President

Mechanism of generating wealth by knowledge

Stagnation, siege mentality and depression, these daunting words summed up the year 2002. In a general mood of society in which people tried to find someone or something to blame, specious logic and criticism prevailed. And now, we are facing the new year, 2003.

Our new year's resolution is to find way out from this cloud of criticism of the last year, that was almost weeping and wailing. There is no magic wand for confronting such a grave situation. All of us have no choice but to fulfil our own roles in society. It is almost pointless and will even worsen the situation if we shift the blame onto others and commentate on any issue as an outsider.

Now, what should we do as a member of AIST? The harsh realities that produced various hardships that we have experienced since last year still exist as imperative facts. In order to make a breakthrough there is little doubt in the necessity for us to be committed to take one of the numerous roles in the society. And it is essential to identify the primary task for each.

AIST is a research institute. A research institute assumes the role to produce knowledge. In this sense, our responsibility would be straightforward, that is to produce knowledge which serve as a resolution of the current issues. As our products (= knowledge) are related to industrial technology, they must benefit the industrial community.

It is essential to have a recognition that industry is the largest mechanism to generate wealth in the society. Accordingly, it can be said that we are the leading player of the activities characterizing mankind, that is "production of wealth based on knowledge".

The modern-day version of the nature of human characteristics; to yield wealth by use of knowledge is construed as a policy common to every nation, that is, state support provided to research activities of science and technology, and industrial application of their outcomes. Japan, a country advocating an emphasis on forging a framework to advance innovations in science and technology is heading such a trend. This is confirmed by the rapidly growing call for "Industry-Government-Academia" collaboration. This is a generally shared awareness. However, we, assuming the major responsibility of these activities for wealth creation, should have a deeper recognition of the contents of these doings. Apparently, the primary importance should be placed on a thorough understanding of the patterns specific to the knowledge in the modern world.

Return to indigenous knowledge

One of the remarkable fruits born out of discussions at international organizations such as ICSU is the viewpoint of cognizing the limits of modern scientific knowledge to solve environmental issues. Although it is possible to understand environmental problems based on the knowledge of natural science such as physics and chemistry, interdisciplinary knowledge including human science and sociology is required in order to prevent or restore the deteriorated environment. However, for that purpose, modern knowledge is extremely segmentalized and confined to each academic field. And yet, no "science" exists to integrate such fragments.

However, although it differs from modern science, our traditional wisdom teaches human beings how to coexist with the environment. Such wisdom is inherent to each region and proves its real worth only in the natural and social environment unique to the region. It is often called "indigenous wisdom". Historically, the significance of indigenous wisdom has been unduly dismissed during the process of elimination of opposing elements against science such as superstitions, anti-scientism, spurious science and so on. However, the indigenous wisdom has been gradually re-evaluated and the method to differentiate its nature from anti-scientism is being established. In addition, we have started to pursue the possibility to utilize such wisdom.

The significant feature which marks the indigenous wisdom is in its constitution coupling knowledge as a factual information of an object and a subjective meaning for a person who has the knowledge. For instance, indigenous wisdom concerning a certain plant may be a combination of the objective information such as suitable conditions and the right season for its growth and the knowledge of possible application -medicinal use of the plant. Moreover, people make use of the knowledge. Hence, a factual knowledge and an understanding for application can be found simultaneously.

In contrast, facts and applications are separated in knowledge which is based on modern science. More precisely, modern science is a scheme of knowledge established by liberating the factual information from the concerns for the possibility of its practical application. As a result, this amount of information has been rapidly increased within the sphere of modern science.

Facing the vast amount of modern scientific knowledge which is continuously growing, the possible application of such factual knowledge, in other words, the potential practices to generate wealth have been emerging as a significant issue. This is a natural consequence of the separation of the factual knowledge from applications. Therefore, vigorous investment by the government to scientific researches in the expectation that they will serve as a breakthrough of the current severe state of affairs is an inevitable corollary from the history of human knowledge. At the same time, such an endeavor is assuming a large scale project to challenge the structural problem interwoven in modern world knowledge.

Learning from indigenous wisdom and creating coherency of knowledge

AIST is taking a pioneering role in such a project. It can be said that rebuilding the tie between the factual knowledge and application based on the scientific methods is the first trial ever made in the history of knowledge. At AIST, with penetrating insight, each director of a research unit takes responsibility for creating a coherency of knowledge within the unit where the researchers producing factual knowledge and those specialized in applications pursue their respective interests based on their self-motivation.

Researchers conduct studies into their own subjects under the supervision of the directors of each unit. Our challenge lies behind such daily activities at a research unit. In other words, we exert ourselves to overcome the structural problem associated the modern knowledge and consequently, to formularize the process to produce wealth from the proliferating knowledge.

A fulfilling year of full research

Defining the year 2003 as a year when the grief of last year will be reviewed objectively and all of us will play a role to solve the issues, our New Year's resolution is to begin a "full-scale" operation to pursue our full research centering on the type-II basic research that we have just launched.