Transdisciplinary Science, Technology and Society: The General Formula/Schema of Transdisciplinarity: Trans-AI S & T & S Platform
Introduction
Transdisciplinarity is largely ignored by the established science institutions regardless that the fusion of Science and Technology and Society (S &T & S) is crucial for Complex Problem Solutions in Science and Technology, Society and Economy, Politics and Culture, Environment and Nature.
Transdisciplinary research (TD), which involves the integration of knowledge from different science disciplines and (non-academic) stakeholder communities, is required to help address complex societal challenges. However, and despite increasing interest at the policy level, there are significant barriers to conducting rigorous TDR.
Science systems, their institutions, structures and processes, have been largely designed around distinct research disciplines and this presents a number of significant barriers to the promotion of TDR
TDR can address complex problems beyond the reach of traditional science. It offers a practical way to address issues that are highly contested and where stakes are high. It can expand on existing scientific evidence and give rise to more innovative, holistic solutions. It can generate both new scientific insights and practical societal benefits. As such, it is a necessary complement, but not a replacement, to traditional research practices. However, given the scale and urgency of the human-environmental system challenges that society is currently facing, there is a strong argument that TDR needs to be scaled up very considerably and become a mainstream modus operandi for research.
As Helga Nowotny?wrote in The Potential of Transdisciplinarity: "Here I want to assert that knowledge, as well as expertise, is inherently transgressive. Nobody has anywhere succeeded for very long in containing knowledge. Knowledge seeps through institutions and structures like water through the pores of a membrane. Knowledge seeps in both directions, from science to society as well as from society to science. It seeps through institutions and from academia to and from the outside world. Transdisciplinarity is therefore about transgressing boundaries. Institutions still exist and have a function. Disciplines still exist and new ones arise continuously from interdisciplinary work. Therefore: beware!"?
Still, there is only Transdisciplinary Journal of Engineering & Science, the Division of Transdisciplinary Sciences, Collaborative educational courses of "Kanazawa University" and "Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, The International Center for Transdisciplinary Research (CIRET), and International Centre for Transdisciplinary Studies and Research.
There is no National Institute of Transdisciplinarity (NIT) in existence, yet, if not to count National Institute of Science and Technology in Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Studies in Ecology and Evolution (IN-TREE), in Brazil.
Given the complexity of the modern human world, with all possible global risks and opportunities, there is the urgent necessity of the Global Network of Transdisciplinary (GNT) Studies, Research and Development in Science, Arts, and Technology, Society and Economy, Politics and Culture, Environment and Nature. This is to be run by Autonomous Intelligent Trans-AI Science & Technology & Society Platform.
I hope to see in each country the National Center of Transdisciplinarity, as the key nodes of the GNT, like as the European Transnational Center of Transdisciplinarity (TNT), with the National Institute for Science, Technology and Society in each Member State, or the Russian Institute of Transdisciplinary Science, Technology and Society.
Real Transdisciplinarity as Transdisciplinary Research and Technological Development (TR & TD)
The first TR appeared in Aristotle's writings covering many subjects including?metaphysics, physics,?biology,?zoology,?logic,?ethics,?aesthetics,?poetry,?theatre,?music,?rhetoric,?psychology,?linguistics,?economics,?politics,?meteorology,?geology, and?government.
Aristotle combined systematic/scientific observations, inductive and abductive reasoning, if not controlled experimental research, elucidating empirical laws, with the?deductive reasoning from first principles.
The 19th and early 20th centuries featured the separation of the sciences, natural, formal and traditional humanities from philosophy, and later the development and formalisation of the natural, formal, social and technological sciences,
With the exponential growth of scientific knowledge, there was fragmentation and specialisation of scientific disciplines in virtually all knowledge domains. Meantime, no complex, emerging phenomena could not be understood or addressed from within specialized knowledge and practice siloes.
As a solution, systems theory was developed in a broad range of fields, including biology, cybernetics, game theory, information theory, and sociology, as examining “the abstract organisation of phenomena, independent of their substance, type, or spatial or temporal scale of existence … [It gave] rise to the idea of an abstract structural unity of scientific knowledge against the background of… progressive fragmentation….” This was a step to integrative research to bridge silos and address complexity. The term “transdisciplinarity” was first introduced 50+ years at the OECD International conference on Interdisciplinary Research and Education.
Nevertheless, science and technology and society remain dominated by traditional disciplinary structures, largely ignoring transdisciplinary systems thinking, TDR; operations research; systems approaches; action research; place-based research; team science; integration and implementation science; ethical, legal and social implications research; citizen science, convergence research, post-normal or mode 2 science.
The TDR is an active area of scientific research and development and there are many different models that try and capture the essence of what it is and how it really represent a paradigm shift in research and practice that can be applied to complex or ‘wicked’ problems.
Unlike the TDR, with its many models, the Transdisciplinarity of Science, Technology and Society implies a unifying world modeling of reality at the meta-physical, meta-disciplinary level.
Such an integrative and comprehensive model of reality (universal formal ontology) is integrated with mathematical modeling as a mathematical representation of reality.
It ranges from modeling climate change patterns to industrial processes and other complex situations, scientific, economical, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological, like as listed in Global Risks Report 2022.
The TR & RD relies on how the fundamental question: "What is reality?" is answered:
The World of Reality = <Substance, attributes, modes>, the world, all that there was, is and will be, is a world of things, or the universe consists of objects having various qualities and standing in various relations (Whitehead and Russel); Science and Technology is all about substances or objects and machines of various kinds, scales and scopes
The World of Reality = <Process, attributes, modes>, the world is a world of facts, states of affairs, phenomena, observations, events or processes; Science and Technology is all about processes of various kinds, scales and scopes
The World of Reality = <Interaction, substances + processes>, the world is a world of interactions and cause-effect relationships, having a causal unity and spatiotemporal unity; Science and Technology is all about interactions of various kinds, scales and scopes.?
This is the ontological foundation of the General Schema/Formula/Model of Transdisciplinarity, where interactions, with all its interacting variables and modalities, are graphed against distinct levels of studies, physical, chemical, biological, mental, social, environmental and technological
So, the TR&TD is all about All, which is "interaction and reciprocal" (Humboldt). Its motto, war cry, is "Everything?interacts with everything else", including sciences, knowledge fields, disciplines, actors and stakeholders.?
The ladder of the TR&TD consists in 4 distinct levels of interactions:
Monodisciplinary - silos (the orthodox sciences of independent disciplines, as philosophical, physical, mathematical, cognitive, social, or technological disciplines); mono-research fails "in contexts with high complexity and uncertainty, where causal pathways transcend disciplinary boundaries"
Multidisciplinary - additive
Interdisciplinary - interactive
Transdisciplinary - whole/integral/synthetic, higher level synthesis systemic, integrated approaches and inclusive participation to address complex issues
The Schema/Formula of Transdisicplinarity implies
reality and causality,
interaction and interactivity,
knowledge and discovery,
universality and locality,
methodology and validity,
understanding and application.
It embraces such all the traditional special mono-, multi-, inter-, trans-disciplines, from theoretical physics and mathematical sciences to human sciences, as health sciences.
In physics, fundamental interactions are?primary forces that act between the elementary particles to compose all matter and energy and changes. Physicists have distinguished four fundamental interactions: gravitational, electromagnetic, weak nuclear, and strong nuclear. In the human sciences, the interactions as causality, ontogeny, phylogeny and adaptation, are studied against distinct levels of analysis: molecule, cell, organ, individual, group, society.
The key message to take away is that only the transdisciplinary S & T is real S & T.
For lack of the unifying ontological Schema/Formula of Transdisicplinarity, there are many fragmented academic positions and conflicting views on what the TD could be.
What is Academic Transdisciplinarity
Transdisciplinary research (TDR) re-emerged at the OECD International conference on Interdisciplinary Research and Education in 1970 to integrate both academic researchers from unrelated disciplines – including natural sciences and social science and humanities - and non-academic participants to achieve a common goal, involving the creation of new knowledge and theory.
The most popular is a socio-epistemic approach; as "research that integrates knowledge across academic disciplines and with non-academic stakeholders to address societal challenges".
Or, "a fusing of theories, methods and expertise across disciplinary boundaries in which each discipline merges with the others in the formation of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Transdisciplinarity?connotes a research strategy that crosses many disciplinary boundaries to create a holistic approach.?It may also include perspectives and methods from such disciplines as social science, economics, and public administration as well as from civil society and a wide range of stakeholders".
A number of different terms referring to problem-solving transdisciplinary approaches include:
The Global Network of TRANSDISCIPLINARY SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY on the Trans-AI Platform
I advance the necessity of the Global Network of Transdisciplinary Studies, Research, and Development in Science, Arts, and Technology, Society and Economy, Politics and Culture, Environment and Nature.
The idea is to see in each country the National Center of Transdisciplinarity, as the key nodes of the global network of transdisciplinarity, like as the European Center of Transdisciplinarity or the Russian Institute of Transdisciplinary Science and Technology.
领英推荐
All is supported by the Global Trans-AI Platform operating the World Knowledge Platform, as the transdisciplinary unification of philosophy, science, arts and technology
Its characteristics – interdisciplinary, integrative, reflexive, problem-focused, interactive and emergent, collaborative beyond special disciplines, activities, groups, communities, and societies, academia, government, business, citizens, etc.
New "transdisciplines" may emerge on the base of the traditional/orthodox sciences, as the nodal points of the Global Trans-AI S & T Platform:
New Biology...
For example, the “New Biology” is the result of interactive/collaborative efforts on behalf of traditional biology, physical and chemical sciences, computational science, mathematics, and engineering, social science, economics, and public administration, all performed withing the academia-government-business-civil society partnership. Thus it integrates the natural, social, and health sciences in a humanities context and transcends their traditional boundaries.
The social value and societal impact of TR & DT is enormous; for its integral approaches, methods and models are decisive in solving most complex problems, producing the most strategic policies and solutions for a smart sustainable future:
General AI Platform > Man-Machine Superintelligence > Trans-AI Science and Technology
There is a critical role of TR & TD in all sciences and technologies and innovative practices, as it is documented in the following books, keynotes and articles.
The Sustainable Way to General/Transdisciplinary AI/MI/ML, Trans-AI
There are two approaches to General AI: false and true, namely:
The mainstream, human-like, human-level Anthropocentric AI (AAI) Model of human intelligence (99.9999%);
Transdisciplinary AI Model of reality and causality, data and knowledge, mentality and computation (0.0001)% .
The AAI systems work by taking in large amounts of labeled training data, analyzing the data for spurious correlations and statistic patterns, and using those patterns to make predictions about future states.
The AAI programming is imitating three human cognitive abilities: Learning, reasoning, and self-correction.
Learning processes?focuses on gathering data and creating rules as algorithms for how to turn the data into actionable information to instruct computing devices how performing a specific task.
The AAI-based machines are fast, accurate and precise, but they are not intuitive and rational and general.
The Transdisciplinarity AI (TransAI) transcends traditional boundaries to integrate the philosophical, mathematical, natural, cognitive, social, engineering and computer sciences in a man-machine intelligence context.
A transdisciplinary cognitive thinking skillset and a disposition/mindset includes observing, patterning, abstracting, embodied thinking, modelling, play and synthesizing, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, dialectical thought, and metacognition
All the most wicked problems as identified in the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (Home), from ending poverty to climate change, are so complex and formally unsolvable that they require approaching the issue collaboratively using multiple lenses, with all intersections and relationships - in short, to develop the transdisciplinary man-machine hyperintelligence.
Such a transdisciplinary R & D approach can provide an integrated, systematic, comprehensive intelligence framework for the definition, analysis and understanding of the scientific and nonscientific (social, economic, political, environmental, and institutional) factors.
The pathway to Real/General/Autonomous Machine Intelligence had started some thousands years ago:
TR & TD: Reality > General World Model > Ontology/Metaphysics > Logic > Mathematics > Science & Engineering > Computing > Cybernetics > ANNs > Symbolic/Logical/General AI > Machine Learning > Deep Learning : Weak/Narrow AI > Neuro-symbolic General/Human-Level AI > ASI > Transdisciplinary AI = Trans AI > Man-Machine Hyperintelligence
“When I read about AI, 80% of the time it’s just flat out wrong information,” says Prof. Stewart Russell of the University of California at Berkeley, the author of the Human-Centric AI textbook.
In reality, “When I hear or read about AI, 99.9999% of the time it’s just flat wrong information”. This misunderstanding of what AI really is has largely enabled the emergence of fake AI, a subjective, non-scientific human-like, human-level AI.
A standard dead-end to a human-like AGI one can meet in LeCun’s position paper: A Path Towards Autonomous Machine Intelligence.
Such a human-like, fake AGI is an aggregation of statistical techniques, mathematical methods, unethical marketing strategies and immature tech solutions. Fake AI does not offer a true competitive advantage, and the market is becoming increasingly aware of what real AI can achieve, fake AI products and novelties are unlikely to stand the test of time.
To be more specific, we demonstrate how crucial could be the ST & TD models for building
Full-Stack AI, All-Scenario AI solutions
This implies several distinct man-machine interaction/interface development task levels:
The Full Stack AI Developer must be a generalist, and a very rare talent good in back end development, AI science/technology, data science/engineering, mobile development, machine learning engineering, knowledge of multiple programming languages, and/or front end AI development.
For example, Huawei released its ML/AI strategy and the holistic full-stack, all-scenario AI solution, as hierarchical and encompassing terminals to clouds, AI chips for Machine Learning and Deep Learning training.
By full-stack, Huawei means solutions covering chips, chip enablement, training and inference framework, and application enablement. [A Holistic View at Huawei’s Full-Stack, All-Scenario AI Strategy]
Conclusion
I advance the necessity of the Global Intelligent Network of Transdisciplinary Research, Development and Practice in Science, Arts, and Technology, Society and Economy, Politics and Culture, Environment and Nature.
The idea is to see in each country the National Center of Transdisciplinarity, as the key nodes of the global network of transdisciplinarity, like as the European Center of Transdisciplinarity or the Russian Institute of Transdisciplinary Science and Technology.