United we stand the way,
fruitful the result.
Leap into vision,
reaching out to form beauty--
invigorate them.
Compassion
Be compassionate.
Add more diversity now.
Look inside your self.
Cross cultural bounds
can be achieved through sharing
thoughts, ideas and scars.
Listen to my thoughts.
We can sympathize as one.
Let’s immerse together.
One
Trust is mine to give
to collaborate in truth--
permission I give.
To err is human.
We all must communicate
what moves our minds most.
Simplify your thoughts,
our friendship depends on this--
a common language.
SDPS is similar to the IEEE Computer Society (founded 1963); however, SDPS recognizes the expansive role of integrated software and hardware as the platform for innovation and design. Like IEEE, SDPS is a professional scientific and engineering society. IEEE is an acronym for the "Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers." It is a society formed by merging the American Institute for Electrical Engineers (AIEE, 1884) and the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE, founded 1912). (Wikiedia, IEEE, Accessed July 10, 2011).
SDPS focuses on the development and application of a fundamental process science to expand scientific knowledge, computational design, engineering methods, mathematics, business innovation and art. Rather than computer science, SDPS represents comuting science across all fields of scientific and human scientific inquiry and life.
SDPS is based on transformational design embracing a systems approach to science, engineering, art and business. The common thread is a “process-oriented view” as "synthetic thought and unifying philosophy." Put simply, SDPS is the science of process. A very brad definition of process is "any [human] description of change."
PROCESS=CHANGE
Step 1: Open the car door
Step 2: Get in the car
Step 3: Put key in ignition
Step 4: Start engine...
What is change according to SDPS? An undefinable term or concept known only through analogy, metaphor, etc. We find these terms throughout science: force, mass, time, etc. The best description comes from philosophy:
"Basic reality is constantly in a process of flux and change. Indeed, reality is identified with pure process. This metaphysical perspective is to be contrasted with a philosoph of substance, the view that a fixed and permanent reality underlies the changing or fluctuating world of ordinary experience.” [Funk & Wagnalls]
Stan Gatchel, Ph.D. from the society explains: "Let's look at a very common concept: a circle. The standard definition is: 'a simple shape of Euclidean geometry consisting of those points in a plane that are a given distance from a given point, the center.' But what's a 'point,' what's a 'plane,' and what's a 'straight line?' Show me one example of a circle. I can tell you now they don't exist, but we can use the concept to describe things which nearly have this quality. So it's really just a useful concept. Ditto: change. Process science is the science of change, i.e, the study of this fundamental concept of change, like mechanics studies the '...behavior of physical bodies when subjected to forces...'"Murat Tanik chimes into our email string: "Change is what second law of thermodynamics does to everything and everyone incessantly. It is a principle of nature, the second law says that everything deteriorates. Which means change." (Stan Gatchel, Ph.D. and Murat Tanik, Ph.D., SDPS, Email interview Nov. 17, 2011)
SDPS is the transdisciplinary society. All science was transdisciplinary until recently. Disciplinarity, according to the society, is a relatively new phenomenon, essentially started with Galelio around 1640s. The notion of transdiscipline was probably first used by Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget in 1970. Thomas Kuhn claimed that he was influenced by Piaget's work in his development of the ideas of “paradigm shift” and "normal science" in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolution. Edward Wilson in his seminal book, CONSILIENCE: The Unity of Knowledge, just like Piaget, indirectly talks about the notion of transdiscipline. Herb Simon promoted transdisciplinary activity by expressing that unstructured problems cannot be tackled by disciplinary means.
SDPS members are from all walks of life and are unified by a kind of thinking that is outside the boundaries of traditional academic disciplines--or technical societies. International student and faculty scientists and engineers work at the intersection of computing (cyber) and virtually all fields of academic and human life—from Man in Space (1960's)-to-computational neuro biology-to-computer virus and malware identification for cyber security.[3]
A HOPI STORY ABOUT THE WAY OF TRANSDISCIPLINE
“‘Hopi language has only limited tenses,’ noted Whorf, ‘makes no reference to time as an entity distinct from space, and, though relatively poor in nouns is rich in verbs. It is a language that projects a world of movement and changing relationships, a continuous ‘fabric’ of time and space. It is better suited than the English language to describing quantum mechanics. A Hopi would be confounded by the idea that time flowed from past to present.’ He [Whorf] made people see that there were no primitive languages; and that there was no pool of thought from which all cultures drew their metaphysics. ‘All observers,’ he cautioned, ‘are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe.”[Lopez, 1986] --Benjamin Whorf, 20th Century Linguist
According to Stan Gatchel from SDPS, "We can learn much from native cultures. One goal of science/engineering should be to preserve cultures."
___________________________________________
[1] During 1995 Dr. George Kozmetsky in collaboration with Dr. Murat M. Tanik (who was at University of Texas Austin), Dr. David Gibson, Dr. Raymond T. Yeh, Dr. C. V. Ramamoorty, and Dr. Herbert Simon, spearheaded the establishment of the Society for Design and Process Science and the Transactions, “Journal of Integrated Design & Process Science: Transactions, “for the society, as an archival journal, covering issues “transcending disciplinary boundaries.” Herbert Simon gave his seminal speech on software and man-machine interfaces indicating the universality of software during SDPS 2000 in Dallas. In response to this speech, with the support of software engineering pioneers R.T. Yeh and C.V. Ramamoorthy, SES was formed as a function of SDPS to embrace the full breadth of knowledge of software engineering and to seek the future of this largest and youngest of all engineering disciplines. SES remains an integral part of SDPS and holds the key to new vistas in science and engineering. During SDPS/SES 2011 in Jeju Island, Korea and SDPS 2012 Berlin, Germany there will be major initiatives to expand SES worldwide. Anyone who feels any closeness to software or its engineering are welcome to participate and communicate with us.
[2] Haiku is a Japanese poem with three lines, the first line is made up of five syllables, the second has seven, and the third line has five syllables. Together they usually express a seasonal change. A Cinquain is a five-line stanza with two syllables in the first line, four syllables in the second, six in the third, eight in the fourth, and two syllables in the last line. While these forms are defined in this way, approximations expressing ideas and sentiments are perfectly acceptable. Sample Haiku, learning declarations, and art works from different audiences ranging from three-year-old children to 85-year-old scientists are sprinkled throughout this book.
[3] In 1975, Herbert Simon and Allen Newell were awarded the Association of Computing Machinery’s Turing Award for methods of detecting viruses and other forms of malware. Learn more about transdisciplinary thinking by example in Herb Simon’s book, about Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), The Sciences of the Artificial (1996).
[4] "Transdiscipline is an expansive term. It implies the process in which disciplinary people work together by genuinely trying to understand the methods, techniques, and strategies of other disciplines to tackle complex phenomena in a collective fashion. This is different than interdiscipline or multidiscipline. In those paradigms the disciplinary people offer their disciplinary expertise to tackle some aspect of the problem. They keep each other at arm’s length. They are not interested in understanding the complex phenomenon itself nor interested in other disciplines. They are only interested in understanding their part of the problem to solve, using their disciplinary tools and strategies." Tanik
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