Process synthesis is the specification of chemical and physical operations and the selection and interconnection of equipment to implement these operations to effect desired chemical processing transformations. Optimization and evolutionary and systematic generation process synthesis approaches are described. (Author/SK)

The author states that our present teaching methods tend to foster a common intellectual skill: thinking the world to pieces, and that while this skill is very essential, it is only half of understanding. Our planet functions not according to a program of technological reductionism, but as a gestalt, and we are in desperate need of perceiving it…