ESOS

Synthetic Microanalysis

The engineering of self-organizing systems (ESOS) is a contradiction in itself: how can you organize something which organizes itself? If we want to build a self-organizing system with autonomous agents, then how can we ensure the function ? Agents do by defintion what they want. How can you construct a self-organizing system?

The answer is: in a balanced, iterative process which combines top-down analysis with bottom-up simulation, where we step by step define the 'rules of the game'. The bottom-up process is needed ensure diversity (innovative, random, surprising elements). The top-down process ensure unity (e.g. function, quality and goal-orientation). Together they form a cyclic round-trip process, which can be named synthetic microanalysis. This is nothing else but the scientific method applied to engineering, the combination of engineering and science. Remarkably, some computer scientists do not want to hear this. They are of course scientists, and as scientists they use of course the scientific method. How do we dare to question this? Yet there is a difference between the scientist and the engineer:

The scientist seeks to understand what is,
the engineer seeks to create what never was.
The engineer explores in order to build, 
the scientist builds in order to explore.

What happens if both meet each other, if we combine the characteristics of pure engineering with pure science and ? Surprisingly, the best and worst. The worst is an engineer which only seeks to create problems that never were before, those false engineers who conceal the truth and produce complexity instead of true engineers which hide complexity and produce the truth. (unfortunately, many computer scientists fall in this category. There are so many hot air merchants at the universities.. In German you call them "Schwindler" or "Schaumschläger". All they do is producing hot air and complex useless frameworks while inventing new buzzwords and acronyms. In Marketing this is ok, but in computer science.. They are a bit like intelligent ELIZA bots, which never will achieve real intelligence, they only produce a perfect illusion of intelligence. Likewise, Schaumschläger will never produce any real progress to science, but a perfect illusion of progress. They are good in selling themselves, in getting jobs and grants, and in pretending to be important.). But there are also the opposite cases. The best cases are "theory engineers" or "scientific engineers": scientists who construct new theories, or engineers who discover new laws in engineering, and new ways to build new types of systems. Albert Einstein comes to mind.

These are the extremes. Except the best and the worst, we get a a engineer who seeks to understand the useful system he his building, and a scientist who seeks to create new kind of interesting theories that never existed before. Exactly what we need for a cyclic round-trip process, which can be named synthetic microanalysis.

Links

Henry Petroski, Scientists as Inventors, American Scientist Vol. 96 Sep-Oct. (2008) 368-371