Defining Heritage Science: A Consilience Pathway to Treasuring the Complexity of Inheritable Human Experiences through Historical Method, AI, and ML

Figure 1

This rendering—realized in 2014 by Muhammad Mustajab Bin Mohamad, Higher Executive Officer (Publicity, outreach & Alumni Relations) at the Nanyang Technological University School of Art, Design and Media—presents the 1st Singapore Heritage Science Conference concept as conceived by the conference chairs, Dr Andrea Nanetti and Dr Siew Ann Cheong. It shows an adult hand passing the world (identified as a complex mechanism with ASEAN at the centre) to a younger one. It is a good icon to summarise an approach to art, culture, and heritage in an AI perspective, where machine-generated algorithms may enhance the human transmission of data, information, knowledge, wisdom, and their relationships. This work was licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) by Nanyang Technological University Singapore in 2014. For the Singapore Heritage Science Conference series (2014-2016, refer to www.paralimes.org for programmes, abstracts, and recordings of the presentations of the four conferences: 1st (January 2014) Heritage as a Complex System; 2nd (Jan. 2015) Heritage and the Creative Industries; Special edition (Nov. 2015) Exploring Maritime Heritage Dynamics; 3rd (Jan. 2016) The Treasure of Human Experiences. “Heritage poses the challenge of innovation in a new way: how does the new integrate with the old?” This was the key question raised by Helga Nowotny (founding member and former president of the European Research Council) in her keynote address at the 1st Singapore Heritage Science Conference on Heritage science as a complex system: The embarrassment of complexity: A phase of transition? The conference was organized and chaired by Andrea Nanetti and Siew Ann Cheong at Nanyang Technological University Singapore for the Complexity Program and the School of Art, Design and Media (6-7 January 2014, Figure 1). This event pioneered a new science of heritage as a state-of-the-art multidisciplinary domain able to investigate and discover integrated action plans and solutions in response to, and in anticipation of, the challenges arising from cultural heritage issues in society. Heritage is closely linked to the history and identity of communities. The complete video record of the conference is available from: http://www.paralimes.ntu.edu.sg/Pages/Home.aspx. The intellectual discussions facilitated by the Complexity Programme under the vibrant direction of Jan Vasbinder at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore between 2013 and 2018 have been extremely relevant in nurturing the idea of this new science of heritage and making the acquaintance with many renowned scholars from all-over the world, with whom I have discussed this idea and shared research projects.