Invent New Doctrines

There is no scientific discipline for developing principles to guide actions in support of objectives

One of the underappreciated aspects of the technology tree in Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (actually by Brian Reynolds— did we mention that we’re big fans) is that it places the development of new doctrines on an equal footing with physical inventions. NATO defines military doctrine as:

Fundamental principles by which the military forces guide their actions in support of objectives. It is authoritative but requires judgement in application.

Abstracting away from the military context is simple enough:

Fundamental principles that guide an individual or group’s actions in support of objectives. It is authoritative but requires judgement in application.

In recognizing new doctrines as inventions in their own right, Brian Reynolds emphasizes an important corollary to this definition: a doctrine is an idea that confers to its users a tangible advantage in the physical world. For example, The Toyota Production System (sometimes called Lean Manufacturing) is a doctrine whose advantages made Toyota one of the world’s leading automakers and then, as it diffused, drove major efficiency improvements across the global automotive industry and manufacturing in general. Just as the size of its impact marks the Toyota Production System out as a major invention, the history of this doctrine looks like the history of a major invention as well. It was invented by a small group of individuals (Taiichi Ohno is generally considered the main inventor) and then refined over a period of 30-50 years before reaching a relatively stable form. It also took decades for this doctrine’s full economic potential to be realized, with major skepticism at every stage of its development

WIth this in mind, it’s puzzling that the scientific community doesn’t spend more time working on inventing new doctrines both for itself and for society at large. The Toyota Production System shows that inventing a doctrine can lead to large economic impact and international recognition. It’s certainly true that science and technology have advanced enough that new principles to guide how to deploy them would be valuable. One possibility is that new doctrines are in fact so valuable that they’re mainly developed in the private sector. For example, there’s a decent case to be made that customer relationship management software is fundamentally a doctrine for applying relational databases, and it certainly made both Thomas Siebel and Marc Benioff staggeringly rich.

We find that argument unsatisfying because there should be many areas, including science, where new doctrines could create lots of value without making anyone rich. And yet we don’t know of any doctrines by scientists for scientists that are more radical than the preprint. Meanwhile, there is no scientific discipline for developing principles to guide actions in support of objectives¹ and the development of such principles is not prioritized inside existing disciplines.

We started Reinvent Science in part to try to develop new doctrines for science in a changing world. Why aren’t more people working on new doctrines? What doctrines are you thinking about?

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1. The field of management cybernetics has plenty of baggage, but we applaud it for trying.