THE WALK-RWD SYSTEM AND THE INTERDISCIPLINARY FLOW OF IDEAS. PART II OF IX.

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THE INTERDISCIPLINARY FLOW OF IDEAS LINKED TO THE URBAN SPACE.

This post is the second in the series of 9 that I have programmed on the subject of the FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF WALKING and that will lead to the definition and presentation of the new functional paradigm that humanity must have and enable in the near future. The first previous post in this series was: THE 9TH GENERATION OF THE MODERN AGE CREATIVITY AND WALKING. PART I.

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Every individual should tend to be a mixed (hybrid) “studious”, that is, to seek knowledge and experience – or simple professional incursion – in two or more disciplines, so as to be more innovative than those people who only dedicate themselves to a single, increasingly atomized specialty that loses the global and systemic perspective.

I have put the word ” studious ” in quotation marks because I wish to refer to a certain number of human activities such as: researcher, analytical, worker, scientist, intellectual, thinker, technician, inventor, observer, inquirer, academic, professor; and I have not found a better term that encompasses and represents them. For all those people who develop them, I recommend a mixed form in their mental performance, both educational and occupational.

The recommendation is based on the fact that in this way the human mind tends to be more creative if it is directed to several disciplines of knowledge, than if it is only circumscribed to a single field of knowledge. That is to say, if our thoughts can venture into different spheres of human knowledge, the migration of ideas from one field to another generates an additional stimulus in the brain’s capacities, prompting it to use other functional areas of the brain.

It should not be understood that we recommend having a formal academic specialization, supported by a great experience in the disciplines involved, but only to have the intention and disposition to venture into them with the clear objective and the declared will to seek the exchange of techniques, concepts, processes and methods that each of them have. In other words, we are not asked to be the great specialists in any of the “mixed” disciplines or sciences, for the achievement of any task.

I will explain in more detail. We can represent the case we wish to convey, using the nomenclature and symbology of Set Theory. I will simplify the problem to only two disciplines (subjects) involved -which are mixed-, the disciplines “A” and “B”.

Let the expression A∩B (read A intersection B), being the set A the discipline “A” and the set B, the discipline “B”, which graphically is expressed as follows:

The shaded area is the intersection of the two disciplines – “A” and “B” – and where the researcher expands his or her creative capabilities by being able to use and manipulate their respective concepts, processes, methods and techniques.

I have no doubt – and it is a proven historical trait – that the creation of new ideas is best generated at the confluence of several disciplines, either in a single person or the confluence of several individuals with their respective specialties and ideas. Let us keep in mind that specialization is very important and determinant, but not sufficient, for the creation of new ideas. This proposal does not intend to minimize the extreme specialization approach that has been promoted in the last 3 centuries in the scientific field, only that there is a risk that by focusing exclusively on observing a single tree, the integral and systemic vision of the forest is lost; in fact, it is essential to have specialization in the different disciplines.

The productive, creative and fruitful path that can be traced between 2 or more disciplines, has no major problem for its gestation, revelation and scope; it is raised and promoted by the taste, vocation or inclination of the researcher and by the needs of the project or projects to be carried out. The main problem is located mainly in the definition and understanding of how the process is developed. Regarding the definition of the expansion –amplification- and propagation –ramification- of the process, the dilemma begins with the classification of the human, social, natural sciences, etc., since each researcher must venture, for his own work, into the disciplines he considers appropriate and not allow himself to be conditioned by the type of academic and dogmatic classifications. Understanding (reasoning) refers to the development of the interdisciplinary combination; it is the realization of the process with a multiple -or diverse- integrative approach of a personal nature of each researcher, so each one must attend to this conjunction according to his own binomial of reasoning and intuition, together with his vocation and experience.

The process is gestated in the A∩B intersection of the 2 disciplines (or more of them, depending on the case) that the researcher uses, and we know that it is caused by the same confrontation that is generated by the search and exchange of techniques, concepts, processes and methods between the disciplines in connection, since each of them has a specific scientific and methodological structure. The head-on collision, a real collision between branches of knowledge, which the researcher faces and has to fertilize, in order to obtain a more creative and productive state.

This exchange of concepts and procedures, which are sometimes even opposed, is what generates the great inventions and creations, without detriment to the specialization that is indispensable in a certain number of participating disciplines. These formal bridges, which each researcher builds in his daily tasks, in order to combine several disciplines, are personal and almost unrepeatable, and this is part of the complexity of knowing how they are generated.

The intersection subset A∩B defines the information possibilities with which the 2 disciplines (or more) can participate in the generation of novel ideas. This whole area, common to the 2 disciplines combined, is where creative events are generated. Also – as mentioned before – it is usually done through the formation of multidisciplinary teams, with different specialists, in the execution of joint projects of high level – of creativity and specialty – but it can also be achieved with the exclusive participation of a single individual with his personal versatility, examples of which we have seen essentially in the Renaissance period with characters in all creative, artistic, technological and scientific fields, with Leonardo Da Vinci at the head. However, the innovations – to call them in this generic way – in the monodisciplinary field have been largely surpassed.

Likewise, the expression AυB represents analytically the sum of all the technical and theoretical sources of co-participation that can be used for the achievement of other objectives, within the same research -or productive- process in which the 2 disciplines participate.

Its graphic representation is:

The subset of union AυB defines the great toolkit, both technical and theoretical, that is made available by the co-participation of these 2 disciplines.

Perhaps one aspect that we will have to analyze in the future, in order to have a better understanding of how multidisciplinarity is generated in the individual, is the degree of disposition and willingness of the researcher to transgress, violate, disobey, contravene the canons and norms established in each discipline he/she makes use of, going beyond their disciplinary boundaries, in order to manage to build that bridge and meet with new paradigms. In addition, we must investigate in which disciplines – and also in which disciplinary sub-branches (subdisciplinarity) – the greatest number of creative and original ideas are generated, in order to discover the different causes that provoke the different levels of creativity.

Multidisciplinarity will always increase the creative capacity in the human being in comparison to that which is generated if only one discipline is used (intradisciplinarity). The dilemma lies in a multidisciplinary SYNERGY versus an intradisciplinary ATONY (monodisciplinarity).

I must emphasize that this post, as you might expect, has a close relationship with the higher mental function of creativity, with the core of creative thinking, with the functions of creating ideas, imagining, inventing, creating and speculating. In the following image we can see the contact that is achieved between the different disciplines and in each one of them we can assume that there is a great activity of creativity, by the only interdisciplinary contact, which can be enhanced with the WALK-RWD system itself.

The use of multidisciplinarity, for the task described above, is graphically illustrated in the diagram above as the border inter-sections that are areas of complementarity between the disciplines involved in the research, production and creative phases, where their specialized fields come together in order to achieve the greatest number of the proposed goals.

Each analyst will be able to cross the theoretical and practical boundaries of the different specialized disciplines in search of his or her particularized distinctive goals within the research or study that is carried out jointly and multidisciplinary; to such effects, each one – in their defined projects – must be attentive when they must move from one discipline to another (transdisciplinarity), due to the unrestricted need to resort to the specialized tools of any of them, of the social, technical, artistic or scientific type, new methods or specific procedures –extradisciplinarity-, to obtain the “answers” that are required and to continue with their work of analysis and synthesis.

In order to have a concept of what creativity is, I will allow myself to give the following personal definition.

Creativity in the human being is a mental process in which two or more ideas or knowledge that have been lodged in one’s own mind, along a continuum of experiences and learning, are related, conjugated, fused, fragmented and/or opposed. Perceived in this way, creativity is a fairly broad function in the formulation of images, representations, conceptions and ideas, including speculations and intuitions, being that it is emphatically oriented to novelty and also to the enrichment of knowledge.

This generative and creative process has several scenarios or dynamic stages through which all those products generated are poured, in graphic and linguistic form, of different rank of importance and significance. The following are those scenarios:

1.            Where compound thoughts flow that the mind uses to memorize.

2.            Where the understanding of the processed ideas is generated, analyzing, criticizing, censuring, judging, etc.

3.            Where acquired knowledge that is in the process of assessment and understanding is evaluated.

4.            Where a conjugation or combination of the 3 previous scenarios is noticed, in order to obtain mental conclusions and synthesis.

5.            Where a different or ignored reformulation of ideas and concepts is generated.

6.            Where new ideas or thoughts are introjected, based on the images already understood or not assimilated, qualifying them according to a particular valuation pattern.

7.            Where new concepts and ideas are gestated for one’s own mind in the creative process. I have called these creative stumbles or findings.

8.            Where thoughts that enrich universal knowledge germinate.

If we increase the interdisciplinary combination to a greater number of disciplines, for example to 3, the effect is greater, because the brain strives to combine different disciplinary models and this leads it to use other functional areas. In the following figure we can see the subset A∩B∩C, as the result of the intersection created by 3 disciplines:

The shaded intersection indicates a greater number of information possibilities with which the 3 disciplines can participate in the generation of novel ideas; and in the same way, this subset, created by the interdisciplinarity of the 3 disciplines combined, is where a considerable amount of creative events are generated.

It is required to be irreverent to a certain degree with the instituted, especially with the norms and models of the academic type, which inhibit creativity in some ways.

A percentage of the population intends, by their own conscience and will, to act with this form of daring and audacity, but another large percentage does not like to try or cannot venture in this way.

This profile of propelling with greater emphasis the multidisciplinary exchange has been achieved through a natural action in the human being when performing -through- informal communications, which has been established as a collaboration between peers, but outside the institutional canons; likewise, this interdisciplinary flow of ideas has been activated through the mechanism of what M. Dogan refers to the so-called “invisible colleges”, a disciplinary hybridization, but not officialized collegiate, it is an invisible transdisciplinarity.

The hybrid form of study and research is achieved through the conjugation of two or more sciences or disciplines, which by partially moving away from the central parts of each of them, are associated and combined in a more creative way which allows finding better solutions and innovations to problems of all kinds. In these zones or frontiers away from the strict, inflexible and narrow rules and procedures of each of the different specialties, it will be possible to find the innovations and alternative answers to substitute the deficiencies that we have at present. This is an adequate path for the institutionalized creation of the discipline that is required to design the new paradigm of human walking in the near future.

If it is not possible to act in this behavioral way of clear, open and effective irreverence to the established canons, and we wish to be able to venture into these levels of interdisciplinarity (hybridization of knowledge), we can support ourselves by resorting to the WALK-RWD system which, when applied in an integral way, incorporating the structured activities of reading, writing and drawing, generates effects similar to disciplinary hybridization.

We have explained this creative function of the WALK-RWD system in several posts: THE WALK-RWD SYSTEM ENCOURAGES CREATIVE THINKING. PART I; THE WALK-RWD SYSTEM AND THE SELF-PRODUCTION OF ORGANIC SUBSTANCES; PRESERVING AND AFFIRMING HEALTH, CREATIVITY AND TRANQUILITY, etc.

Now, our final purpose is to tend towards the definition of a new model or paradigm of human walking in Future Posts.

Surely we can move towards a new disciplinary scheme to emphatically support human walking, to tend towards a new institutionalized academic discipline (In another Future Post).

Everything indicates that the population of the future will be concentrated in cities -within their own habitat- and the solution to the problem will have to be addressed from the urban point of view, although other physical environments where human beings will be located should not be overlooked (In another Future Posts) .

As for the WALK-RWD system, we have already mentioned previously that the coordinated movement generated in the walk causes the brain to produce several substances, and these in turn, stimulate the full functioning of the neurons of the brain, increasing considerably the number of connections between them and the functional areas of the same; also the recurrent practice of the system procures that effect on the mind of rationally raiding areas that are asleep or blocked unblocks and disinhibits them.

Likewise, we have expressed that walking generates that the brain is introduced in a need to “COMPENSATE” a state in movement, which in turn causes an “unleveling” in its chemical elements and neurotransmitters (Post THE WALK-RWD SYSTEM ENCOURAGE CREATIVE THINKING. PART I), and that during the same period of the walk, the brain seeks to “stabilize” itself, giving instructions to its own organic unit, as well as to other systems, glands and organs, to reach that “balance” (Future Post THE WALK-RWD SYSTEM AND HOMEOSTASIS). During this process, some vicarious parts of the brain will try to make up for the insufficiency of some others that are affected by the loss of that “balanced and harmonic state”. Similarly, some organs, glands or systems, in their articulated whole, will try to support the needs that the brain is experiencing, including the vestibular system.

Now, when apart from walking, we read, write or draw, the effects generated in the brain are greater and more intense, because in a continuous way, the parts that constitute the sense of sight try -constantly- to keep the sight focused on what is being read (written or drawn) and therefore also send messages to the brain, which in turn helps to keep the sight fixed.

The impulses generated during walking, together with the 3 structural activities (reading, writing and drawing), produce stronger messages to the brain, which seeks to rebalance -permanently- making other areas of the brain work, which in general, without these activities, would remain inactive, almost numb (Future Post THE WALK-RWD SYSTEM AND HOMEOSTASIS).

Thus, in this way the WALK-RWD system generates a functional analogy with the interdisciplinary model we have described, which facilitates and drives the migration of ideas from one mental environment to another. The system stimulates the brain to break with all the frontiers that have been imposed on it and seeks that effect on the mind to incursion in areas that are dormant or rationally prohibited, un-inhibiting them.

Let us start to walk around reading or writing or drawing, and we will see that the system works, because we will begin to have images that will have us in a certain way incredulous of what happens to us in the field of ideas, intuitions, perceptions and mental graphic representations. But let us also promote creative pluridisciplinarity and hybridization to allow us to achieve a new hybrid discipline that will lead us towards this paradigm in the not too distant future. The human being will develop better, physically and mentally, walking and eliminating monodisciplinarity in his future performance of study, creation, realization and welfare.

When publishing this post I have decided to update Post UPDATED DYNAMIC INDEX OF POSTS 1-100, increasing by 10 more, so now there are 110 posts, where you will be able to see their titles and link directly.

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