Unfortunately, “artifactual science” makes people think about physical artifacts, and thus I agree with Doug McDavid’s comments above — this is too narrow and leaves out human relationships, which are essential to service science, as value-cocreation phenomena is at the heart of service science; service just means “value-cocreation” to me. Note that value-cocreation is different from collaboration. A game of chess is an example of value-cocreation, but not cooperation (from a layman’s perspective).

I hope people read Simon’s “The Sciences of the Artificial” when they get a chance – the 1996 version, since the earlier versions leave a lot out. I do believe the book provides some important foundations for service science (the notion of physical symbol systems, for example – this basically says symbol processing, as far as we know, requires some physical embodiment — either human brain or computer. As far as we know you can’t have symbol processing without a physical system of some type biological or electronic; AND as far as we know, you cannot have human-like intelligence, language and tools and models of others and the world, without symbols; so value-cocreation phenomena that we observe between people seems to require physical symbol system level of system complexity).

If one thinks about service science as a specialization of systems science that has a focus on the very real, human made world (what Simon calls “the artificial world”), this world is not just about physical artifacts, but includes very important things like rights and relationships and value, symbolic things — which as Doug McDavid correctly points out, are not physical artifacts. “Service” to most economists is “intangible value” — so “artifactual” unfortunately would not even make economists happy.

I recommend people interested in service science start with James Teboul’s books “Service is Front-Stage” — this is a very easy to read book, and it is practical, and provides for “students of service” and executives, as well as researchers a good starting point for understanding traditional views of service.

Next, I recommend people interested in the philosophical foundations of service, read Richard Normann’s “Reframing Business” — here we see the introduction of the notion of service as “value creating systems.” This is a wonderful book, and really deserves much attention, especially from system scientists.

At this point, people may say — I want more practical or I want more theoretical. If they want more practical, then I recommend Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons textbook. Really good stuff and lots of it.

If they want more theoretical, then I believe Herb Simon’s “The Sciences of the Artificial” comes next. To understand the evolution of value-cocreation phenomena, that is normative interactions between service system entities, one requires a type of system capable of intelligent behavior at the level of physical symbol systems (it seems). Molecules cannot do this level of value-cocreation (it seems). Yes, autocatalytic sets of molecules exist, but they do not reason symbolically about value propositions. Bees cannot do this level of value-cocreation (it seems). Yes, reciprocity and collective intelligence exists, but they do not reason symbolically about value propositions (it seems).

One of the wonderful chapters in Simon’s book is “Social Planning: Designing the Evolving Artifact,” here Simon is very clear that an artifact can be an organization or even an entire nation — he talks about the Federalist papers, and the notion of “checks and balances” as something that was designed and argued about. This is not artifact in the simple physical artifact sense — this is artifact in the sense of complex service system entities that are reasoned about symbolically (as well as perhaps non-symbolically, but the symbolic is necessary, perhaps not sufficient).

So David, in some, I do not prefer “artifactual science” for exactly the reason expressed by Doug McDavid above — though less concisely than Doug :-).

I also agree that “artifactual” is better than “artificial” and that Design or Art should be included as a first-class citizen in the SSME discipline acronym.

To add to that debate, here’s the intro to Donald Knuth’s “Computer Programming as an Art” (CACM, 1974):

‘When Communications of the ACM began publication in 1959, the members of ACM’S Editorial Board made the following remark as they described the purposes of ACM’S periodicals [2]: “If computer programming is to become an important part of computer research and development, a transition of programming from an art to a disciplined science must be effected.”

Such a goal has been a continually recurring theme during the ensuing years; for example, we read in 1970 of the “first steps toward transforming the art of programming into a science” [26]. Meanwhile we have actually succeeded in making our discipline a science, and in a remarkably simple way: merely by deciding to call it “computer science.”

Implicit in these remarks is the notion that there is something undesirable about an area of human activity that is classified as an “art”; it has to be a Science before it has any real stature. On the other hand, I have been working for more than 12 years on a series of books called “The Art of Computer Programming.” People frequently ask me why I picked such a title; and in fact some people apparently don’t believe that I really did so, since I’ve seen at least one bibliographic reference to some books called “The Act of Computer Programming.”

I believe Simon is very important but you need to find a way to write consideration of his line out of your work simply to bound your rationality effectively. You can do this from the perspective of the literature you are working from I am sure. I will write further and in more detail about this as wh you are dealing with is VERY important to me and my own work.