Context: The problems that are most in need of interdisciplinary collaboration are “wicked problems,” such as food crises, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development, with many relevant aspects, disagreement on what the problem is, and contradicting solutions. Such complex problems both require and challenge interdisciplinarity. Problem: The conventional methods of interdisciplinary research fall short in the case of wicked problems because they remain first-order science. Our aim is to present workable methods and research designs for doing second-order science in domains (...) where there are many different scientific knowledges on any complex problem. Method: We synthesize and elaborate a framework for second-order science in interdisciplinary research based on a number of earlier publications, experiences from large interdisciplinary research projects, and a perspectivist theory of science. Results: The second-order polyocular framework for interdisciplinary research is characterized by five principles. Second-order science of interdisciplinary research must: 1. draw on the observations of first-order perspectives, 2. address a shared dynamical object, 3. establish a shared problem, 4. rely on first-order perspectives to see themselves as perspectives, and 5. be based on other rules than first-order research. Implications: The perspectivist insights of second-order science provide a new way of understanding interdisciplinary research that leads to new polyocular methods and research designs. It also points to more reflexive ways of dealing with scientific expertise in democratic processes. The main challenge is that this is a paradigmatic shift, which demands that the involved disciplines, at least to some degree, subscribe to a perspectivist view. Constructivist content: Our perspectivist approach to science is based on the second-order cybernetics and systems theories of von Foerster, Maruyama, Maturana & Varela, and Luhmann, coupled with embodied theories of cognition and semiotics as a general theory of meaning from von Uexküll and Peirce. (shrink)

Modern societies depend on a growing production of scientific knowledge, which is based on the functional differentiation of science into still more specialised scientific disciplines and subdisciplines. This is the basis for the paradox of scientific expertise: The growth of science leads to a fragmentation of scientific expertise. To resolve this paradox, the present paper investigates three hypotheses: 1) All scientific knowledge is perspectival. 2) The perspectival structure of science leads to specific forms of knowledge asymmetries. 3) Such perspectival knowledge (...) asymmetries must be handled through second order perspectives. We substantiate these hypotheses on the basis of a perspectivist philosophy of science grounded in Peircean semiotics and autopoietic systems theory. Perspectival knowledge asymmetries are an unavoidable and necessary part of the growth of scientific knowledge, and more awareness of this fact can help avoid blind and futile struggles between scientific perspectives, and direct efforts toward more appropriate ways of handling these fundamental knowledge asymmetries. Concretely, we show how different kinds of scientific knowledge, expertise, disagreement and learning can be correlated to the perspectival structure of science, and propose how polyocular communication based on observations of the observations made by specialised perspectives can be used to handle such perspectival knowledge asymmetries. This can help overcome the observed problems in carrying out cross-disciplinary research and in the collective use of different kinds of scientific expertise, and thereby make society better able to solve complex, real-world problems. (shrink)

(2013). Complexity and Transdisciplinarity: Reflections on Theory and Practice. World Futures: Vol. 69, The Complexity of Life and Lives of Complexity, pp. 200-230.

The epistemology which sees intra-specific and intra-group heterogenization, symbiotization, interactive pattern-generating and change as basic principles produces types of theories and research strategies different from the epistemology based on the notions of intra-specific and intra-group uniformity, competition and stabilization. In the uniformistic view, individual variations have been reduced mainly either to statistical deviations from the mean or to dominance relationship. On the other hand in the heterogenistic view, mutual beneficial interactions between qualitatively heterogeneous individuals within a group is regarded as (...) indispensable for the increase of the level of behavioral and biological sophistication and evolution. This article compares five epistemologies including the two mentioned above in the context of the current epistemological transition in science, particularly due to the emergence of non-equilibrium thermodynamics in physics and differentiation-amplifying reciprocal causal models in mathematics and engineering, both of which consider the universe as pattern-generating, information-creating and evolving. (shrink)

(1993). Evolutionary learning for a post‐industrial society: Knowledge, creativity & social ecology. World Futures: Vol. 36, Evolutionary Consciousness, pp. 181-202.

Досліджуються проблеми становлення гуманістичного менеджменту як нової концепції управління суспільством в центрі якої не абстрактна людина, а чоловік і жінка з їх потребами і інтересами, різними можливостями для їх самовизначення і реалізації; обґрунтовується необхідність врахування гендерної складової при впровадженні принципів гуманістичного управління як необхідної умови демократизації, формування соціальної держави та громадянського суспільства.