Methodology of Thinking
Writer Profile
Osamu Kurita
Faculty of Science and Technology Professor, Department of Industrial and Systems EngineeringOsamu Kurita
Faculty of Science and Technology Professor, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
2024/02/28
In our work and daily lives, as well as in academic and research settings, there are many challenges where policies must be decided rationally according to specific goals. I wrote this book with the hope of helping people recognize (or re-recognize?) and utilize "model thinking" to support those solutions. A model is a system that extracts the main elements of a target problem as components and describes the temporal or causal relationships between them; it is an important tool that can be used regardless of whether one is in the humanities or the sciences.
I studied urban planning in the College of Policy and Planning Sciences at the University of Tsukuba, and while serving as an assistant in the Department of Urban Engineering at the University of Tokyo, I was welcomed into the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Keio's Faculty of Science and Technology.
Urban planning involves the goal-oriented rational design of urban and architectural spaces and systems, and my academic foundation was originally operations research for approaching this through applied mathematics. When I arrived at the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, I was moved by the truly fascinating research and education being practiced there, which comprehensively sheds light on the study of decision-making surrounding people, goods, money, and information. I spent over 30 exciting years at Keio, developing my own urban research while learning from this culture. This book is the result of those efforts.
In addition to explaining various types of models and the "spiral development" that advances model analysis, I covered important engineering concepts that support them, such as Pareto optimality, net present value, and sunk costs. Furthermore, I introduced important concepts from sociology for correctly setting goals themselves, such as traditionalism and fetishism, and the functions and dysfunctions of bureaucracy. I wanted to convey that learning across the boundaries of the humanities and sciences brings about rich thinking.
In doing so, I faithfully followed the suggestion of Maki Imoto, a talented editor at Kodansha, to "create content that conveys the appeal to general readers without using mathematical formulas." I used models of traffic flow, urban facility planning, population forecasting, and so on as subjects. Starting with the anecdote of how the legend of Yaoya Oshichi caused the total fertility rate to drop during the Showa era, I also detailed the history of the sexagenary cycle.
I aimed for a paperback that is accessible and narrative, so that by reading through it, the reader would ultimately understand the essentials of model thinking. I leave it to the readers to judge how successfully that was achieved.
*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.