Research Support
SPIRITS

Engaging Kyoto Citizens in Creating New Integrated Creative Sciences

Project Gist

Construction of New Integrated Creative Sciences (NICS) necessary for better understanding of an increasingly complex world

Keywords

New Integrated Creative Sciences (NICS), Endo-exo Circulation Principle (Self-nonself Circulation Principle), Complex System

Background, Purpose, and Project Achievements

Globalization has made our planet an increasingly complex world, where human and nonhuman systems are mutually coupled. When a single action is applied only at a small part of a complex system, it can sometime trigger unintentionally disruption of the whole through complex feedback processes. Most of such unexpected challenges that confront us emerge at a different kind of boundary. It is now time to construct New Integrated Creative Science (NICS), in order to understand complex behaviors of our complex world through the integration of various knowledge spanning among quite different disciplines biology, complex system science, medicine, sociology, economic science, nursing science, ecology, philosophy and so on. Over 20 meetings were organized with different invited speakers from quite diverse disciplines. It was clear that endo-exo circulation (or self-nonself circulation) principle can not only cause the emergence of coherent order of a complex system, but also trigger possible disruption of the whole depending on its long-term history. In order to extend our project research, Journal of Integrated Creative Studies (JICS) was constructed. It is now open for public as a free access electric journal. http://icis-kyoto.jp/

Future Prospects

As our real world is highly complex through many kinds of feedback loops, any action of one component system can influence the others, often leading to disruptions in different ways. While the details are always different, interesting features of such disruptions are remarkably consistent. It is true that we cannot control and even avoid disruptions. Now, we need a new paradigm, by which we must consider some failures as necessary events to maintain the whole world. For this purpose, we must design systems to better absorb disruptions, which can operate under various conditions. This must be the emerging field of resilient systems, which must be a useful idea for the future.

Figures

Symposium organized by Graduate School of Advanced Leadership Studies, Kyoto University, Speakers: Eiichi Yamaguchi, Juichi Yamagiwa, Masatoshi Murase (2014.7.2.)
Kyoto University Salon Talk, Speaker: Masatoshi Murase (2014.6.26.)
Symposium of “International Society for Education”, Speakers: Tomoko Murase, Ken Utsumi, Katuya Kawagishi, Chair: Masatoshi Murase (2014.8.9.)

Principal Investigator

MURASE Masatoshi

・MURASE Masatoshi
・Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University
・Masatoshi Murase became a member of Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology in 1985. He received a PhD degree from the University of Tokyo, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences in 1987. Positions held overseas include a period of as a visiting scientist in the Physiology Department at Duke University Medical Center from 1987 to 1988, and an associate professorship in the Department of Mathematics at University of California at Davis from 1990 to 1991. He chaired an International Symposium entitled, “What is Life? The Next 100 years of Yukawa’s Dream”, held in 2007 at Kyoto. He also chaired a Kyoto University International Forum on “Towards a New Integrated Knowledge” in 2011. He wrote the book on “The Dynamics of Cellular Motility” (Wiley, 1992), and he is also an author of the book on “Life as a History: Construction of the Self-nonself Circulation Theory” (in Japanese, Kyoto University Press, 2000).
・URL:
http://www.nics.yukawa.kyoto-u.ac.jp/index.html
http://icis-kyoto.jp/