Manuel Ferreira Patrício
(Rector of the University of Évora)
The Constructal Method of Adrian Bejan
In this Symposium on the Constructal Theory of Shape and Structure in Nature,
the University of Évora is honoured by the presence of Professor Adrian
Bejan, an outstanding academic personality and world-renown scientist, chiefly
known for his capacity in conceiving and building innovative knowledge – a
distinctive criterion of the true university academic.
Teaching is an act of the utmost human relevance. It consists of offering the
other – the other fellow human – the knowledge that one possesses.
That knowledge may, however, have been received from another source or it may
have been one’s own creation: its possession may be external or internal.
To create, conceive or build knowledge by oneself is the highest intellectual
pursuit attainable by a human being. To investigate is the nature of that activity
and new knowledge is its fruit.
The University is, in that sense, the institution characterised by its vocation
to generate new knowledge, new understanding, adding up to the human knowledge
accumulated so far, either quantitative or qualitative. The history of the University
is the history of such a calling.
Let us recall, on this occasion, the eminent personality of Aristotle, an exceptional
constructor of knowledge, of understanding. He distributed knowledge into three
classes: poietic knowledge, praxis knowledge and theoretic knowledge – diffluent,
respectively, from poiesis, praxis and theoria, the three intellectual and structural
classes that constitute activities of the human being. Poiesis is the activity
of producing or making; praxis is the socio-moral activity of human interaction;
and theoria is the activity of creating knowledge that enables proof and explanation,
of what today we call ‘pure rational knowledge’ or ‘understanding’ (which,
of course, does not exclude experience and experimentation).
The historic hour through which we are living is characterised by undervaluing
the theoretic activity and maximal overvaluation of the poietic activity. It
is in the class of theoretical acquaintance that scientific knowledge belongs.
It is the class of theoretical scholarship the identity mark inscribed in the
front of the University. There is no epistemological contradiction between theoretical,
praxis and poietic acquirements, rather what exists is an epistemological hierarchy.
The top of this hierarchy is occupied by theoretical knowledge. Within this perception
of things, there is room for all interactions and mutual enrichments. The University
is the House of Knowledge, where the triangle of knowledge categories and the
dynamic hierarchy in which they organise, require and imply the strictest discipline.
This is the idea of University we see glowing in the scientific work of Professor
Adrian Bejan. This is the idea that, in my view, confers the most remarkable
magnitude to the theoretical effort of Professor Adrian Bejan.
The work of every great creator always heralds in its origin one idea and is
governed by that idea. According to Professor Adrian Bejan, that idea refers
to natural beings, whether living or inanimate. In both cases they are material
systems. Every such system, either simple or complex, has form and structure.
Incidentally, no material system exists without shape and structure, neither
shape without structure nor structure without shape. The idea is that Shape and
Structure are a constructional process of growth governed by a teleonomy, which
subjects the Whole and the Unity of Purpose to all parts and moments in the process.
The Whole is not merely the sum of the parts, the result of the sum and the concatenation
of its parts. The Whole transcends the parts and the moments, which are what
they become and organise themselves as finally assuming form and structure constrained
or determined by the Whole which supposedly they should constraint or determine.
I believe that, in the Constructal Theory of Shape and Structure in Nature, we
meet again Plato’s Theory of Ideas, which was, indeed, conceived to explain
the Natural and the Sensorial World.
I believe that, in it, we also meet again the genial Goethe’s intuition
in his ideation over the metamorphosis of plants and the nature of light.
Moreover, I believe that we find in Professor Adrian Bejan’s theory what
was the nuclear intuition of the gestaltian psychology – the Gestalt
or Shape of Kohler, Koffka and Wertheimer, and of the gestaltian psychology–philosophy–pedagogy,
holistic and topologic of Kurt Lewin: the one of the onto-genesis primacy of
the Whole over the parts, which with Kurt Lewin lead to the ontological enlightenment
of the almost, creative key to the change and growth of the natural reality,
both the plainly natural and the psychic and gnoetical. The reality moves, moves
towards, grows, it tirelessly takes shape and structure. And it moves because
it is not exactly identical, but in fact almost identical. The Whole attracts
it into Shaping and Structuring.
These are the fertile and fascinating scientific prospects, psychological and
philosophical, that are apparent to me in the Constructal Theory of Shape and
Structure in Nature, such as I was able to grasp from the kind and wisely didactic
introduction that my esteemed colleague Professor Heitor Reis made of it in advance
for me.
That is also why the thanks which I convey to Professor Adrian Bejan, on the
behalf of the University of Évora, for being among us and for the fruitful
collaboration he is offering us, goes, in both form and structure, beyond the
course of words and protocol.
