On April 20, 2007 Leoncio Jiménez and Jim Morin of the Universidad Católica del Maule met with Philip Sallis of the Auckland University of Technology to explore possibilities for collaboration between different faculties of our respective institutions. In this context Professor Morin presented the following epistemological model to orient the development of a Heuristic Design Network, as a framework for transdisciplinary dialogue and multicultural collaboration on specific problematic issues. This weblog was created to explore the theoretical foundations of this model and to document initiatives to advance developments within this framework.
This model offers epistemological criteria for a heuristic design network based upon the experience of knowing that may be conceived semantically, represented mathematically, affirmed philosophically and verified in the practice of all fields of knowledge. The model assumes that the desire to know orients the sensible, intelligible, rational, responsible and religious development of human consciousness, which must transcend authentically in relation with the object or subject of knowledge that may be known compoundly as data, as idea, as real, as good and as God. The model is heuristic in the measure that it begins with the problem of an unknown and proceeds methodically towards reasonable understanding. The model also orients the design of both research and development activities in the foundation and application of knowledge. Finally the model represents the network of cognitive and linguistic activities that guide human historical development and explains why their misuse lead to intelectual decline and moral decadance.
Within this general framework, Jim Morin offered to develop a position paper that will include two parts. The first section will develop in greater detail this model for a heuristic design network on the basis of Bernard Lonergan´s epistemological research. The second and concluding section will present a series of tentative hypotheses that explore how this epistemological model may orient information sciences in the research and development of learning organization that promote human resource development for the production of knowledge.
