The West Wing of the Thinkibility University – our exciting recent project – is dedicated to thinking patterns in sciences. At the West Wing, scientists dissect the basic thinking patterns in a scientific discipline.
Although philosophers of science will work there, the research agenda will not be philosophy of science – roughly this discipline is concerned with when we could claim that something might be true. Instead of exploring the relationship between science and truth scientists in the West Wing will focus on the paradigms of science or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitutes legitimate contributions to a field. Thus, the focus is not on true/false claims.
Since we believe that science is basically the outcome of processes of human interaction, you will also find at the West Wing sociologists, psychologists, political scientists and even anthropologists who explore people and their ancestors’ habits in relation to culture, and social and environmental factors.
However, besides classical education in traditional sciences, the people working at the West Wing will all have received thoroughly training in thinking theories. They will be skilled in Lateral Thinking, TRIZ, Anti Conventional Thinking, Biomimicry and several other disciplines and approaches that are slowly entering the body of knowledge about a rather significant feature of humans – thinking.
The main goal is not to describe the standard thinking in a scientific discipline, but to escape from it. To design alternative approaches for scientific development. The scientists are involved in design thinking for scientific research.
A basic assumption that underlies the work a the West Wing is that most of the sciences nowadays are still ruled by a Newtonian view of balls and forces.
In an earlier post we argued that classical economy is a typical example of a science based on mechanical assumptions and by that, possible, totally inadequate. The scientific queeste of the department could be to explore if it is possible to base economic theories on system dynamics or quantum physics? Or even evolutionary biology? How could we design methods and techniques to escape from standard thinking in economic theory?
In Patterns in Psychological Research we provided another example of what could be an intermediate result of the Department for Psychology research. In Thinking Patterns in Science we gave even more examples such as for dominant thinking patterns in engineering systems. Another example of a dominant idea in brain research is that it would be located in the brain, while for more fruitful research it might better be assumed as an outcome of interactions between environment and the body, or even all body cells.
The objective of the West Wing research groups of the Thinkibility University will be to design alternative approaches for “doing science” in the classical sciences. The people working there will use systematic and deliberate creative thinking techniques to achieve the goals.They will offer alternative thinking strategies for scientific disciplines.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if by escaping standard thinking strategies students at the West Wing of the Thinkibility University would generate new hypothesis in nearly every branch of science?
Guess what we will have in mind for the North, South and Eastern wings?