| Abstract: | This paper attempts to describe informally the subject and overall methodology of a new Club of Rome project. So far as the problématique of the project may be seen as the opening of a new field of inquiry, the research assumptions and methods may be taken as tentative. The authors outline the history of the origin of the project and its overall aims. Next we attempt to state the strategy of the project as we see it. Since the project focuses around the topic of human values and their representability in world models and policy planning, areas too vast to be definitively covered in the space alloted, we simply state in general terms what is proposed and how we are thinking about handling the topic. The authors do not allege to speak for the whole research group, although we do believe that the views, as far as they go, contained herein are held in some similar form by most (if not all) the research associates. Undoubtedly this paper introduces some conjectures that require a defense more lengthy and detailed than has been provided here. Indeed, in advance of research it is likely that some of our suppositions cannot be supported at all except by appeals to intuition. In this light we expect this paper to simply introduce the topic of the project and its ambitions, leaving the bulk of supporting material and arguments for a later, more detailed paper in this journal. |
