Terrance J. Quinn
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website. Please feel free to contact me (tquinn@mtsu.edu) if you
need any further information.
One of my ongoing interests has been the
interdisciplinary nature of progress in mathematics and the
sciences. My Ph.D. (1992) was in Operator Theory (C*-algebras), the
origins of this area of mathematics being quantum mechanics, and
later quantum physical chemistry. Since 1992 I have published in
pure and applied mathematics, mathematics for the biosciences,
mathematics education and mathematics pedagogy. I have gradually
been increasing my work on the foundations of mathematics and the
empirical sciences. More recently (2011), foundations of the
sciences has become a main focus.
There is of course tremendous activity,
ongoing advances throughout the many disciplines, emerging
sub-disciplines and hybrid disciplines. If we include the full sweep
of scholarship to include past oriented studies as well as future
oriented work such as directions, policies, plannings, communications, and so
on, various questions can arise: How can we better collaborate, in
more effective ways? What is the dynamical structure of progress in
the mathematical and empirical sciences? Physics has had several
centuries to work out a basic stability in some of its methods. So,
within the present context of a Standard Model, specialists in high
energy labs (http://www.er.doe.gov/hep/universities/index.shtml)
look for anomalies in data, while theoreticians look for
interpretations through, e.g., various gauge field theories. This is
not to say that there are not individuals who do both, but that
experimental research and theoretical development have emerged as
two distinct but functionally related types of expertise.
In 1965, Bernard Lonergan made a
fundamental breakthrough in identifying an eightfold structure, a
“general dynamics” of progress, consistent with development in
physics, but reaching across disciplines. His result points to a
unity in the sciences that embraces spontaneous interdisciplinary
developments. He called this general dynamics “functional
specialization”.
At present, I am interested in better understanding the potential of “functional specialization”, and in particular how adverting to the emergent differentiations within the general dynamics may, in particular, help increase and implement collaborative potential across the mathematical and empirical sciences. Basic leads on this have been provided by Phil McShane (http://www.philipmcshane.ca/ ). There is a growing international awareness of the significance of “functional specialization”. See, e.g., SGEME (http://www.sgeme.org/). I am working on various collaborative projects in this area, and welcome queries.