This industrial feat made Connecticut so famous that when Mark Twain wanted to dramatize America's industrial advances over the Old World, the Yankee he chose for King Arthur's Court was a Connecticut Yankee. And rightly so, for among the most necessary conditions of industrial civilization is this abstract capability: the capability of machine parts--from the parts of transistors to those of planes, cars and houses-to be assemblable.

Now, there is no way around the fact that the author of Chapter III, Jere Clark, is not exactly a Connecticut Yankee. No matter what he's saying, whenever he opens his mouth he proclaims himself, loud and clear, to be from the South. (He once told me that the only Connecticut State College he could possibly have accepted an invitation to was Southern Connecticut.) So I'm introducing that interesting new type, the Southern Yankee. And the most interesting thing about this one is that while Eli Whitney, the first Connecticut Yankee, made interchangeable machine-parts, the second one, Jere Clark, has organized a Center for making mind-parts. For assemblable mind parts are just as vital to our new scientific and academic revolution as assemblable machine parts were and are to the industrial revolution.

You know what the modern university has become: a tremendous industry composed of a lot of high-powered departments making parts of mind; but parts which have not been designed to be assembled! (Figure IV-9.) The product of each department has his own special vocabulary and notation, and even his own world view, centered upon his particular ology. But each departmental specialist, characterized by his own logocentric background theory, is so remote from his colleagues in other logocentric fields that Dr. Clark talks about "interdisciplinary space", and likens unified science to a space ship for inter-disciplinary space travel!

And he does not just talk: he acts. Dr. Clark is perhaps the most active promoter of intellectual space-ship assembly plants known to history: He is Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Creativity at Southern Connecticut State College. For the last three years he has served, and is still serving, as the international Chairman of the Education Committee of the Society for General Systems Research. He is past Coordinator of the Northeastern States Division of that Society, Executive Director of the Consortium on Systems Education in New Haven; U.S.A. Representative, Education Coordinating Committee, World Organization for General Systems and Cybernetics; and President of the Conneticut Chapter of the World Future Society. Dr. Clark is a charter member of the Leadership Council of the Buffalo-based Creative Education Foundation and is currently serving as a consulting editor of the Journal of Creative Behavior. He is also a consulting editor for International Associations, and Associate Editor of General Systems Bulletin. During the U.N. International Education Year ( 1970), he served as Systems Creativity Editor for International Associations.

In the beautiful, hilly outskirts of New Haven, at Southern Connecticut State College, Dr. Jere W. Clark directs his pilot plant for assembly of the sciences' now interchangeable parts. History thus repeats itself, as usual, on a higher level: what Whitney's plant for interchangeable mechanical parts was to our Industrial revolution, Clark's Center for Interdisciplinary Creativity is to our Scientific Revolution: an assembly plant in which to pull this civilization's unassembled mind together and gain, under God, control over its destiny.

Designing a Vehicle for Mental Space Travel

It is common knowledge that the outstanding achievement of man to be recorded in history for the year 1969 is expected to be the consummation of interplanetary space travel. This year has indeed been a great year not only for the four moon walkers but perhaps even more so for the designers, producers, testers, launchers, and controllers of the space vehicles involved in these ventures.

Today-four days before the end of the year, 1969-- we have met to test in a preliminary way, and to consider launching, a still more powerful and important kind of vehicle for space travel. This is a vehicle for what might be called "interdisciplinary mental space travel." Indeed, this vehicle is an interdisciplinary conceptual model whereby a specialist's mind can take flight to, and land on, distant intellectual planets, and return laden with a cargo far more valuable than moon rocks or gold dust. Although this special kind of space vehicle is not so romantic as those used by the moon walkers, it is far more important to the destiny of man--and much less costly.

Unique Capabilities of Mental Spacecraft

Fortunately, our mental space vehicle can have built into it a number of additional capabilities which the physical spacecraft do not have. As a stepping stone into the question of how an interdisciplinary conceptual model of unified science can vitalize education, we might note some of these unique qualities.

l. Exploration of Social Space

One of these extra capabilities of this conceptual model is its capacity to explore the galaxies of social space (as well as the galaxies of physical space). This model can link the various social disciplines with each other and with the natural science disciplines.

2. Restructuring Knowledge

The versatility and maneuverability of this vehicle is indicated by the fact that it can interlink sub-atomic particles, atoms, molecules, cell ecosystems, plant ecosystems, animal ecosystems and human cultures into coherent and orderly patterns. In so doing, the model will provide a basis for restructuring the entire realm of knowledge--thereby simplifying and vitalizing both education and research. As Russel L. Ackoff has put it, "We must stop acting as though nature were organized into disciplines in the same way that universities are."¹ Elsewhere in the same article, Professor Ackoff identifies the type of integration of knowledge which is required.

In most problems involving organized man-machine systems each of the disciplines we have mentioned might make a significant improvement in the operations. But as systems analysts know, few of the problems that arise can adequately be handled within any one discipline. Such systems are not fundamentally mechanical, chemical, biological, psychological, social, economic, political, or ethical. These are merely different ways of looking at such systems. Complete understanding of such systems requires an integration of these perspectives. By integration I do not mean a synthesis of results obtained by independently conducted uni-disciplinary studies, but rather results obtained from studies in the process of which disciplinary perspectives have been synthesized. The integration must come during not after, the performance of the research.2

Or, in the words of Sir Julian Huxley: " ... we need a science of human possibilities, with professorships in the exploration of the future...the integration of science with all other branches of learning into a single comprehensive and open-ended system of knowledge, ideas and values relevant to man's destiny."³

3. Providing a Meta-Language

Another extra capability of this mental space model is that of providing the conceptual basis for developing a meta-language which would be "spoken" in any galaxy in the universe of knowledge. Because of the technical nature and strategic importance of this semantic development, it will be discussed at length in a later section of this paper. It will suffice here to cite one testimonial to the need for it at the practical level. The relevance and importance of a functional meta-language are illustrated in personal correspondence from Mr. A. J. N. Judge, Assistant Secretary General, Union of International Associations, Brussels, to the author, November 6, 1969. Within the context of describing some of the special difficulties of establishing and operating a world management information system, Mr. Judge comments as follows:

The area in which this work interacts with your own is that we hope to ensure that any success in your meta-language investigations, or similar developments in other countries, could be used as a means of relating terms indexing entities held within the system. Thus where two bodies may currently consider themselves as having no need to interact, we would hope to be able to show with the aid of work such as your own, in just which areas they could benefit from interaction.

4. Crisis Prevention Management for Space-Age Democracy

Another important capability of this mental transport medium is that it can provide a basis for crisis prevention as distinct from post-crisis administration of the process of educational change. Because of today's "explosion of explosions"--information, population, technology, interdependencies, pollution, crime, protests, and urban decay--this need is especially acute and seems to be destined to become still more critical in the immediate future. If we are to avoid letting trends toward complexity, rapidly rising expectations, and rapid change lock our society into an irreversible trend toward some highly regimented form of totalitarianism, we must somehow transcend the disciplinary barriers and create a new society. This new society would be based more on cooperation than on competition and, as is suggested in Figure 1, could make it possible to achieve ever higher and more meaningful forms of freedom.

FIGURE III-1

5. Problems Solved "Cheaper by the Dozen."

Still another desired capability of the mental spacecraft is that of providing a scientific basis for the broad kind of scientific perspective which enables an entire scientific puzzle to be put together quickly.

This holistic vision is important even in putting together static jigsaw puzzles. It is still more important when all the pieces of a puzzle are in motion and are changing shape by the hour, as is the case in our nation's efforts to solve its major national problems such as poverty, urban decay, crime, unemployment, pollution, congestion and race prejudice. To continue to direct our efforts at each of these problems individually with a plan that is fairly independent of the plan for each of the other related problems is not only very costly and ineffective, but is frustrating as well. Hence, it may be cheaper, quicker, easier, and more meaningful to develop a master, interdisciplinary plan for attacking these problems collectively, than it would be to solve any one of them by itself. The futility of piecemeal approaches to our major problem is mirrored in the following excerpt from K. G. Harr, Jr., President of Aerospace Industries Association:

We know much of what the future will bring in terms of problems. We know they will be big, complex, and serious... These problems represent the givens. We know they will be there--and we know they will overwhelm us if we do not find the means of coping with them. What we lack, thus far, is conviction that there is a means of getting hold of them. They seem so staggering in their size and complexity--so far beyond the capability of a single institutional segment of the community, public or private... And they are so interrelated that to proceed to try to solve any one of them in isolation from the other is often to create more problems than are solved by the effort. The dilemma thus presented has so far frustrated most efforts to come to grips with these problems. This condition of paralysis need not obtain. None of the . . . challenges lies beyond our already existing capacity for coping with them. The tools are already at hand; and included in those tools are not only the technological capabilities but experience in systems management and systems analysis as well as proven patterns of joint public and private effort.⁴

It is believed that Mr. Haskell's model for assembling the sciences is an example of a model which, in cooperation with supplementary concepts, models, and perspectives, has the potential of developing most--if not all--of the capabilities of vehicles for mental space travel enumerated in the preceding section. Much hard work, frustration, debate, reformulation, experimentation, testing, and adaptation will be required, however, before its potential can be realized.

Graduate Seminar

One of the highlights of the work of the Center for Interdisciplinary Creativity at Southern Connecticut State College was the sponsoring of Mr. Haskell's pioneering course, Assembly of the Sciences, in the spring semester, 1969. Twenty persons enrolled for either the three semester-hour credits or for auditor status. Included were graduate students, elementary, secondary and college teachers and administrators from the social and natural sciences, music, the humanities and fine arts. I am pleased to be able to say that I was one of the auditors.

The seminar is scheduled to be repeated at the SCSC Center in the coming spring semester. The following excerpts from the seminar syllabus will provide a general idea of the nature, methods, and purpose of the seminar.

This seminar is designed first of all to provide an orientation to a newly developed, simplified approach to establishing functional communications bridgeheads between the social, biological and physical sciences, and the humanities and fine arts. To this end, the techniques of traditional specialization are extended to the task of assembling the basic data of the traditional sciences into a master or meta-scientific model. Analogous concepts and processes in different fields--e.g., a generalized form of the cybernetic process--are used as common denominators of all. The model serves as an intellectual road map to help the specialist in any field identify, reach, and interpret facts, principles, and processes which are especially relevant in other fields. The other principal purpose of the seminar is to apply this unified conception of science to the task of attacking systematically the major educational, social, political, and technical problems of our day. Such problems as deteriorating cities and ecosystems, crisis-ridden political systems, and obsolete educational curriculums, methods, and institutions will be related to student concerns.

Evaluation

The written and oral evaluations of the seminar were unusually encouraging. Generally the participants indicated that the seminar was believed to be several times as valuable as the average college course they had previously taken. Outputs which were revealed to be exceedingly valuable were:

a.	Improvement in attitudes toward science;
b.	Increase in degree of creativeness and open-mindedness;
c.	Improvement in ability to transfer learning across disciplines;
d.	Improvement in ability to understand literature in other fields;
e.	Improvement in ability to cope with change;
f.	Relevance to one's daily work.

It will be noted that the above factors are all critical in the present historical era. The fact that these are among the weakest outputs in most courses today further underscores the importance of the work in this seminar.

The course was thought to be almost equally valuable for school administrators, teachers, and graduate students. With appropriate modifications in the level of sophistication, it is believed that the seminar would be effective for college freshmen and some talented high school students.

Specific Applications

Several of the teachers are applying the basic ideas of the seminar in their own teaching and are reporting quite significant results in terms of student motivation and technical performance. The flexibility of the approach is suggested by the fact that teachers in many different fields and grade levels are using some adaptation of it. For instance, William Eblen and his associates in Wilton, Connecticut, use their own variation of this approach in their high school and college ecology project, Total Education for a Total Environment (TETE). Professor Rossalie Pinkham, Director of Laboratory Schools, Southern Connecticut State College, and Chairman, Consortium on Systems Education, New Haven, uses it as a springboard into, and as a frame of reference for, linguistic and social science subject areas. Chemistry teachers in high school use the periodic table as a springboard into interdisciplinary units. Biology teachers can use the general model as a functional framework for integrating the study of evolution in all the traditional sub-fields of biology and for relating evolution theory to psycho-social studies. Historians and anthropologists use it as a functional basis for explaining the process of change.

Being an economist who had already developed a broad economizing model for interpreting the universe of organized energy before meeting Mr. Haskell two years ago, I have blended his model into the economizing framework. A brief sketch of that master model will set the stage for describing the nature and importance of the task of developing a meta-language of the sciences, and for describing the particular approach we are developing at the SCSC Center for I-D Creativity.

The synthesizing model of knowledge developed at the SCSC Center for I-D Creativity prior to the important link-up with Mr. Haskell's cybernetic coaction model is being called "eco-cybernetics." Eco-cybernetics fits the cybernetic communications apparatus into the broader framework of the generic means-ends or economizing process. By linking functionally the cybernetic flows of information with the economizing tasks of selecting aims, setting priorities, devising strategies, and identifying criteria for evaluation, it is possible to develop a more functional and simpler synthesis of knowledge in all disciplines. Thus we have a symbiotic, mutually-reinforcing relationship between cybernetic and economizing principles. Whereas cybernetics provides a basis for describing the patterns of inter-actions among the components of a system (and its environment), economizing principles provide a partial basis for explaining these patterns-why they emerge, what they are likely to lead to, and what alternative courses of action are available.

All of these economizing-cybernetic processes take place within the context of general ecology which includes human as well as natural ecology. Hence, the scope and purpose of general ecology are combined with generalized versions of the decision-making, economizing process of economics and the information control processes of cybernetics.

Several unique features of Mr. Haskell's coaction cybernetics make it superior to traditional cybernetics for our purposes. First, this coaction cybernetics is much broader in scope than is traditional cybernetics. It might be called cybernetics, "sub-cybernetics," and "supra-cybernetics." Cybernetics is the middle link in a chain of evolution from such sub-cybernetic (closed) systems as atoms and the "cybernetic-plus" systems such as human societies which have communications capabilities and operating characteristics which keep them from being considered to be cybernetic systems in traditional circles.

Second, by interpreting Mendeleev's Periodic Table in "cybernetic" terms, and then developing the cybernetic counterpart of that table in each of several other disciplines, Mr. Haskell has been able not only to show the inter-relatedness of the various disciplines but also to express many of the key relationships in geometric terms. To think that the way may have been opened to express human values geometrically and in a way that can be related geometrically to other "values" is indeed remarkable.

A third unique and helpful feature of this coaction cybernetic model should be mentioned. That is the fact that it preserves the basic content and structure of each of the traditional sciences while adding the dimensions of general pattern and order, responsiveness and coordination. It mainly adds a specially "coded," conceptual lens for viewing the various sciences, and a more functional and operational way for approaching the various disciplines so as to interrelate them meaningfully and to convert more facts into usable knowledge.

This third unique feature may prove to be quite important in minimizing the amount and difficulty of changes a one-field specialist will need to encounter in up-dating his work. The specialist is not asked to forget what he knows and begin again, but rather to reorient his image of his field.

We have noted in an earlier section of this paper that one of the real advantages of a general synthesizing model of knowledge is that it should make possible the development of a generalized language to use in the most basic aspects of many-ideally all-branches of knowledge. Such a language could be used to portray the functional operation of the most basic elements of all the social, biological, and physical sciences, and surprisingly large portions of the humanities and the fine arts as well.

The manner in which we at the SCSC Center for Interdisciplinary (I-D) Creativity are attempting to develop and apply the metalanguage might be described figuratively in terms of two innovations from business and economic history.⁵

Developing an Intellectual Medium of Interdisciplinary
Exchange

One of these innovations was the development of money in the economic world. The intellectual counterpart of money--our metalanguage--is being designed to serve as a communications medium for the interdisciplinary exchange of ideas.

An emerging need for the conceptual counterpart of money can be seen by turning the pages of economic history back to the beginnings of organized efforts to develop and use a common monetary unit. As market places evolved historically to accommodate ever larger numbers of products, the need for some common unit of account or generally accepted medium of exchange was intensified. Likewise, as education and knowledge have developed to accommodate increasing numbers of scientific specialties, the need has increased correspondingly for an equivalent common means for communicating and exchanging ideas.

In other words, just as money can be used in industry to facilitate the inter-industry exchanges of goods and services, a meta-language, i.e. a "universal language" of science is being developed to expedite inter-disciplinary exchanges of ideas among research specialists.

This language will not only facilitate inter-disciplinary exchanges of ideas within the traditional framework of knowledge, but also should help significantly in creating a functional, operational synthesis of knowledge. This development is giving the specialist equipped with this language (along with supporting tools) mental wings to explore the whole universe of knowledge in search of particular lessons relevant to his own specialty.

Generalized forms of such economic principles as comparative advantage, diminishing returns and alternative cost are assumed to have just as much to do with the structure and functioning of an ant colony or a biological cell as they do with the operation of a business firm.

Likewise, such cybernetic concepts as input, output, sensor, controller, effector and feedback are assumed to have just as much to do with the operation of an economic market as they do with the functioning of the human nervous system or an engineering quality control process.

Guiding, Motivating, and Measuring Intellectual
Effectiveness

The second innovation from the business world being built figuratively into our conceptual model was the development of profits which, in a theoretical competitive, free enterprise economic world, would serve to guide, motivate, and measure efforts to utilize scarce resources efficiently (effectively). Hence, our meta-language model is being designed to provide the intellectual counterpart of profits to guide, motivate and measure the results of efforts to be efficient or effective in allocating scarce education resources.

For decades, the educator has been aware of his need for more meaningful and objective criteria for allocating his intellectual resources. Traditionally, however, he has tended to treat this subject as Mark Twain said we treat the weather. That is, everyone talks but no one does anything about it.

This model is being devised to meet several requirements of a good testing, guiding and motivating vehicle of organization. The model must provide identifiable, measurable and demonstrable tests or yardsticks of intellectual efficiency broadly conceived. At the same time, it must provide a set of guidelines for increasing efficiency and a set of motivations leading individual persons and groups to strive to be more efficient. Furthermore, this efficiency generator, or model, along with the meta-language counterpart of money, must provide a basis for inter-relating all inputs and outputs of any given enterprise. It must help us identify the value of inputs by relating them to derived outputs. Finally, it must provide a basis for evaluating the results of experimental efforts and for utilizing these evaluations in designing follow-up experiments.

Although the present model relies heavily on intuitive judgements, it provides an operational basis for identifying the strategic variables and a means of organizing relevant information once it, or an estimate of it, is available. Research is being designed to focus a figurative magnifying glass and mental radar screen on each subjective value involved so as to measure it more carefully and/or to seek combinations of objective sub-variables which will yield more practical results. Value engineering principles are being combined with cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analyses in an effort to determine more clearly what types of educational inputs are producing the desired educational outputs. As experimental progress continues to be made along these lines, the expectation is that more reliance can be placed on objective, measurable, demonstrable factors.⁶

Translating Etbnic Bi-Lingualism Into Scientific Pan-
Lingualism

FIGURE III-2

This discussion of meta-language would be incomplete without some extensive excerpts from a letter I recently received from Mr. Haskell. In the letter he was calling to my attention an unusually perceptive article, "Bilingualism and Information Processing," by Paul A. Kolers, in the March, 1968 issue of Scientific American (pp. 78-93) and was stating his interpretation of it. I am pleased to be able to quote the following excerpts from that letter.

Each discipline has, and must have, a certain vocabulary of its own: thousands of words that refer to its data on the lowest level of abstraction. These represent the "concrete manipulable objects" mentioned on page 82 of Mr. Koler's article. (For psychology and the humanities they include emotions, feelings, values.) The point however is, first, that each discipline now has, but in most cases does not need to have, a set of words which represents the grouping, the classification of its low-level words. These are the "abstract words" in the reference above, comprising part of each discipline's vocabulary. These many diverse abstract vocabularies cause the disorganized complexity of modern education and thought, producing much of the confusion in the students' minds. They require a vast amount of memorization, conceal meaning, and prevent understanding. Our model of unified science corrects this situation: It accepts the data of each of the sciences and humanities, and the vocabularies which denotate them. It also accepts many "game tree" classifications such as the taxonomic series, and all others which are logically compatible with each other. It then classifies these diverse sets of data and classifications in a single manner and vocabulary: The manner and vocabulary in which the chemical elements were classified by Mendeleyev and Maier a century ago, and which have since been improved by many others . . . (See fold-out chart and Figure IV-11). In unified science, the same set of abstract concepts occurs over and over, once for each discipline. This has the following efFect: It makes learning vastly easier; it reveals the meaning of each higher set of data (as shown in our Periodic co-ordinate system) in terms of the lower sets; and the meaning of each lower set of data in terms of the higher sets. Thereby it increases the breadth and depth of the students' understanding. This is why our seminar students who answered your questionnaire found "Assembly of the Sciences" on the average 3.76 times as meaningful, relevant, and useful as the average graduate and undergraduate course they had taken. This American execution of the Royal Society's second objective is possibly more important than reaching the moon. It facilitates and improves education here, and potentially around the world, three or four times over right at the start. It makes possible the inter-disciplinary research essential to the successful management of our complex system of ecosystems. It permits, as shown in your conference, the restatement of ancient religious truths in modern cybernetic terms. And it successfully transfers political controversies from the barricade to the blackboard, as also demonstrated in practice elsewhere. Unified science not only vitalizes education and research, but redirects dangerous religious and ideological cold wars into warm teamwork.

Against the background already sketched we can now consider the challenge before us. A part of the challenge is reflected in the following excerpt from Dr. N. Henry Moss' address, "The Pursuit of Knowledge-Synthesis or Fragmentation?", given as retiring President of the New York Academy of Sciences:

Where are our great synthesizers of knowledge? . . . Industry, government, universities, and medical schools have need of and eagerly seek capable people who can efl'ectively give the broad sweep, recognize the important from the unimportant, and maintain a reasonable understanding of the literature in multiple medical and scientific areas. . . . We must be able to develop a corps of such scientists and physicians as synthesizers and integrators to help guide us in directing our resources toward optimum use. . . . We must create this kind of fine generalist in the image of a captain of a team, a strong and vigorous leader with intelligent insight and technical know-how in multiple fields.7

Another part of the challenge is reflected in the sketch of Figure 3 which is a proposal for designing and developing a global network of centers and institutes for the promotion of general systems methods, philosophy, attitudes, and viewpoints. The terminology used there is suggestive rather than definitive. That mission profile is the embryo of a possible blueprint for a global campaign to translate the capabilities of unified science models into a widespread program of action. The assumption is made that the entire realm or universe of knowledge would be restructured as a prerequisite to any adequate reforms in curriculum and administration.

Proposed by Jere W. Clark, Dir., Center for Interdisciplinary Creativity, Southern Conn. State College, New Haven, March1, 1969, (revised December 23, 1969.)

FIGURE III-3

Another part of the challenge inheres in the global political setting in which both scientific research and education take place. Our national aspiration to send men to Mars and return them safely could be considered within this context. Because of the great economic and engineering capabilities required, we, as a nation, might do well to consider teaming up with the Soviet Union for this venture. We know that the Russians are quite advanced in the development and application of broad-gaged cybernetic and other broad systems models to political, scientific, and economic ventures.

In view of these considerations, along with the extremely important capabilities of unified science models, might there be something this group gathered here might be able to do to dramatize the potentials for global progress, which might result from concerted cooperative action to launch some form of this mental space vehicle? Could we, for example, initiate action leading toward a dramatic proposal that the governments of the USA and the USSR jointly appoint a global task force for exploring the possibilities of joint exploration of both physical and intellectual space?

In other words, might we be able to use the dawning Seventies to initiate action which might be of even greater historic significance than the lunar landings earlier in the century?

Chapter IV