Fostering Inter-Disciplinary Communication (FIC)

Nagib Callaos

The main objextives of this article are 1) ro show the impotance, even the necessity of inter-disciplinary communication, including its role in avoiding intra-disiciplinary intellectual/academic incest and 2) to provide conceptual, notional, and programmatic contexts to the papers published in this special issue.

First, we will to show that effective inter-disciplinary communication 1) develops critical thinking, in general, and, more specifically, in intra-disciplinary thinking, supporting more effective intra-disciplinary research, education, and communication, and 2) is a source of creativity via analogical thinking, which generates the analogies required for any kind of logical thinking, e.g., hypothesis formulation in inductive logic, conjectures (e.g., potential theorems) in deductive logic, plausible explications in abductive logic, possible means in ends/means logic, etc.

Consequently, effective inter-disciplinary communication is a great support to both intra- and inter-disciplinary research and education, as well as for knowledge integration. It supports, and even it is required in both analytical and synthetical thinking, i.e. in both: knowledge production and knowledge integration. The former is oriented to approach the “truth” (in its different meanings) and the latter is required for the solution real-life problems, at any level: individual, collective, and social levels.

This is why the International Institute of Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics (IIIS) has been since 1995 trying to foster inter-disciplinary communication.

This special issue of the Journal of Systemic, Cybernetics, and Informatics (JSCI), entitled “FOR Inter-Disciplinary Communication” is part of a larger program oriented to fostering inter-disciplinary communication, which has been conceived and being designed and implemented, by the IIIS via incremental planning (Braybrooke & Lindblom, 1970). The fundamental methodological bases are Action-Design (Callaos N. , Co-Evolutive Action-Design Methodology, 1997), (Callaos & Callaos, 2008) and Action-Learning. (Marquardt, Banks, Cauwelier, & Ng, 2018).

This is why we will briefly describe the program FIC in order to provide context for the purpose of this special issue. We will also, briefly, describe other projects in the same program FIC in order to support a systemic view that may include the relationships being generated with other projects; which are also being implemented in order to complement, and be complemented, by this special issue, in the context of the Program FIC.

This description of FIC will be oriented to WHAT FIC is, WHY FIC is important to be implemented and HOW we are trying to do it via Action-Learning, Action- Incremental-evolutive-Design, by means of initiallu smaller, then larger projects.

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