这篇意见论文倡导一项以复杂性理论为基础的新遗产科学研究。其出发点是本文两位在新加坡任教的作者组织并主持的会议"遗产科学作为一个复杂系统"(新加坡南洋理工大学2014年1月6—7日)。在这次会议上,我们为直接参与遗产相关问题研究的工作者和复杂性理论研究工作者建立了共同的平台。作为一个工作定义,我们认为遗产是人类经验的宝藏(即人类知识和价值观的综合存储系统)。为了使遗产很好地被组织,被理解,从而能在日益复杂的社会中发挥作用,我们将遗产设想为一门综合了多学科领域的先进科学,这门科学研究并引领整体的行动计划和解决方案,应对和预测社会上遗产问题带来的种种挑战:保护、获取、使用、阐释和管理。为了战胜这些实际的挑战,我们急需各相关学科全面合作,但截至目前不同学科的学者们工作仍局限在自身学科内,部分原因是学者的职业发展取决于单一学科阶段性成果之学术传统,而另一部分原因是学者们缺乏一种共同语言。文章建议以复杂性理论作为通用语,并从复杂性的视角对遗产进行观察,研究人-遗产-景观系统中的涌现性(emergent property),其通常包含很多强有力的相互作用的因素。在题为SHIFT(Sustainable Heritage Impact Factor Theory,可持续遗产影响因素理论)的纲领中,我们的目标是调查并确定如何将遗产数据提炼成知识,从而以科学的方法和证据支持政治决策,并加强所有遗产利益相关者的身份和价值观的认同。
This position paper presents a research agenda for a new science of heritage drawing strengths from complexity theory. The starting point is the conference organized and chaired by the two authors in Singapore on ‘Heritage Science as a Complex System' (Nanyang Technological University, 6-7 January 2014). In this conference, we established common grounds between the people who work directly on heritage related problems, and the people who work on complexity theory. As a working definition we consider heritage as the treasure of human experiences (i.e., the comprehensive storage system of human knowledge and values). To make heritage organised, accessible, and useful in our increasingly complex society we envision a new science of heritage, seen as a state- of-the-art multidisciplinary domain, which investigates and pioneers integrated action plans and solutions in response to, and in anticipation of, the challenges arising from heritage issues in society: conservation, capturing, access, interpretation, and management. To tackle these real-world challenges we need integrated efforts, but as of now scholars of different disciplines work in silos, partly of the academic tradition in which career advancements are based on the results of just one discipline at a time, and partly because they lack a common language. We propose to use the language of complexity as a lingua franca and observe heritage through the lens of complexity to study emergent properties in man-heritage-landscape systems that typically have many strongly interacting players. Under the programmatic title SHIFT (Sustainable Heritage Impact Factor Theory) we aim to investigate and identify how heritage data can be distilled into knowledge, so as to support political decision making with scientific methods and evidence to reinforce the identities and values of all stakeholders.