Patrick M. Gunkel (1947 – 2017) was an American futurist and independent scholar best known as the originator of "ideonomy", a combinatorial "science of ideas". Although he never completed a degree, his career included positions at the Hudson Institute, MIT, and the University of Texas. [1] [2]
Guido Enthoven describes Gunkel's ideonomy as one of three pioneering attempts to create a science of ideas (the others being Antoine Destutt de Tracy's original notion of ideology and Genrich Altshuller’s TRIZ "system of inventive problem solving"),[3] while Marvin Minsky described ideonomy as "perhaps the most extensive study of ways to generate ideas".[4] An archive of his works was assembled by Whitman Richards.[5]