NSWG: SYSTEMS PROCESSES THEORY
AS SYSTEMS-LEVEL MIMICRY
Len Troncale
Professor Emeritus Cal State Polytechnic
Abstract
The previous two talks were on nature and bio-inspired design which have a long history of success in engineering. But they focused on mimicry that is relatively restricted to biological systems. This talk has two simple, direct messages. First, that there are many examples of natural science phenomena other than biology that show “application” or “usage” of isomorphic systems processes (ISPs) and we should know all of them. These have been deeply studied and reported in peer-reviewed detail by a very wide range of the conventional sciences. Our SPT team has collected over one thousand such exemplary case studies as well as their reports which will be summarized in this talk. Now is the time to use the theoretical understanding of these ISPs in consciously designing better human systems as well as becoming “doctors” to curate our natural system nest. To do this successfully, it is required to know a great deal of detail on each and every ISP. The SP3T projects of the SSWG, NSWG, and recent grants of the INCOSE Foundation are producing databases and new professional societies to promote and develop these approaches. Second, while bio-mimicry is well understood, though underdeveloped and underutilized at present, its extension to systems-level-mimicry through SP3T is poorly understood and almost not applied at all in current practices. We believe the profession of systems engineering is uniquely placed to study, advocate, and deliver systems-level mimicry for the first time.
Bio
Lenard Raphael Troncale is an American biologist, Professor of Cellular and Molecular Biology, and former Director of the Institute for Advanced Systems Studies at the California State Polytechnic University.
Troncale studied at the Catholic University of America from 1966 to 1970, and received his Ph.D. in 1970 in Molecular Biology. He started working at the Department of Biology at the California State University. Later in the 1970s he became Professor Cellular and Molecular Biology, and Director of the Institute for Advanced Systems Studies at the California State Polytechnic University. In 1990-91 he served as president of the International Society for the Systems Sciences.
Troncale's research interests are in the fields of Cellular and Molecular Biology; Systems Science; Biosystems Allometry; Biohierarchies; Molecular Evolution; Theory of Systems Emergence; Proteins of the chromosome scaffold and nuclear matrix of eo-eukaryotes; Organization and function of the nucleus; Theoretical models of cell differentiation.[2]