How do you take into account the diverse factors that contribute to a product or service’s ecology? How do you determine which factors are more relevant than others? One of the ways to begin this process is by mapping these interactions at a conceptual level. Then, we an begin to map them in individuals, societies, and real-world environments.
Gregory Bateson defines information as “a difference that makes a difference” (1).
This is why the framing, point of view, or perspective of information is important. Perspective is what allows us to take things into account and recognize for whom these differences matter.
Bateson’s words ideas came to mind as I recently read a news report (2) about a social science study investigating the impact of interdisciplinary education on the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and math). For a while now, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has supported interdisciplinary graduate education programs. I had the fortunate opportunity to participate as an affiliate of the Evolution, Development, and Genomics IGERT while studying at Indiana University. There is a wide diversity of programs ranging from the aforementioned Evo-Devo program to focused efforts in Complex Systems and Invasive Species Biology and Policy, for example.
My experience with the IGERT at IU was extremely enriching, but I would never have described it as interdisciplinary, per se. The difference I recognized was the attention that evolutionary biologists gave to developmental variation as a source of novelty and the recognition of developmental biologists that a handful of gene-expression profiles was not enough to characterize the variation in a population. I always wondered if there were any truly unique perspectives involved in the mixing of evolution, development an genomics or if it was really about the integration of tools to expand the explanatory power of evolution and genetics.
In the Nature article, Amanda Haag describes the social experiment in which students were organized into two experimental groups based on their functional role (natural science, policy analyst, etc), their stage of education, and those that had received training in an interdisciplinary framework and those that had traditional disciplinary graduate training. A number of smaller sub-groups were then formed based on the charrette model (3) to solve a specific problem. Apparently, the charrette process is used extensively in urban planning and other disciplines that frequently require the involvement of multiple stakeholders. Not surprisingly, the term is thought to come from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the nineteenth century. Contrast this model of design process with Bruno Latour’s Politics of Nature in which he sets out to establish the context for political ecology in the practice of science and policy-making.
The observation that stood out in Haag’s article was that, “To everyone’s surprise, students tackled the problem similarly, irrespective of whether they had interdisciplinary or traditional training.”
The researchers conducting the study have yet to analyze the results, but from my perspective this observation would not be surprising. For one thing, these aren’t very heterogeneous groups. Each of the functional roles maintains that science has the fundamental explanatory power. That’s a pretty specific perspective. Also, what is the real difference in graduate training that occurs through a program like IGERT? Are different perspectives really encountered, or are similar perspectives reinforced by integrating individuals that share the same perspective but use different heuristics and interpretations? Given that the groups are trying to solve problems based on the intersection of human activities and ecosystem services, these could easily be classified as difficult problems that may also require frameworks other than science and policy-making.
I should back up a bit and provide some more background.
I’ve been reading The Difference by Scott Page (5) along with the Complex Systems interdisciplinary workshop here at the University of Michigan. Page is a Professor of Complex Systems, Political Science, and Economics, and his book discusses how “the power of diversity creates better groups, firms, schools, and societies.”
Page’s main argument and finding is that diversity in mental models (aka cognitive approaches) is the premiere source of diversity’s benefit to problem solving.
In order to get to this result, Page categorizes people’s cognitive toolbox into four functional frameworks: perspectives, heuristics, interpretations, and predictive models.
Perspectives are “how we see things…[and]…a map from reality to an internal language such that each distinct object, situation, problem, or event gets mapped to a unique word.” One might easily say that artists frequently contribute different perspectives. Keep in mind that we don’t necessarily have to rely on verbal mappings of perspective.
A heuristic is “a rule applied to an existing solution represented in a perspective that generates a new (and hopefully better) solution or a new set of possible solutions.” I tend to think of these as behaviors. It might entail finding a new idea or solution by simply looking across the aisle in a library after searching for a specific book. This chance operation depends partly on the Dewey decimal system, the layout of the library, and the subject of your initial search.
Interpretations are mappings “from objects, situations, problems, and events to words. In an interpretation, one word can mean many objects.” What’s the difference between a perspective and an interpretation? Using Page’s approach, identifying each of these components (perspectives, heuristics, interpretations, and predictive models) as components of the cognitive toolbox is a perspective. Using predictive models to classify the differences among disciplines is an example of how interpretations can be used. How the interpretation is structured and/or relevant depends on our goal (more on that later).
A predictive model is “an interpretation together with a prediction for each set or category created by the interpretation.” Predicting if an organism is a member of a is a member of particular species might be a good example. One perspective might view genetics as having something to do with species definitions and thus say that certain gene sequences will be able to predict its species. Another perspective might perspective might say that genetics is not involved. In this case, one interpretation might simply say that morphology will predict the species. The non-genetic perspective might also say that the a species is classified depending on whether it was embalmed, trained, a suckling pig, a mermaid, fabulous, a stray dog, or other (6).
Page took all of these tools into account when developing a mathematical proof to show how these differences matter for the problem-solving capacities of groups.
Though I’m only through chapter six, here is what I understand about Page’s results.
The main feature thus far is that one shouldn’t rely on standardized measures of ability alone. In fact, diversity in groups trumps the ability of homogeneous groups. In order for this to happen, a few necessary conditions and assumptions are needed.
One condition is that the problem needs to be sufficiently difficult such that no single member can solve it by themselves. That individuals share the same, similar, or synergistic goals is an important factor in determining a group’s success. Many social problems fall into the category of “difficult” including those that the grad students were faced with in the social science experiment.
Another condition is that each of the problem solvers has some ability to solve the problem. This is where some of my concerns begin. In the book, Page argues that problem solvers in a group cannot create overly rugged landscapes. By this he means that individuals in a group must contribute perspectives that contain knowledge of the causes of X problem. In this sense, he is keeping the perspectives among group members constant while allowing the heuristics and/or interpretations to be the mechanisms of diversity. This is an important assumption and one that has important consequences for interdisciplinary policy.
Page states clearly that this result shows that chemists will not benefit from having a poet or other humanist join them in the lab. I personally think he shouldn’t have been so categorical about this conclusion, given the examples he used (designing products, curing diseases, and improving our educational system). The opportunity for someone to contribute knowledge depends on the problem and its definition. If it is too specific a problem, then perhaps only those with extremely specialized knowledge can contribute. However, the very difficult problems he cites are the product of many different perspectives and causes. Should teachers and educational administrators be the only individuals contributing knowledge about the causes of educational inequity? What about educational standards? In order for the benefits of diverse perspectives to be realized, they must, as Bergson points out, be taken into account. After all, these perspectives may be the differences that matter for a positive solution.
Another one of Page’s assumptions is that people with the same perspective are able to communicate clearly, or, conversely, that people with different perspectives are unable to communicate. This is due to the one-to-one mapping of idea and word that Page’s definition of perspective entails. What happens when we don’t share the same perspective and can still communicate? One might describe this as empathy–i.e. recognizing another’s perspective. It might also be the product of a translator that can provide the mapping between perspectives. If these situations exist (and I know that they do), it is likely that people with wildly different perspectives have contributions that will amplify the beneficial effects of diversity.
All of this is why, when I read the Nature article, I was not surprised that the different groups used similar tactics to solve the problems. The question to ask is at what threshold is there difference enough to create diversity in group perspectives. If we have this diversity among perspectives, are we also confident that the group is addressing the same problem? This may be dependent on some form of communication and/or translation that can bridge perspectives.
“Bridges” is a term used by Diana Rhoten (7) to describe researchers that have many cross-disciplinary connections. She contrasts this with “hubs” which describes researchers with the most overall connections. One could therefore hypothesize that a bridge is much more likely to translate across disciplines or perspectives. This is not dissimilar to Burt’s descriptions of network entrepreneurs as individuals that span structural holes (8). Structural holes separate nonredundant sources of information, and entrepreneurs that span these holes recombine these sources in such a way that makes each of these sources valuable to the other. So if we start to ask what interdisciplinary graduate training is providing, we could focus on those policy efforts that remix differences in perspectives, interpretations, heuristics, and/or predictive models. Which is most likely to be the difference that makes a difference? I’ll put my money on groups that bring together wide arrays of perspectives with individuals that can negotiate, translate and broker these differences to solve difficult problems.
My goal is to implement synthesis between the disciplines of art, design, and biology. As a way of reaching this objective, a set of heuristics can be a valuable tool. My attempt is situated within a systems approach to art, which seeks to integrate the development of better decision making and other analytical strategies with creative arts behaviors. I import the heuristic concepts of relational aesthetics, boundary objects, and network entrepreneurship. These ideas of value, form, and behavioral strategy, respectively, can serve as first approximations for how to engage in the ideation and implementation of creative work. These also function as design strategies that take into account differences among disciplines. They may therefore aid in the formation of educational and organizational objectives whose aim is to find positive solutions at the interfaces of art, design, and life science.
1.1.3. Network Entrepreneurship
A third heuristic is the concept of network entrepreneurship. A network entrepreneur is someone who brokers ideas across structural holes in organization and networks (Burt 2003). Burt defines structural holes as areas of emptiness or gaps between social groups. The epistemological and methodological gap between the arts and sciences is a good example. According to Burt, individuals (and possibly groups) that provide vision advantages through network entrepreneurship can be thought of and related to as social capital. The work that these types of individuals do is based on the assumption that within group variation and the diversity of ideas is less than the variation and range of possible solutions achievable between groups.
Network entrepreneurs are positioned (or position themselves) to draw from these different sources of variation while seeking strategic design solutions.
If an individual in involved in designing a boundary object, the degree to which they engage in network entrepreneurship may increase the suitability of that object across different communities. Burt (2003) recognizes four behaviors of network entrepreneurs who engage in information arbitrage:
One thing to recognize is how similar the benchmarks for interdisciplinary integration (see Wolfe and Haynes 2003) are with these brokering behaviors. It seems reasonable to consider the processes of network entrepreneurship in the context of strategies for realizing high quality interdisciplinary creative work.
Examples of network entrepreneurship abound and there are varying degrees of the behavior. Someone directly involved in cinema production may reasonably be called a network entrepreneur. Cinema, by virtue of its techniques and conventions, is a collaborative medium and dependent on the actions of individuals to create a relational aesthetic that facilitates production. Recognizing the corresponding needs of the lighting crew and the camera operators is a function of the director of photography. The motion picture is a sort of boundary object, representing the work and input from a variety of individuals, groups, and organizations. In an industrial setting, producers balance the concerns of directors and distributors. On the side of the spectator, cinema appeals to multiple audiences and provides an exceptional level of empathy for the viewer to attach oneself (Koss 2006).
For Soviet filmmaker Sergi Eisenstein, calling attention to the similarity between developing cells in a biological context was akin to his new formalist approach to film editing (Eisenstein 1949). This was a form of network entrepreneurship that facilitated communication and boundary crossing using an analogy.
For students, network entrepreneurship can take the form of an idealized set of behaviors that can facilitate the formation of new ideas.
As a principle of good practice, encouraging network entrepreneurship can communicate high expectations and promote respect for diverse talents and ways of learning.
High expectations are reinforced when standards in one group can be related to standards in another. The high currency placed on writing in the sciences, for example, may carry over into the arts if they are networked. Likewise, the emphatic respect for diversity in the arts may also carry into the sciences as multiple perspectives contribute to new
ideas.
If the goal is to build bridges between art and biology, network entrepreneurs are a key to unlocking new opportunities. By actively promoting connections and translating across these social boundaries, network entrepreneurs establish relationships and build cohesion within and between individuals.
Burt, R. S. Structural Holes and Good Ideas. American Journal of Sociology. 110: (2004). p.349–399.
Eisenstein, S, The Cinematic Principle and the Ideogram in Film Form. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1949.
Koss, J. On the Limits of Empathy. The Art Bulletin. 88: (2006). p.139-57.
Wolfe, C. R., and Haynes, C. Interdisciplinary writing assessment profiles. Issues in Integrative Studies 21: (2003). 126–169.
Answers abound…in terms of looking for ideas about how to overcome some of the difficulties associated with developing relationships between systems, design, and public health.
Take a look at DORI’s Moblog where she provides Two Reasons for the Failure of Design Policy . She is a design anthropologist, meaning that she is “tries to understand how the processes and artifacts of design help define what it mean to be human.”
Does that mean that a design biologist tries to understand how the processes and artifacts of design help define what it mean to be human and non-human.
I like that.
I found her research based on a tip from someone I met at the public health and complex systems conference last week. Speaking of social networks, weak connections are valuable.
I want to reflect on some aspects of the conversations from the symposium on Visual Culture and Bioscience and try to reframe the discussion with notes for myself.
A focal point for the discussion has been to discuss the roles artists play in laboratory settings. A good deal of discussion and effort has been directed over the years towards promoting opportunities and understanding the roles that artists perform alongside and/or despite scientists. Suzanne Anker also introduced the notion of “art as invention”–the migration of social spaces in a recent thread dealing with the social and cultural implications of bioscience.
While these are complex topics full of social and methodological implications, I sense a generalizable way of framing the conversation that, I think, warrants some consideration–if only because it might help draw others into the conversation.
Whatever the engagement of art and biology, be it through individuals, groups, and/or at the level of disciplines, there are certain instances of value created by these multifaceted interactions. Many of these have been discussed. However, these are not characteristic of only art and bioscience, but rather they seem to exists at all levels of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is the practice of sensing opportunities and starting new organizations (of concepts even!) to seize on those opportunities.
Quoting Suzanne Anker:
Novel ways of thinking and doing can be socially, economically and politically beneficial. The wonder of invention is a creative springboard allowing the more adventurous to remix the given. Negotiating territorial discourses and practices requires tenaciousness and makes significant learning demands on the border-crossers…Invention can also be looked upon as incorporating an element of chance…For the artist, recognizing nuance and possibility in the process of making, is part of artistic creation. Another aspect, furthering collaboration and creative process is the random and not so random meeting of various practitioners at cocktail parties, lectures art exhibits and the like.
I like Suzanne’s sentiment–though I have to disagree about the role that chance plays in the interaction. Certainly there is an element of chance, but invention is much more an import/export process: “Negotiating territorial discourses, recognizing nuance and possibility, meeting of various practitioners.” From my point of view, the majority of what counts as interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary practice involves translation, mediation, organization, and consultation. If you are involved in an actively engaged import/export process of exchanging ideas, materials, methods…whatever…you generally increase the odds that chance will fall in your favor. The implications, especially for teaching and learning, are that the import/export process can be learned and developed while chance cannot.
Would you agree that a characteristic of artists is their ability to sense gaps in culture or social structures? Would you also agree that artists are able to bridge these gaps because they maintain affiliations and learning strategies that involve and leveraging the concerns of multiple groups?
I see at least two ways of looking at this:
Behaviorally–that is, what are the behaviors of artists and scientists that seek to make these kinds of bridges and border-crossings? A question to ask here is, “How?”
Functionally–that is, what are the benefits that these behaviors confer both for the individuals involved and for their “other” constituencies? A question to ask here is, “For Whom?”
From the behavior standpoint, this idea of entrepreneurship is critical. I admire the symposium participants’ overriding desire to identify new areas of investigation, their resourcefulness in building a practice and implementing projects, and their dedication–despite conventional “wisdom.”
Woven through this discussion have been themes of
These themes, not coincidentally, characterize Wolfe and Haynes’ criteria for interdisciplinary synthesis (at least in terms of writing). (Wolfe, C. R., and Haynes, C. 2003. Interdisciplinary writing assessment profiles. Issues in Integrative Studies 21, 126–169.)
To what degree are the behaviors, practices, and methods of the artists and scientists involved in this discussion and elsewhere indicative of brokering–such that each is translating, applying metaphors, creating common ground, and resolving differences between groups? This brokering, I think, is a fundamental activity and the research seems to indicate that it can be learned.
For much of my argument about brokering, I am drawing from Ronald Burt’s work on structural holes and network entrepreneurship. Burt recent presented to NESTA on the topic of innovation.
The domain knowledge and landscape is also critical. The fact that so little is known about biology, and for that matter, about art, necessarily creates opportunities. These are amplified by the apparent and real methodological differences between biology and art practices. Thus, one explanation for why this is such a rich area of inquiry lies in the social, cultural, and ethical implications of bioscience–confounded by the social and cultural “holes” created when we try to align the constituencies and interests of biology and art.
“The project makes a gigantic leap in the distribution of biological data–moving it beyond the conventional representations of names and numbers to embrace the visual and organismal aspects of cellular and molecular forms”, says Harp.
“Organelle View is a scientific visualization application allowing users to dynamically generate a visual interpretation of data from Organelle DB. Organelle View presents a searchable interface with a three-dimensional representation of an archetypical cell. Rather than representing organelles and subcellular structures by text, Organelle View offers an artist’s rendering of a cell and its major organelles. At present, we have chosen a budding yeast cell (S.cerevisiae) as the model for Organelle View, largely because protein localization has been studied quite extensively in yeast; future versions of Organelle View will incorporate additional cell types from other organisms.”
(Wiwatwattana, N., Landau, C.M., Cope, G.J., Harp, G.A., & Kumar, A. (2007). Organelle DB: an updated resource of eukaryotic protein localization and function. Nucleic Acids Research, 35, D810-D814.)
In response to
In all honesty, I’m not sure how my interests in the intersections of art, science, and technology started. Perhaps I was simply unable to single out a single discipline for study. When I started at the University, my stated interests were communications and botany. My courses ranged from biology to photography and ceramics to film theory in those early years. Because I was increasingly interested in environmental justice, I started looking for ways to leverage the content of these areas and my skills in service to environmental justice issues.
During an educational exchange in Northern California, I was exposed to the conflict between industrial logging and ecological interests. This was the period in which Julia Butterfly had occupied Luna, a large redwood tree, as one of many ongoing direct action protests against irresponsible commercial logging operations. My commitments at the time came from my interactions with instructors and classmates at Humboldt State University where I was studying deep ecology and photography. My creative work became directed at finding visual ways of communicating sublime ecological and evolutionary interactions among community members–of all species. Eventually, I decided that I needed to know more about the scientific explanations for evolution and ecology. I studied ecology, evolution, and behavior at Indiana University for the next six years.
My experiences as a developing biologist brought me closer to some common threads among biology and art. I became interested in how art and design can inform and communicate scientific research, the role of biological signaling as an indicator of health and/or attractiveness, and the similar role that repetition has in the creation and study of art, genomics, and behavior. Following these threads has led to my current research including a forthcoming article on the relationship between the cinema and genomics (in Leonardo, forthcoming).
Finding a community that shared an interest in and the values of research at these intersections was key. I was fortunate to happen upon the SPARK! Festival in South Kensington in 2000, when organizations from the Royal College of Art, the Wellcome Trust, the Museum of Natural History, and especially the Victoria and Albert Museum were organizing and promoting public events aimed at dialogue and integration. Later, I attended the Art/Science Collaboration Inc. conference in NYC in November, 2001. I was then able to begin connecting within my own country. My involvement in the Leonardo Education Forum has allowed me to, at the very least, contribute to a landscape where new students have a resource for asking questions.
In some respects, I feel that I have strayed from my environmental justice roots. Maybe it has just been a shift in focus from ecosystems to genomics and how the human community recognizes and interacts with scientific methods for portraying nature. For some reason, I’ve always viewed art as a way to incorporate methods beyond the scientific into the social discourse surrounding biology-related concerns. How, for example, can interdisciplinary collaborative groups be innovative or take into account more perspectives. I started to recognize that my role as an artist involves what it called network entrepreneurship, which is not so much the creative aspects of making things so much as it entails the behaviors that allow the transfer of tools, methods, and language from one discipline and community into another (e.g. from biology into art and design or vice-versa). This leads me to my interest in pedagogy. I’m interested in how to develop methods for teaching and learning that promote network entrepreneurship and other ways of building relationships among diverse community members and commitments. This can be through art and science–as the perceived conflict also provides a much opportunity for resolution and mutual cooperation.
