2. On the premise that all disciplines are so fragmented that to define any subject field as a discipline is arbitrary, one possible response is to reject the term interdisciplinarity entirely (Thompson Klein, 1994). Some who do so prefer instead nondisciplinarity. But doing so not only ignores the social, intellectual and institutional reality of disciplines but also homogenises them. Literary studies and physics, for example, differ from one another not only in regard to what is done but also in regard to how what is done is conceptualised. They also, therefore, differ in regard to how they are conceived as disciplines. Postdisciplinarity (or neodisciplinarity), however, rather than rejecting the reality of disciplines seeks, instead, to problematise and combine them into more fluid, conceptually open categories. Gender studies, for example, encompass elements from, amongst others, literary studies, economics, history, sociology, anthropology and philosophy. In the same way cognitive science, communication studies and critical discourse analysis also flexibly encompass a broad range of disciplinary fields. But, while each of the disciplinary elements constituting these flexible new structures are there for a reason, each element is not necessarily there for the same reason. Depending on the outcome the consequences of the resulting differences between them can either be considered a significant advantage or an acute problem (Craig, 2003).
protodisciplinarity
3. On the other hand, protodisciplinarians tend to be far more focused. While also attempting to integrate disciplines, they see as the end result the emergence of another discrete, acknowledged discipline. Those involved are usually in outcomes-based disciplines. Researchers currently, for example, in physics, chemistry and engineering might well coalesce in a discipline of nanotechnology, while some biologists, psychologists, linguists, computer scientists and engineers might come together in a discipline of machine learning.
Multidisciplinarity
4. In contrast to post- and protodisciplinarity, multidisciplinarity is not integrative. Instead, the interdisciplinary process is seen as additive:
disciplinary perspectives are simply contrasted, no explicit attempt being made to alter them. A course on climate change, for example, might include the juxtaposition of different disciplinary perspectives. The task of synthesis is left to individuals to make. Alternatively, researchers from different disciplines might contribute to a common project, but the analytical
processes are kept separate and the resulting knowledge claims only circulated within the separate domains of each discipline (MacMynowski, 2007). Pluridisciplinarity constitutes a subset of multidisciplinarity.
While the latter might involve a juxtaposition of unrelated disciplines, pluridisciplinarity involves a juxtaposition only of those considered mutually related: mathematics, physics and astronomy for example, or, alternatively, history, anthropology and sociology. Cross-disciplinarity is also a subset of multidisciplinarity. The difference between the two, however, is subtler than that between pluridisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity. Instead of merely being juxtaposed, disciplinary perspectives, instead, are co-opted in order to permit one to illustrate an aspect of the other. A course on medieval architecture, for example, might include inputs by historians of medieval history. Superficially at least, therefore, multidisciplinarity and its subsets, because they are additive not integrative, are marked by lack of controversy.
But this is true at one level only: while a course or research undertaking might be regarded as multidisciplinary, individuals cannot be considered as such for personal integration of the learning or research material, to one degree or another is inevitable. It is also possible, because of misconceptions by the parties involved, for an interdisciplinary endeavour to be considered by one party as postdisciplinary and by the other as multidisciplinary. In the new field of medical humanities, for example, those from the humanities might see their role as reappraising medicine while those in medicine might consider the purpose of the humanities as additive, as ‘softening’ medical practice (Rowland, 2006).
Transdisciplinarity
5. In contrast to multidisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity goes beyond juxtaposition or illustration. It might, for example, involve the wholesale application of one discipline’s theories, concepts or methods to another.
Economics, for example, has been mathematised (Becher & Trowler, 2001) and holistic medicine is a consequence of the application of the philosophy of holism to medicine (Thompson Klein, 1994). Alternatively transdisciplinarity might explicitly contest the self-definition of particular disciplines by bringing different assumptions and theories, indigenous knowledge for example, into critical engagement with those definitions. To this extent transdisciplinarity is also critical interdisciplinarity, for differences in perspective and practices emerge when one explanatory framework is contrasted with another (Rowland, 2006). This is indicative of a core feature of interdisciplinarity:
while all research has the potential to be subversive, interdisciplinary research can, according to the extent to which it is instrumental or critical
in its orientation, explicitly be made so. While a necessary tension exists between them, the former will be instrumental to the solution of specific problems while a critical orientation might contain explicit radical and intellectual challenges to social and institutional practices (Rowland, 2002).
A particular aspect of interdisciplinary medical research, for example, could be instrumental to the solution of a particular medical condition. On the other hand, because it might have involved aspects of ‘alternative medicine’, it could also bring into question conventional views of how medical research, as a whole ought to be conducted. Transdisciplinarity is not, though, necessarily an imposition on a discipline. It might, in the first instance, apply in those cases where individuals, particularly those within broadly defined disciplinary fields, reorient their work in accordance with the commitments of a socially more powerful discipline: geographers, for example, becoming economic geographers (Schoenberger, 2001). It might also apply where one discipline’s theories or concepts are adopted in other disciplines (Rowland, 2006). Complexity theory, formerly the preserve of mathematics and physics has, for example, been appropriated as an explanatory mechanism by a wide variety of disciplines.
2.5 DISCIpLINARY pERMEABILITY
1. Economics and sociology are social sciences and both have traditional cores of seminal works. Economists, however, tend to argue less about the nature and purpose of their discipline than do sociologists (Becher & Trowler, 2001). This is primarily a consequence of the greater empirical coherence of economics relative to sociology. (It has been argued, though, that economics is a sub-discipline of sociology because the economic system is part of the social system [Sawyer, 2005].) Nonetheless, each, in common with the other social sciences and with the humanities, deals in its fundamentals with abstractions. Because abstractions, irrespective of whether they are operationalised or not, are less amenable to measurement than material objects the theoretic constructs of the social sciences and humanities cannot be stabilised to the same extent as is possible in the natural sciences. This is particularly apparent in philosophy that, as watchdog of critical thinking, has duties beyond those of other disciplines (Taleb, 2007). However, an academic in philosophy complained that:
[we]…seem to be lacking the most elementary lingua franca to discuss our field in general [and] the most rudimentary notion of a set of problems that are common to the discipline…
(Cited in Becher & Trowler, 2001, p.116).
Academics in the natural sciences secure in their assumptions about the law-like nature of the systems they study tend, thus, to be more confident in their disciplinary status than do academics in the social sciences and humanities (Rowland, 2002). But, to interpret this statement as valorising the natural sciences is to adopt them as a vantage point from which to view the social sciences and humanities. It may well be that academics in these disciplines do not seek convergences of opinion and do not, therefore, place the same value on the stability of their theoretic constructs as do those in the natural sciences (Peck MacDonald, 1994).