development of small-scale intermodal freight transportation in a ...

is judged according to the ideals of basic and narrow scientific fields, then one should also
pursue the studies at a corresponding department and, as in this case, use transportation
merely as one of many fields on to which one’s narrow method should be applied! As a
metaphor, PICASSO proved to be a superb realistic painter before becoming a surrealistic
one, but today young artists are accepted for their fresh and novel modern art rather than for
being able to reproduce photographs. Furthermore, in the field of medicine it is actually an
acknowledged speciality to be a general practitioner!
From this dissertation, it should be quite obvious that I am educated to be a generalist – I
have followed the study programme of natural science in the gymnasium and that of industrial
engineering at Chalmers. The latter programme is marketed as a programme training
students to bridge the differences between the professional languages and scientific cultures
of economists and engineers. Thus it is natural for me to adopt BRUNSSON’s (1982) conceptualising
ideal in my research. The principles behind the ideal, however, were identified
long ago by ENGELS:
“In science, each new point of view calls forth a revolution in nomenclature.”
(Friedrich ENGELS, cited by CASTI, 1994, p. 43)
This ideal has also attracted attention in my research environment, for instance applied by
DUBOIS (1994) and HULTÉN (1997). The conceptualising ideal is by ARBNOR and
BJERKE (1994, p. 147) considered as obvious to system researchers when they note that
renewing the system language is one of the main objectives of system research. Both ideals
state that it is no primary task to generalise own theories, but rather to express them and let
other researchers judge whether the new thoughts are useful. As a consequence, more attention
could be paid to generating theories than to verifying them, a point of view that, in
fact, also POPPER supported:
“POPPER allowed that experimentation could falsify theories, but held that the real
work was done when the theory was adequately articulated.”
(PORTER, 1995, p. vii)
There are clear parallels between the conceptualising ideal and the principles behind the
World Wide Web where truly extensive information is made available. Yet it is up to the
individual to search for and – not to forget – to evaluate the usefulness of the information.
Using industrial production terminology, it can be put as that information is now pulled instead
of being pushed by authors. Nevertheless, the 4.0 version of Microsoft’s Explorer
“science”) or people representing the studied phenomenon. SAMUELSSON (1997, p. 4) argues that the scientific
world would benefit from replacing the terms basic and applied research with disciplinary and transdisciplinary
research or long-term and short-term research.
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