Conceptual Foundations for Multidisciplinary Thinking / Stephen Jay Kline.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kline, Stephen Jay, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Interdisciplinary approach to knowledge.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (357 pages)

Place of Publication:

Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, [2020]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Our current intellectual system provides us with a far more complete and accurate understanding of nature and ourselves than was available in any previous society. This gain in understanding has arisen from two sources: the use of the 'scientific method', and the breaking up of our intellectual enterprise into increasingly narrower disciplines and research programs. However, we have failed to keep these narrow specialities connected to the intellectual enterprise as a whole. The author demonstrates that this causes a number of difficulties. We have no viewpoint from which we can understand the relationships between the disciplines and lack a forum for adjudicating situations where different disciplines give conflicting answers to the same problem. We seriously underestimate the differences in methodology and in the nature of principles in the various branches of science. This provocative and wide-ranging book provides a detailed analysis and possible solutions for dealing with this problem.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Acknowledgments

Contents

Preface

1. Introduction

2. Systems, Domains, and Truth Assertions

3. Sysreps and the Human Mind

4. An Index for Complexity

5. Thinking About Complex Systems

6. Feedback as a Source of Complexity

7. Hierarchy as a Structural Feature: The Hierarchy of Constitution

8. Interfaces of Mutual Constraint and Levels of Control: Polanyi’s Principle

9. The Theory of Dimensions

10. Integrated Control Information

11. Disciplines at One Level

12. Consistency as a Primary Criterion

13. Operational Procedures in Forming Sysreps for Complex Systems

14. Examples of Multidisciplinary Analysis

15. The Evolution of Disciplines, 1500–1900

16. Relations Among the Disciplines in the Twentieth Century

17. Fallacies of Projection

18. Fallacies of Projection

19. What Have We Learned?

20. What Have We Learned?

APPENDIX A. Implications for Education

Appendix B. Two Standing Bets

Appendix C. Hypotheses, Guidelines, Dicta, and Queries

APPENDIX D. Glossary

References

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jul 2020)

ISBN:

9780804763936

0804763933

OCLC:

1178769042