ABSTRACT
All known sciences (except mathematics and philosophy) can be classified according to three major groups: disciplines that study nature (such as physics, chemistry, biology, and geology), disciplines that study human behavior and society (such as psychology, economy, and sociology), and disciplines that study artificial objects (such as electron engineering, marine design, aerodynamics, and root cause analysis). The uniqueness of TRIZ is that it combines knowledge of all these groups:
• it uses some philosophical concepts of dialectics, materialism, and idealism for its roots,
• it uses the results of cognitive sciences for suppression of a solver’s psychological inertia,
• it uses natural science effects and phenomena for improving artificial technical systems and technological processes, and
• it analyzes breakthroughs to recognize generic heuristics and design principles and to extract major trends in technique evolution.
