A Science of Organization

Many individuals are already engaging in relevant activities. However, these activities are considered by the hosting fields as marginal, they are uncoordinated and conducted in much too timid a way.

A number of sciences ought to be centered on the phenomenon of organization but have historically neglected the subject, for reasons of limited perspective. Biology does not see the development of concepts as central to its activity. The neurosciences are rich in relevant concepts, but these are scattered over many subfields, and too little effort is made to collect, unify and teach them. Computer science is still too much centered on single algorithms and issues of their formulation, execution, efficiency etc., and the field has not come around yet to study the mechanisms behind the generation of algorithms and of entire systems. Physics, although realizing that it is losing its attraction for young people, is too busy with its classical application fields to embrace the issue of organization. In short, there is, at present, no science of organization, or what little there is, it is without an academic home.

Interdisciplinary interaction will be mandatory. Existing fields of science and engineering have complementary strenghts and deficits. Relevant concepts, methods, facts and instructive paradigms are scattered over the scientific landscape. It is important to concentrate them into one academic curriculum and educate a new generation of scientists, aligning them behind this one goal: understand the phenomenon of organization. Only in a novel intellectual climate will it be possible to overcome barriers of solidified perspectives within existing fields.

Study of the phenomena of organization is of great attractiveness to young people. This is the intellectual frontier of our time. Students must be given the opportunity to focus on it, and the scientists already devoting their lives to it must be brought out from the fringes of existing fields, must form the core of a science, must be encouraged to feel (and act!) as the avant-guarde they are! There is a great opportunity for intitiatives!