Thursday, July 5, 2007

Transcend practically the dichotomy?

A few days ago I received an email from the Université Paris-Dauphine, the school where I'll be taking classes this fall. I'm supposed to let them know what courses I plan on taking, but that isn't easy. First, they don't tell you when the lectures take place, and second the course descriptions are some of the most cryptic ones I've ever seen. Case in point (and this comes straight from their site):

Aesthetics and organisational culture

Objectifs:

This course has three main goals:
  1. Transcend practically the dichotomy between science and "humanities" in education and particularly between economics and arts as well as literature in management training.
  2. Discover one's personal creativity and use it as a professional device.
  3. Perceive and experience transdisciplinarity and transculturality through a mode of cognitive navigation between different traditions of reality representation.

Contenu:

Peter Drucker's expressions about work content in the "Knowledge society" as well as Daniel Bell's perspectives on "post-industrial society" in the 60's have both already been validated by numerous researchers dealing with the paradigm of "knowledge economy". This course focuses on Knowledge economy. It starts with Nonaka's 's the Knowledge Creating society and enquires deeper about the concept of knowledge , its meaning in history as well as its anthropology. Going on through the case studies of innovation processes, the role of the metaphor is also explored as an intellectual tool for communication as well as brainstorming.

I don't really understand what any of that means, but seeing as I'm a fine arts and business student, the title sounds promising enough! I've had a life-long desire to experience transdisciplinarity and transculturality. This seems like the kind of course that would make more sense if you attend the lectures high.

1 comment:

Mary said...

Vero - You will have to tell me about this course when you take it - I'd be interested in seeing what all that junk that they call a 'course description' actually means. What's the countdown until you actually leave for France? I'll have to see you and the rest of the gang before you fly off!