scholarly journals The Survival Spectrum: The Key to Transition Engineering of Complex Systems

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Krumdieck
Keyword(s):  
Risk Management ◽  
Time Scale ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Safety Engineering ◽  
The Past ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Engineering Projects ◽  
Field Transition ◽  
Social And Environmental Impacts

This paper puts forward a simple idea describing the time, space and relationship scales of survival. The proposed survival spectrum concept represents a new way to think about sustainability that has clear implications for influencing engineering projects in all fields. The argument for the survival spectrum is developed sequentially, building on theory, definition, examples and history. The key idea is that sustainability can be effectively addressed by emergence of a new field, Transition Engineering. This is a parallel of safety engineering but with longer time scale, broader space scale, and more complex relationship scale. The past 100-year development of safety engineering is examined as a model for development of sustainability risk management and mitigation. The conclusion is that the new field, Transition Engineering, will emerge as the way our society will realize reduction in fossil fuel use and reduction in the detrimental social and environmental impacts of industrialization.

Survival is the driver for adaptation: safety engineering changed the future, security engineering prevented disasters and transition engineering navigates the pathway to the climate-safe future

2022 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Krumdieck
Keyword(s):  
Technology Development ◽  
Safety Engineering ◽  
Rapid Reduction ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
Engineering Discipline ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Innovation And Technology ◽  
Continuum Concept ◽  
Engineering Projects ◽  
Field Transition

Abstract Consider a simple idea describing the time, space and relationship scales of survival. Engineering has been going along with the current paradigm that growth in wealth and material consumption can continue through innovation and technology development. The proposed survival continuum concept represents a new way to think about sustainability that has clear implications for influencing engineering projects in all fields. The argument for survival as the driver for adaptation is developed sequentially, building on theory, definition, examples and history. The key idea is that sustainability will be effectively addressed by a new engineering discipline furthering development of the field of safety engineering with longer time scale, broader space scale and more complex relationship scale. The implication is that the past 100-year development of safety engineering can be leveraged to fast-track the inclusion of sustainability risk management throughout the entire engineering profession. The conclusion is that a new, interdisciplinary field, Transition Engineering, is emerging as the way our society will achieve sustainability-safety through rapid reduction in fossil fuel use and reduction in detrimental social and environmental impacts of industrialization.

scholarly journals If Mathematical Psychology Did Not Exist We Might Need to Invent It: A Comment on Theory Building in Psychology

2021 ◽  
pp. 174569162097476
Author(s):  
Danielle J. Navarro
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Work ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Statistical Problem ◽  
Theory Building ◽  
Mathematical Formalism ◽  
Mathematical Psychology ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Subject

It is commonplace, when discussing the subject of psychological theory, to write articles from the assumption that psychology differs from the physical sciences in that we have no theories that would support cumulative, incremental science. In this brief article I discuss one counterexample: Shepard’s law of generalization and the various Bayesian extensions that it inspired over the past 3 decades. Using Shepard’s law as a running example, I argue that psychological theory building is not a statistical problem, mathematical formalism is beneficial to theory, measurement and theory have a complex relationship, rewriting old theory can yield new insights, and theory growth can drive empirical work. Although I generally suggest that the tools of mathematical psychology are valuable to psychological theorists, I also comment on some limitations to this approach.

Feeling Film: Time, Space, and the Third Image

2021 ◽  
pp. 002216782110180
Author(s):  
Luke Hockley
Keyword(s):  
Present Moment ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The World

This article explores what it means to feel film. It does so through an exploration of the interconnections between Bergson, Deleuze, and Jung. Central to the argument is the ontological status of the image in these different philosophical and psychological traditions. In particular, image is seen as an encapsulation of coming into being, or what Bergson terms durée. To feel film is to engage with its therapeutic capacity to bring us into being. In the consulting room and in the cinema, this process is embodied and in some way created either between client and therapist or viewer and screen. The elusive present moment is the site at which the past permeates the present, creating as it does feeling toned entry into the process of becoming. Jung thought of this as central to individuation and Bergson as central to being. Feeling film from this perspective becomes a way of finding ourselves in both the world of the film and in our individual psyche.

scholarly journals “Cognitive Linguistics: Looking back, looking forward”

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 447-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dagmar Divjak ◽  
Natalia Levshina ◽  
Jane Klavan
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The Past ◽  
European Data ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
Looking Back ◽  
West European

AbstractSince its conception, Cognitive Linguistics as a theory of language has been enjoying ever increasing success worldwide. With quantitative growth has come qualitative diversification, and within a now heterogeneous field, different – and at times opposing – views on theoretical and methodological matters have emerged. The historical “prototype” of Cognitive Linguistics may be described as predominantly of mentalist persuasion, based on introspection, specialized in analysing language from a synchronic point of view, focused on West-European data (English in particular), and showing limited interest in the social and multimodal aspects of communication. Over the past years, many promising extensions from this prototype have emerged. The contributions selected for the Special Issue take stock of these extensions along the cognitive, social and methodological axes that expand the cognitive linguistic object of inquiry across time, space and modality.

The Problem of Energy

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 3-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Urry
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Energy Systems ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Human Intervention ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
And Control ◽  
Global Growth

Energy forms and their extensive scale are remarkably significant for the ways that societies are organized. This article shows the importance of how societies are ‘energized’ and especially the global growth of ‘fossil fuel societies’. Much social thought remains oblivious to the energy revolution realized over the past two to three centuries which set the ‘West’ onto a distinct trajectory. Energy is troubling for social thought because different energy systems with their ‘lock-ins’ are not subject to simple human intervention and control. Analyses are provided here of different fossil fuel societies, of coal and oil, with the latter enabling the liquid, mobilized 20th century. Consideration is paid to the possibilities of reducing fossil fuel dependence but it is shown how unlikely such a ‘powering down’ will be. The author demonstrates how energy is a massive problem for social theory and for 21st-century societies. Developing post-carbon theory and especially practice is far away but is especially urgent.

In search of lost space: The process of space planning through remembering and history

Organization ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio James Petani ◽  
Jeanne Mengis
Keyword(s):  
Production Of Space ◽  
Space Planning ◽  
The Past ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Non Linear ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Contested Narratives

This article explores the role of remembering and history in the process of planning new spaces. We trace how the organizational remembering of past spaces enters the conception (i.e. planning) of a large culture center. By drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s reflections on history, time and memory, we analyze the processual interconnections of his spatial triad, namely between the planned, practiced, and lived moments of the production of space. We find that over time space planning involves recurrent, changing, and contested narratives on ‘lost spaces’, remembering happy spaces of the past that articulate a desire to regain them. The notion of lost space adds to our understanding of how space planning involves, through organizational remembering, a sociomaterial and spatiotemporal work of relating together different spaces and times in non-linear narratives of repetition.

Futures Honed

Futures ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 118-134
Author(s):  
Barbara Adam
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Original Work ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
The Past ◽  
Writing Theory ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Verse Form ◽  
The Way

This chapter comprises an interview between Barbara Adam and the editors, and is followed by Adam’s ‘Honing Futures’, which is presented in four short verses of distilled theory. In the interview Adam reflects on thirty-five years of futures-thinking rooted in her deeply original work on time and temporality, and her innovative response to qualitative and linear definitions of time within the social sciences. The interview continues with a discussion of the way Adam’s thinking on futures intersects in her work with ideas of ethics and collective responsibility politics and concludes with a brief rationale for writing theory in verse form. In ‘Honing Futures’, a piece of futures theory verse form, Adam charts the movements and moments in considerations of the Not Yet and futurity’s active creation: from pluralized imaginings of the future, to an increasingly tangible and narrower anticipated future, to future-making as designing and reality-creating performance. Collectively, the verses identify the varied complex interdependencies of time, space, and matter with the past and future in all iterations of honing and making futures.

Risk management in the design of engineering projects as sociotechnical systems

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 85-99
Author(s):  
Bryan R. Moser ◽  
Ralph T. Wood ◽  
Kazuo Hiekata
Keyword(s):  
Risk Management ◽  
Sociotechnical Systems ◽  
Engineering Projects
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