The notion of transdisciplinary science and technology has been gradually formed during struggles to establish the recognition of non-natural scientific foundation of engineering. This article presents the way the struggle has been conducted in the author’s step-by-step advance towards the understanding of transdisciplinary science and technology. Similar notions related to transdisciplinary science and technology, such as “pure engineering” and “design sciences”, are discussed in the context of engineering education and social relevance of science and technology. The importance of the transdisciplinary science and technology in the future techno-society is discussed. Consilience of knowledge is discussed in the light of transdisciplinary science and technology.

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The key issue of the role of the science and technology in the 21st century is how to create the socio-economic value through the science & technology innovation process. The roll of the transdisciplinary science and technology is indispensable to build up Japan in the 21st century for both the national innovation system and also for the global sustainable innovation ecosystem. Building the Innovation Pipe Network Systems is proposed connecting the kowledge creation and the socio-economic value creation in conjunction with the roll of the transdisciplinary science and technology.

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Activities of collection and exchange of knowledge in the Society for Science on Form, Japan, are described. The society was originated in the joint meetings of the groups of “physics of form” and “stereology”. The word KATACHI (Japanese expression of “form”) has a less-restricted definition and has meanings of gaining some completeness. That is contrasted with the western word “symmetry” which has a clear definition and gives norms of beauty. KATACHI appears in all fields and its notion can be shared beyond the difference in the terminology of different fields. It is found that researches from broad range of fields in science, technology and art, can have active discussions and exchange of knowledge under the aspect of KATACHI. It is expected that the aspects of KATACHI in a variety of fields lead to a transdisciplinary integration of knowledge.

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The modern statistical methodology and practical statistical sciences have been systematically generated since the establishment of the grammar of science for recognition to give laws to Nature in 1892 by K. Pearson. The author proposes to construct a new grammar of science for design and corresponding new mathematical or statistical methodology to improve the laws for society such as the Taguchi method. In this new grammar, not passive facts based on the researchers’ sense impression but active facts designed by numerical simulation will take an essential role. The author also introduces recent research activities in Japanese Society for Quality Control to establish new statisical methodology for technology developments based on numerical simulation.

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The ubiquitous services are paid to attention as social infrastructure services in which the range of the applications reaches the entire society. The acceptability as a social system is required in such social infrastructure services. In this paper, both an integrated knowledge structure and the function creation process are clarified by classifying the Koto-Tukuri in the ubiquitous services using electronic tags.

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Duality plays a pivotal role in every field of science and engineering, but its concrete meaning is diverse. In search of duality-based technology duality concepts are classified and the role of duality in optimization and control is discussed. As fundamental duality phenomena in mathematics, emphasis is laid on the dual space in linear algebra and the Legendre transformation for convex functions. Duality between connotation and denotation is also explained. Two specific examples indicate recent fruitful interactions between different areas through duality.

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This paper considers the view of artifact in the Japanese culture, through the comparison with aWestern Europe modern culture. Concretely, though the clock technology had been introduced into Japan in the Muromachi age, why it had not developed to the automatic technology as inWestern Europe is discussed.

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