Jan. 14, 2017
Dear TRIZ Colleagues,
Toru Nakagawa
Professor Emeritus, Osaka Gakuin University
A Happy New Year 2017 !!
"TRIZ Home Page in Japan" has been updated
today (dated Jan. 13, 2017) in English and in Japanese pages.
http://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/nakagawa/TRIZ/eTRIZ/
[1] Message for the New Year 2017 (Editor: Toru Nakagawa)
[2] Introductory: 'Liberty vs. Love':
The Principal Contradiction Inherent throughout the Human Culture
(Toru Nakagawa, Bulletin of YMCA at Univ. Tokyo)
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[1] From the Editor: Message for the New Year 2017
(Toru Nakagawa)
Greetings from Japan for a Happy New Year 2017!!
Wish the year be peaceful in the World, and healthy, happy, and successful for you all.
Posted is an English translation of my New Year Card which I sent to about 200 friends in Japan whom I met before my TRIZ days.
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Happy New Year 2017 !!
Since my retirement of OGU in 2012, I am continuing my research and proliferation activities on the methodologies of creative problem solving.
I have reached a conviction that the Six-Box Scheme is the new paradigm of creative problem solving in general, including technological development in industries, advanced research in academia, issues of social problems, etc.
Starting with the visualization of the logic of "The Low-living Elderly" book written by Takanori Fujita, I worked on the issue of poverty in the Japanese society.
In the issues of poverty and welfare, there always exist the conflicts of arguments between self-responsibility and mutual help.
At the root of them, I have found the conflicts between the two basic Principles, i.e., Liberty and Love.
Liberty vs. Love is the Principal Contradiction inherent in the Human Culture, and emerges and exists everywhere unsolved in the history.
Ethics, containing the Fundamental Human Rights (having Equality at its core), can motivate and coordinate Liberty and Love together.
Thus at the personal (and inter-personal) level and at various social levels, the relationships among Liberty, Love, and Ethics should be revealed in their actual as well as desirable situations.
And such understanding should be shared widely as the Human Culture.
--- This is the understanding of the problem and its hypothesis I have just obtained at the age of 76, and it forms an important starting point for the big task of creative problem solving.
I wish you all for your health and success, and for a peaceful new year.
January 1st, 2017 Toru Nakagawa
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In the Japanese page, I wrote a summary of my work in 2016 and a brief message of my thought about the situations in Japan and in the world, especially quoting the one I wrote last July after the election of Japanese Parliament.
[2] Introductory: 'Liberty vs. Love':
The Principal Contradiction Inherent throughout the Human Culture
(Toru Nakagawa)
This article was written last October and published in the Bulletin of YMCA at Univ. of Tokyo last December.
Starting with my self-introduction, I briefly trace my work for these 20 years on methodology of creative problem solving, and explain the big topic in the title on which I have been working since last year.
I explain how I have been working as a researcher, initially in physical chemistry and later in informatics, to understand and develop 'Methodology of creative problem solving' (namely, methodology of research and development).
I found the Six-Box Scheme as a new paradigm in science and technology.
For extending its application to social problems, I chose to work on the problems of poverty in the Japanese society. Underlying people's arguments whether to help the poor, I found the conflict between the emphasis on Liberty and that of Love.
Then I realized that Liberty vs. Love is much more basic, and actually is the Principal Contradiction unsolved throughout the history of Human Culture.
I have shown here a hypothesis of the Liberty vs. Love Contradiction in its skeletal form.
The idea that there exists a basic conflict (or contradiction) between Liberty and Love is not difficult to understand in itself. You can easily show such examples in our everyday life, in our society, and in the international politics, etc.
We have been taught simply, however, "Liberty and Love are both important. So you should respect both of them. They should be compatible."
Nobody dared to say clearly "Between Liberty and Love there exists an intrinsic conflict. That is the most basic, Principal Contradiction of Human Culture."
The present approach is based the spirit/philosophy of TRIZ, i.e., "Understanding contradictions clearly is the basic way for us to solve the contradictions (or make them compatible)".
To understand the real situations and desirable directions concerning to this Principal Contradiction in the fields of humans, organizations, societies, and the world is a huge task for us to work from now on.
Please visit our website for more information about these Innovation and TRIZ topics.
Best wishes always,
Toru Nakagawa