"Methodology of Thinking"

In our work, daily lives, and academic research, we are faced with a mountain of issues 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 the "model thinking" that supports these solutions. A model is a system that extracts the main elements of a target issue as components and describes the temporal or causal relationships between them; it is an essential tool that can be utilized 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 Faculty of Science and Technology.

Urban planning involves the rational design of urban/architectural spaces and systems, and my academic foundation was originally operations research as an applied mathematical approach to this field. When I arrived at the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, I was moved to find that truly fascinating research and education were being practiced, shedding light comprehensively on the science of decision-making surrounding people, goods, money, and information. I have 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 have included important engineering concepts that support them, such as Pareto optimality, Net Present Value (NPV), 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 a richness of thought.

In doing so, I faithfully followed the suggestion of the talented editor Maki Imoto (Kodansha) to "make the content appealing 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 a decrease in the total fertility rate during the Showa era, I also detailed the history of the Sexagenary Cycle (Jukkan Junishi).

I aimed for a paperback (Shinsho) that allows readers to understand the essentials of model thinking as a result of reading through accessible, narrative-driven content. I leave it to the readers to judge how successfully that was achieved.

"Methodology of Thinking"

Osamu Kurita

Kodansha Gendai Shinsho

280 pages, 1,100 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are those at the time of publication.