DUT
Research Center of Knowledge Science and Technology
SYSTEM INTUITION AND ITS ROLE IN
KNOWLEDGE CREATION
ZHONGTUO WANG
DALIAN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
DALIAN, CHINA
2005. 08
DUT
Research Center of Knowledge Science and Technology
CONTENTS
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
INTRODUCTION
INTUITION AS THINKING STYLE
SYSTEMS INTUITION
COLLECTIVE SYSTEM INTUITION
ROLE OF INTUITION IN KNOWLEDGE
CONVERSION AND CREATION
6. CONCLUSION
2005. 08
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Research Center of Knowledge Science and Technology
1 INTRODUCTION
• In the recent years, the knowledge creation problem
becoming a hot point (not only in R&D, but also in
DM ,design & BPR) is both in theory and practice.
• For the knowledge conversion and creation process,
the “SECI”model by Nonaka and Takeuchi is well
known. Its main contribution is emphasizing the role
of tacit knowledge and the conversion processes from
tacit knowledge to explicit and from individual to
organizational , as well as creation of new knowledge.
• People often appreciate Polanyi’s contribution on
tacit knowledge. But ancient history tells that more
than two thousand years before, Chinese philosophers
had many investigations on it.
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Confucius said :“Writing could not fully describe what the people
want to say; speech could not express what the people want to think”
UNAWARED TACIT
AWARED TACIT
TALKED
WRITTEN
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Research Center of Knowledge Science and Technology
• The “SECI”model is from the macroscopic view
and the conversion processes from tacit
knowledge to explicit and from individual to
organizational are more or less dichotomously.
• According to the view point of the author of this
presentation, the knowledge possessed by
individual or organization is a continuum from
tacit to explicit.
• In the knowledge creating process, there are many
intermediate sub-processes, e.g., knowledge
integration, data and text mining, oral exchange
of experiences, etc.
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知识的传递与转化
If we investigate
it microscopically, the knowledge body
is a continuum and there are many sub-processes.
EXPLICIT
ES
DM
DISCUSS.
BRIEF.
SKILL
TACIT
INDIVIDUAL
ENVIRONMENT
ORGANIZATIONAL
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Research Center of Knowledge Science and Technology
• The knowledge conversion and creation process is
closely related to the way of thinking.
• In these sub-processes, beside the analytical thinking,
the intuition is always employed.
• Intuition is one of the greatest powers latent in all
human beings and called "straight knowledge", but is
often underrated and unrecognized.
• This presentation aims to investigate the role of
intuition in knowledge creation and put forward a new
concept “system intuition” for the systems approach to
complex knowledge systems.
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2 INTUITION AS THINKING STYLE
Understanding of intuition is also intuitive.
Definitions of intuition, formal or informal :
“A sense of feeling of pattern or relationships”.
“Holistic thinking, immediate insight, seeing the
answer without knowing how it reached”.
“The sixth sense”.
“Compressed expertise, a way of rapidly accessing
chunks and patterns of knowledge formed from
previous experience”.
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• “A way of thinking which stems from reason,
that generally improves with experience and
that can also improve by appropriate exercise”.
• “Understanding without rationale”.
• “A perception of possibilities, meanings and
relationships by way of insight”.
• “Knowledge of fact or truth as a whole;
immediate possession of knowledge; and
knowledge independent of the linear reasoning
process”.
• “Immediate knowledge of something without the
conscious use of reason”.
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• The essence of intuition has been included in
these definitions:
- Holistic thinking.
- Feeling of pattern or relationships.
-without the conscious use of reason.
- Understanding without rationale.
Intuition can be considered as a mode of thinking
and as a kind of knowledge.
As called straight knowledge, It is closely related
to tacit knowledge.
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• Intuition vs Analysis
Depend on Conscious. Learn by Kldg
Intuition Feeling
Unconsc. Self
Tacit
Analysis Thinking Conscious. Taught
Explicit
• Chinese traditional philosophy paid more attention to
intuition and has a brilliant tradition on intuitive
thinking.
• In the years of 80s last century, initiated by Professor
H.S.Tsien, a new discipline named “Noetic Science”
was founded in China, it is quite similar to Cognitive
Science, but its main focus is on both logic and imagery
thinking.
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The relations between intuition and two types of thinking are like:
(logic operation)
(Logic thinking)
Concept
Sensation
Image
Perception
Judgement
Inference
LT memory
Intuition
(Imagery thinking)
Pattern
Association
Imagination
(experience operation)
Intuition is not always right.
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The relations between intuition and two types of thinking are like:
(logic operation)
(Logic thinking)
Concept
Sensation
Image
Perception
Judgement
Inference
LT memory
Intuition
(Imagery thinking)
Pattern
Association
Imagination
(experience operation)
People often think the logic thinking is for scientists and
engineers and imagery thinking for artists. The facts
are anyone needs both of them.
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• Chinese heritage of the image thinking is partly
from Chinese calligraphy.
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3 SYSTEMS INTUITION
• The systems approach is often adopted to tackle
the complex knowledge creation problems.
• It is worthy to investigate the role of intuition in
the area of Systems Sciences and Engineering.
• When people faced with a complex system, they
firstly take a holistic view and before taking
system analysis, go straight to intuitive view of
the whole system. This means that intuitive
thinking will provide rapid and appropriate
response to the system situation.
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• The modern Systems disciplines are founded in
the last century. But the primitive idea of
system thinking emerged several thousand
years before. From the ancient history of
China we recognize that some ideas of system
thinking were created from Chinese traditional
medical science.
• The main idea of the Chinese traditional
medicine is the concept of “organic whole”.
The meaning of organic whole has two folds,
entirety and unity.
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• Chinese medicine suggests to use some holistic
methods
like
“Observation”,
“Listening”,
“Inquiring”, and “Pulse feeling and palpation” (望,
闻,问,切）to collect information of the whole
body and analyze intuitively.
• A Western scientist F. Capra pointed out: “the
Chinese idea of the body has always been
predominantly functional and concerned with the
interrelations of its parts rather than with
anatomical accuracy.”
• This means more relying on the intuitive thinking
rather than analytic to the whole system.
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This leads to a new thinking style, the author of this
presentation would suggest to call it “System
Intuitive Thinking” or simply “System Intuition”.
In the sixth to fourth century B. C., Both the Chinese
and Greek philosophers developed some holistic
view of the world. At that time, science, philosophy
and religion were not separated. These types of
holistic view are intuitive and from our point of
view, are primitive system intuition.
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The System Intuition or system intuitive thinking is
characterized by both holistic and intuitive view.
The main features are:
1.Emphasizing on the entirety, or “Seeing the whole
first.” From the whole functional view, from the
totality to see the system. Pay attention to the
synchronic patterning of things and events.
2.Emphasizing the unity, pay more attentions to the
interrelations of parts and environment.
3.Top down approach.
4.More relying on tacit knowledge.
5.Context orientation.
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• Some Western scholars have noticed this point.
H.Muller-Merbach suggested a hierarchical
typology of system approach and distinguishing
between systematic and systemic approaches.
• The Western tradition brought about systematic
type. Since the system thinking originated from
the Western countries is mainly relying on
structure and function of artifacts and they
considered that the systems are dividable, it often
takes the bottom-up approach.
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•
In contrary, the Eastern system thinking was
originated from medicine and organic world,
considered that things are indivisible. If you try
to divide them, they will be destroyed. Like the
human leg, it is only meaningful as a leg of human
when it is on the body. Once it is cut off, it will no
longer be the human leg. This is one of the
features of Oriental system thinking.
• Systemic type is characteristic for Eastern
philosophy , whose main feature is holistic and
top-down.
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Experiment of a Scientific group of
University of Michigan shows the
difference of cognition
Path of the sight of
Chinese Student
Path of the sight of
American Student
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• Intuition cannot be taught, but can be learned by
practice.
• The creation of systems intuition(Chinese
fashion):
“习”---Experience
“薰”---Nurtured
“悟”---Enlightenment
“化”---Sublimated
You don’t know what you don’t know
You know what you don’t know
You know what you know
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You don’t know what you know
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Imagination and creativity
creativity
imagination
Analytic
Experience
The system intuition excels in the complex, uncertain,
ambiguous and highly unpredictable situation when
the quick response is needed. Especially some reallife systems in the world are becoming complex
adaptive systems. In such case, people can not
follow the analytic procedure in terms of problem
identification, problem definition, modeling,
problem solving.
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4 COLLECTIVE SYSTEMS INTUITION
Another concept the author of this paper would put
forward is “collective system intuition”.
The collective intuition is defined (by Schamp T.) as :
“The collective capability amongst a management
team’s member to recognize issues especially in fast
changing environment”.
The collective system intuition can be defined as the
collective capability to system intuitive approach.
In the case of group decision making or problem
solving, collective system intuition is necessary as
the basis for the same feeling.
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• If the individual intuitive ability can be enhanced
through subconscious learning and understanding,
the collective intuitive ability can be got by raising
intuition to a more or less explicit level. Collective
system intuition, as well as collective intuition in
general, may be considered as cultural gene. To this
point, perhaps the collective unconsciousness(after
C.G.Jung) may be the influencing factor.
• The concept “Meme” can also be used to explain it.
• A meme is a cognitive or behavioral pattern that can
be transmitted from one individual to another one.
• It is a replicator of cultural information analogous to
the gene, constitutes a second form of evolution.
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• The system intuition is based on the tacit
knowledge, and collective system intuition is
based on organizational tacit knowledge.
People often acquire tacit knowledge when
they think intuitively.
• Just like the intuitive is not opposed to rational,
the system intuition is not opposed to the
analytical system thinking, which is the core of
modern systems sciences. In the present stage
Having rigorous methodology, methods, and
tools of analytical approach, we can use the
system intuition synergetically in different
ways according to different situations.
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5. ROLE OF INTUITION IN KNOWLEDGE
CONVERSION AND CREATION
• The existing research on intuition is limited in
theoretical area by psychologists and only a few
in application.
• It is necessary to investigate the role of intuition,
especially the system intuition in knowledge
working processes.
• If the knowledge creation process is investigated
microscopically into different sub-processes, the
intuitive and analytic thinking are used
synergetically.
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In fact there is a continuous cognitive spectrum
from intuition to analysis just like there is a
continuous spectrum from tacit to explicit
knowledge. In each part, there are some mix of
intuitive and analytic components.
Analysis
Intuition
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Research Center of Knowledge Science and Technology
• The knowledge creation process is a spiral
between chaotic and ordered states.
CHAOTIC STATES IN SYSTEM
（EXCHANGE AND CREATION OF TACIT
KNOWLEDGE ）
KNOWLEDGE INTEGRATION &
CREATION
（INDIVIDUAL AND TEAM WORK）
ORDERED STATES IN SYSTEM
（ACQUISITION,INTEGRATION AND EXCHANGE
OF EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE）
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• In different sub-processes, the intuition is portrayed
in different ways. It includes:
Intuitive vision (based on system intuition) for the
empathy building.
Intuitive emotion and
Intuitive prediction as well as
Intuitive imagination for the help of synthesizing
isolated information into integrated picture and for
idea generation.
Intuitive collaboration(collective intuition based on
the empathy) to help the brainstorming and
consensus building.
Intuitive judgement to check on results.
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C
S
P I
J INF
LTM
INTUITION
PAT A IMG
Resonant
Understanding
C
S
P I
J INF
LTM
INTUITION
PAT A IMG
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Research Center of Knowledge Science and Technology
6. CONCLUSION
• The system intuition or system intuitive thinking is
characterized by both holistic and intuitive view.
• The main features of system intuition are:
-Emphasizing on the entirety
-Emphasizing the unity
-Top down approach
-More relying on tacit knowledge
-Context orientation
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• The collective system intuition can be defined as the
collective capability to system intuitive approach.
• The system intuition is based on the tacit knowledge and
collective system intuition is based on organizational
tacit knowledge.
• The system intuition has been and should be used
complementally with the system analytic techniques.
• In the process of knowledge creation the intuition plays
important role indifferent sub-processes.
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Research Center of Knowledge Science and Technology
THANK YOU
2005. 08