May 16, 2013 - noble, neutral, and evil purposes and everything in between. .... âFrom âThe Curious History of Faà di Bruno's Formulaâ by Warren P. Johnson,.
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FROM THE EDItOR
Control Science or Control Engineering?
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCS.2013.2249393 Date of publication: 16 May 2013
6 IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE » JUNE 2013
While most people who perform between various biological components research in at least one of the above from the molecular to whole organism areas will argue over the exact defini- levels [5]. By the late 1990s, the study of tion of systems biology, most of these biological systems was well established, people will state definitively that sys- when systems biology began to be protems biology is a completely new field moted as a completely new field of study. This new field of systems biology of investigation that arose in the late 1990s [2], [3]. An ISI search of “systems was wildly successful, as measured biology” would support such a point by a startling growth in journal pubof view, as the first research item with lications until 2010 when most of the the term in the title is an abstract world’s countries had undergone a from a talk given by Leroy Hood in few years of recession and there was a 1998 [4], which was followed shortly leveling off (see Figure 1). This growth afterward by papers on systems biol- was associated with an increased ogy that cited the first papers in the interest in quantitative methods for field as being published in the late trying to understand living systems, 1990s. Papers repeatedly stressed largely inspired by the rapid growth how systems biology was a com- in data produced by genome sequencpletely new field and that nobody had ing and other technologies. The numpreviously taken a systems approach ber of journal papers in “systems biology” published per year went from to biology [2], [3]. Was systems biology completely almost nothing in 2000 to over 1500 unrelated to previous work? The field by 2010. of biological systems has amassed a huge literature that spans more than half a 1600 century. The well-accepted 1400 definition of a biological sys1200 tem is “a system that contains biological processes.” Given 1000 the definition of a system, 800 research in the field of biological systems involves the 600 understanding of connected 400 parts that collectively form 200 an interconnecting mechanism or network. Numerous 0 papers were published in the 1960s and 1970s that explicYear itly modeled and simulated living systems from a sysFIGURE 1 Number of journal papers published per year tems and network perspec- with “systems biology” as a topic. (Image obtained tive, to gain understanding by searching “systems biology” in the ISI Web of of and study the interactions Knowledge.) 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
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any scientists and engineers understand the power of language and have employed language as a way to better convey ideas, properly credit the contributions of themselves and others, or obtain financial support for their activities. More generally, language is regularly used for noble, neutral, and evil purposes and everything in between. This column considers the use of language in technical communications, focusing primarily on its impact in systems and control. For an example of the power of language in technical communications, consider the term “systems biology,” which describes an emerging field investigated by many scientists and engineers that has risen to prominence in the last decade or so. During this time, people have proposed countless definitions for systems biology, some of which include [1], [2] 1) technologies for the collection and analysis of large quantities of biological data 2) computational modeling of the function of living systems 3) the integration of data and computation for the understanding of living systems 4) the application of quantitative methods for the understanding of living systems 5) an approach to biomedical research whose goal is to understand living systems at the level of organism, tissue, or cell 6) a field that aims at system-level understanding of biological systems, such as cells and organisms.
While it is true that increased quantity and variety of experimental techniques and data became available in the late 1990s that justified a significant increase in the number of researchers in systems biology, it is also true that biology was studied at a systems level by many researchers long before the term “systems biology” came into vogue. There are numerous examples of similar occurrences in science and engineering in which the term used to define a field played a key role in directing people’s attention and perceptions. In the systems biology example, the new term involved the reordering of the words “systems” and “biology.” I have discussed the importance of this ordering of words with some scientist colleagues who independently made a simple conjecture. With its placement of “systems” after “biology,” “biological systems” did not excite scientists because they did not understand or care about systems as a field. By placing the word “biology” after “systems,” “systems biology” represented the field as being a science, and so that the field could attract a much wider variety and larger number of scientists. The above conjecture is that a field will attract much more interest, respect, and financial support by the placement of science at the end of a two-word moniker for the field. I have heard many engineers make similar statements within the context of their own research. For example, I recall
a conversation in which researchers studying networks demanded that their field can only be known as “network science” and were very strongly opposed to having the term “network engineering” associated with their field of study, although a large proportion of the networks that motivated their studies arose in engineering rather than scientific applications. I have also heard comments over the past two decades from control engineers that our community will not receive any respect from scientists or the public unless we rebrand ourselves as “control scientists.” Perhaps not surprisingly, in recent years the term “control science” has become the name of journals, departments, and centers— sometimes in association with the term “control engineering” but often without the words “control engineering.” Given that there are examples of the rebranding of fields that have been highly successful, it is not surprising that people in other fields want to rebrand themselves, and certainly people should have the right to choose their own terms to describe their fields. I am concerned, however, when such renaming makes its way into our field. More specifically, I am concerned with attempts to replace the word “control engineering” with “control science” in our nomenclature. First, control engineering is playing an increasingly prevalent and important role in commercial products, and
it is the engineering aspect that produces control systems that perform effectively in products. Second, we should be sufficiently proud of being control engineers that we should not feel driven to rebrand ourselves as a science. Most scientists dislike mathematics, and changing the name of our field to “control science” is not going to make them love mathematics or control theory. On the other hand, developing a control technology that enables scientists to solve the problems that they care about will attract their attention and appreciation. This editorial only scratches the surface of some of the issues associated with technical communications in the control community, but I am out of space. There is plenty of material for a future issue…
References [1] C. Wanjek, “Systems biology as defined by NIH: An intellectual resource for integrative biology,” NIH Catalyst, vol. 9, no. 6, pp. 1, 10–12, Nov.-Dec. 2011. [2] H. Kitano, “Perspectives on systems biology,” New Gener. Comput., vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 199–216, 2000. [3] T. Ideker, T. Galitski, and L. Hood, “A new approach to decoding life: Systems biology,” in Proc. Annu. Review Genomics Human Genetics, 2001, vol. 2, pp. 343–372. [4] L. Hood, “Systems biology: New opportunities arising from genomics, proteomics and beyond,” Exp. Hematol., vol. 26, no. 8, pp. 681–681, 1998. [5] “Network thermodynamic simulation of biological-systems—An overview,” Math. Comput. Simul., vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 437–441, 1982.
Richard D. Braatz
Missed Opportunities
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everal years went by before the MONTHLY published a proof (different from ours, and apparently the only one they received) by Frank Schmittroth. The editors missed the chance to publicize a nice paper on statistical applications of Faà di Bruno’s formula that appeared in this MONTHLY three years before the problem was posed, and they also failed to mention Faà di Bruno. (The current editors are, of course, much more enlightened.) —From “The Curious History of Faà di Bruno’s Formula” by Warren P. Johnson, The American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 109, no. 3, pp. 217–234, Mar. 2002.
JUNE 2013 « IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE 7
