A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, con a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insect.

(Robert A. Heinlein)

Motto of Milan Zeleny

This volume, edited as a Festschrift in honor of Prof. Milan Zeleny, reflects and emulates his unmistakable legacy: the essential multidimensionality of human and social affairs. There are many levels of this multidimensionality presented in this volume: 1. Multidisciplinarity of contributed papers, 2. Multinationality of their authors, extending even to the editors and the publisher, 3. Multicultural and multilevel exposition, ranging from empirical studies to philosophical foundations. Generally, these papers can be divided into three parts: Multiple Criteria Decision Making; Social and Human System Management; and Information, Knowledge and Wisdom Management.

Just going through some keywords in the titles of individual contributions to this volume, represents an adventure in multidimensionality: multi-value decision making, multicriteria communication, multi-objective EMI, multicriteria analysis of OECD, digest wisdom, enlightenment, collaborate for win-win, value focused management, highly intelligent nation, KM pragmatism, human ideals, outsourcing risks, mobile technology, intelligent knowledge, purposeful coordination of action, high technology R&D, de novo programming, continuous innovation, competence set analysis, knowledge sharing, wisdom shaped management, socio-technical enablers, informed intent – such new words promise fresh insights, affirm that a new era has arrived, and invite the reader to the challenges of integration and synthesis, to knowledge and wisdom.

It is the recognition of multidimensionality in decision making, economics, optimization, systems, cybernetics and the pursuit of knowledge that bear the stamp of specific Zeleny's contributions. His life-long dedication to multidimensionality has produced an ultimate multidimensional being, living in academic “multiverse”, functioning in a boundaryless world of all continents, cultures and countries. He has lost all respect for nonpermeable boundaries and artificially imposed limits when he crossed the first such border in 1967: from his native Czechoslovakia (now non-existent) to his beloved United States of America.

To this volume we have invited top researchers and scientists from an amazing variety of countries, ranging from the U.S.A., China, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan, to England, Greece, Finland, Israel, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Sweden and Slovakia. Even so, it is only a small sample of all the countries Milan has visited and worked in. He has become a truly global professor, with ongoing appointments on four continents, expanding his activities into a growing circle of areas, cultures, countries and friends.

Together with multidimensionality comes naturally integration, cooperation and systems – the other side of the coin of recognized and appreciated multidimensionality.

Finally, with any integrative and collaborative efforts come knowledge and wisdom, the other natural pursuits of people who integrate and collaborate across all boundaries, real, self-imposed or virtual. Knowledge and wisdom are the pursuits he is trying to mold into respectable academic areas, moving beyond their metaphorical or habitual traditions of usage.

It all ads up to human systems management as the transdisciplinary expression of humane pursuits of human interests through systems. It is no coincidence that his brainchild, the journal of Human Systems Management, is celebrating its first 25 years, while Milan celebrates 65 years of his still accelerating quest for the new, the unknown and the original in social systems. Reading through the titles of his publications, one can see that there is very little coincidence in Milan's work: it all unfolds from many different starting directions, evolves and begins to “come together” in the end – as if all has been carefully designed and crafted, all planned. It probably was, although assembling his impressive body of knowledge and wisdom has been executed spontaneously and with apparent ease.

Nobody ever saw Milan working. He is always enjoying life, enjoying good food and drink, going to interesting places and cherishing the ever-evolving company of even more interesting men and women from all around the globe. As he escaped the ever-tightening borders of the ever-diminishing Czechoslovakia, he has continued “escaping” ever since: always ahead of the curve, pushing the envelope, outside the box.

Milan has contributed to so many fields and areas, that most of us, being specialists, do not know the true extent of his work. He is certainly not a one-topic man: he has become known to many non-intersecting groups and societies, often he himself being their sole intersection. Just consider: artificial life, autopoiesis and tradeoffs-free resource allocation. His contributions to all those multiple fields are always original, fundamental and controversial, yet immediately recognizable for their emphasis on multidimensionality, contextual dependency, dynamics and pragmatic utility.

Zeleny clearly abhors the “mainstream” of anything; he avoids it like a vacuum: mainstream thinking, mainstream research, mainstream values, mainstream life. He escaped the “mainstream” long time ago and shows no intentions of returning. He even escapes the fields he himself established or founded – as soon as they show the deadly signs of becoming “mainstream”. Mainstream thinking, he says, invites mediocrity, routine, copy and self-approval: perhaps useful and necessary to some, but so unexciting, boring and unchallenging to boundary-crossing seekers. The very definition of “mainstream” implies: within the boundaries, accepted by majority, mass behavior with no individuality, no surprises and certainly no inner rewards.

So, in this Festschrift we also honor a challenge. What are we to think of a man who initiated, introduced or contributed to not only multiple criteria decision making, multiple criteria simplex method, linear multiobjective programming, de novo programming, eight concepts of optimality, compromise programming, knowledge-based fuzzy sets, knowledge management, self-producing social systems, spontaneous social orders, high technology management, theory of the displaced ideal, conflict dissolution, multidimensional radar diagrams, osmotic growths, inorganic precipitates, etc., but also historical studies on Trentowski's Cybernetyka, Bogdanov's Tectology, Leduc's Synthetic Biology and Smuts' Holism, as well as original contributions to management, strategy, systems sciences, cybernetics, autopoiesis, artificial life, game theory, APL simulations, social judgment theory, economics of interactions, tradeoffs-free economics, and so on.

How do we honor such a student, teacher and man?

It seems to us that only through a book like this one: a book that is as diverse and as multidimensional as the man and his work.

Finally, we would like to express our sincere thanks to Yong Shi's doctoral students at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xingsen Li, Rong Liu and Zhongbin Ouyang for their hard work on the formation of this book. We also acknowledge grants from National Natural Science Foundation of China (#70621001, #70531040, #70501030, #70472074), 973 Project #2004CB720103, Ministry of Science and Technology, China, and BHP Billiton Co., Australia for their support in the preparation of the book.

Yong Shi, Beijing, China

David L. Olson, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA

Antonie Stam, Columbia, Missouri, USA