The lecture on system boundaries was presented by Director Kunz Bill to members of the Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences Department at the University of Washington, Tacoma. The seminar took place on 19 April 2013 at 2.30 pm in Carwein Auditorium in Keystone Building at the university. Although it was much open to everybody to attend, it was more specific to members of third year class who needed to experience more extracurricular intellectual discourses by exposing themselves to current researches in social sciences, humanities, and sciences. The director began by making it clear that they are boundaries that define scopes of various systems; these are both concrete/real and abstract/imaginary. In this regard, a boundary will determine both external and internal system environments, because without it no system will make sense. External environments are normally found outside the system boundary and conversely, internal environments are found inside the system’s boundary.
The director emphasized that the system is supposed to be dynamic and interactive with other systems, in its larger system. He also reiterated that there are three types of boundaries: selective transport, highly selective transport and semi-selective transport. For Selective boundaries they will dictate what should enter and live the system, for instance the cell membrane incase of water and big molecules. Highly selective system will prevent the access of some objects, for instance physical boundary and security systems. Semi selective boundaries are normally irregular, arbitrary and porous to incorporate some objects from outside environments; they include for instance political parties, corporations, states, languages among others. It is important to note that boundaries are formed when components strongly couple with others to form a system or when there is relatively a weak coupling of components with an external system.
How is the Lecture related to the Theme of TIAS 305?
The lecture on the system boundary has helped to understand that there are two types of boundaries: real and imagined. Real boundaries inscribe physical components whilst imaginary boundaries are mostly abstract and found in social sciences and business. However, one should note that the boundaries are not exclusively impermeable as they can only be highly selective or just semi-permeable. In this regard, they will continue being interdependent, interacting and interrelating with other systems. Although, initially, it was thought that the two primary disciplines of science and arts existed like two silos which cannot meet, they are continuously borrowing from each other. Therefore, Interdisciplinary Arts and Science Course explore the interdependencies, interactions and interrelationships between arts and science/ among various disciplines. For instance, culture, which is an independent system with its own boundary, can be used to analyze other contexts of the society in history, economics, religion, gender among others. It can happen well because the subjects interrelate a lot, interacting with each other as they borrow concepts. In fact new subjects or areas of study are emerging: bioengineering.
In this respect, therefore if a student is studying a particular discipline, the course will help him understand how he can approach his area of study with multiple perspectives, because with this era of post modernity, boundaries between arts and sciences and among science and art subjects are increasingly becoming permeable. Therefore, scholars should realize that there will be a lot of risks or costs by strictly maintaining boundaries of their disciplines impermeable. When scholars strictly maintain that the boundaries of their disciplines are impermeable, their studies will always be inadequate and cannot illuminate on researches of past eras. Therefore it is appreciable that the course will help contemporary scholars to view their disciplines through unique lenses of interdisciplinary studies.
