Lecture 1: Introductions and survey

• Purpose of course
• Survey of topics and activities
• Personal introduction
  • me
  • all students
• Set the stage for the importance of "transdisciplinary" science
  • problem types
    • focus on wicked problems
    • problem types with solutions
  • mission vs. curiosity (Norton)
  • pure-applied-consultancy (Funtowicz and Ravetz??)
    • comment by Homer-Dixon
  • complexity paradigm (Pfirman) (powerpoint)
  • solutions that require innovation and entrepreneurial approaches (my diagram)

Activities:

• go through reading list
  • who's read what already and in what context
  • any other sources to suggest
• background on history of science, philosophy of science
• create a categorization scheme for environmental science and management
• discuss where you think your current project fits
• suggest who to invite to speak/ be interviewed
  • suggested interview template

Follow-up notes

On Sept 27 we had a discussion about what transdisciplinary research might be situated in the major types of science described by Funtowicz and Ravetz.

Transdisciplinary science is when the project moves out past depending on academic disciplines and has to include agencies, business, non-profits or other groups.

The four types of science are:

• pure - curiosity based with no specific timeline or values associated with the outcomes
• applied - addressing a problem by using both products of science and the scientific method
• consultancy - requires a client and may set the type of work done by time and money limitations from the start
• post-normal - starting from values of the stakeholders

After a discussion, it seemed we converged on trying to understand how different people would put together their long-term research agenda and incorporate different amounts of these types of science. For example, someone working on lakes might use pure science literature and approach to develop methods, applied science to respond to problems, and may gain valuable knowledge about the lake through smaller projects for clients.

Our project for the next few weeks is to identify people who could either come in to talk to the class or who we could interview.

The goal is to help the class understand how transdisciplinary context and skills can be combined into your PhD work and ongoing professional development.

In retrospect it was interesting that we were really trying to create a grid, or another dimension to this list. I think we all really wanted to create a chart with two axes. Subliminally, we all know that every good sustainability report has a Venn diagram in it somewhere (that requires two axes or three axes and an excellent graphic artist). Are we "scientists" or what?

Assignment -- think of people or sub-disciplines that might represent researchers that have research agendas that fit along the continuum from pure to post-normal.