Interdisciplinary Hype?

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Here, Jerry A. Jacobs objects to the push for interdisciplinarity (or the more fashionable label, "transdisciplinarity"). A recent experience at a transdisciplinary conference suggested to me that many proponents of the approach don't quite know what the word, whichever word you choose, should mean. There will be no transcending of the disciplines unless each invites a new, more integrated epistemological basis for its work. Artists, theologians and philosophers must no longer choose between fearing or revering the pronouncements of science (or look to them to bolster their intuitions) but must become, themselves, systematically investigative thinkers. While, scientists must develop their aesthetic and philosophical sensibilities so that they can come to know the world as it displays itself in its fullness.

This does not mean an end to specialization. It means striving, within specializations, to maintain a cosmic view, one that never loses sight of the fact that the disciplines are a secondary expression of the world, rather than a lens through which we "see" an abstract world that is somehow more real than the one we know through our senses and intuition. How does the saying go? "I can explain but then you would understand my explanation and not what I said." A poem and its explication are not commensurate. Neither are a star and its chemical description. All that we know is grounded in the incommunicable. Without this fundamental understanding, there is a limit to how subtly one intelligence may communicate with another. With this understanding, the possibilities are limitless.

Happy Thanksgiving!