*
Let us return to
1954 when four scientists, a biologist, an economist, a physiologist and a
mathematician spent some time together in a research center in Palo Alto, California. One of
them was Ludwig von Bertalanffy. There they developed among them a stimulating resonance
across disciplines, and in recognition of its importance they established the Society for
Research of General Systems. It was the era of cybernetics, structuralism and information
theory, a time pregnant with cross-fertilization, interconnections, and cross- breeding of
scientific disciplines. Let us take note of the four tasks advanced by the four originators of the
system movement 2)
:
1. To investigate the isomorphy of concepts, laws, and models from various fields,
and to
help in useful transfers from one field to another;
2. To encourage development of adequate theoretical models in fields which lack
them;
3. To minimize the duplication of theoretical effort in different fields; and
4. To promote the unity of science through improving communication among specialists.
While reading the
above formulations a while ago, something began to bother me. As they are
written, they are identical to the contemporary concepts of those efforts which are timely and
necessary in order to develop future science emerging from the status quo of our knowledge,
fragmented as it is into an unmanageable diversity of separate disciplines. Identical
proclamations are abundant and they resound proudly in many research teams, centers and
institutes around the globe. How is it possible that only today we strive to achieve something
which is essentially identical to a 40-year-old statement? How come 40 years were not enough
to transform the statement into a generally accepted, ordinary, and every-day method of
scientific inquiry?
*
In his famous lecture
in 1959 Charles Percy Snow identified "two cultures", namely those of the
natural scientists (exemplified by physicists) and of the literary intellectuals (as he
called
them, exemplified by writers and literary critiques). He pointed to the polarity of these two
groups, lack of common understanding, respect, and interest. His principal aim at that time was
to call for a greater emphasis on natural sciences in higher education and to celebrate the
scientific revolution as the best possible solution to the social problems of the world 3)
. Now,
forty years after Snow's influential talk and the following controversy, the most interesting thing
to
be observed is how much the spectrum of issues, and the intellectual climate as a whole, has
changed since that time. This is very well analyzed by Stefan Collini in his extensive introduction
to a recent edition of Snow's essay
4)
.
Among the issues,
I would like to concentrate mainly on one, namely what Collini mentions as
"the changing map of disciplines" 5)
. Instead of one gap between the Snowian two cultures
there are many gaps today, smaller or larger, between many different disciplines and sub-
disciplines. Moreover, there are various forms of interdisciplinary endeavour. Still, according to
Collini, there is "something distinctive shared by those activities which are referred to as 'the
sciences', and not characteristic of those designated 'the humanities'.
Talking about a
"map" of disciplines suggests a convenient spatial metaphor. We can
meaningfully ask, avoiding many technicalities, about the way that the "landscape of human
knowledge" is structured. Terms like "gap", "overlap", "distance"
etc. have an obvious
visualization (Fig. 1). The manifold of disciplines as we know it is intuitively broken into clusters
of specialities with gaps between disciplines. The ideal of the post-Enlightenment attitude is
what J. T. Klein calls "the fish-scale model of omniscience" 6)
(Fig. 2). Acceptance of this
model has naturally led to various attempts at unification.
There is an inherent
relationship between size of the gaps between disciplines and the "depth"
into which particular disciplines are drilling. To simplify the matter let us distinguish three
different levels of depth of knowledge (or research) -- (Fig. 3). The first, surface level is
accessible to the general public, (usually) taught in lower-grade schools and popularized in the
general media. The second, intermediate level corresponds to the general knowledge of a
particular field or area on the university level and shared by researchers of various sub-
specializations and (hopefully) by specialists in neigbouring disciplines. Finally the third, deep
level, accessible to a very limited community of specialists, is where the most advanced
research in particular specialization is pursued.
However we favour
breadth of knowledge and bridges over gaps, we cannot object to any
specialized deep-level research where one cannot and perhaps should not expect full
understanding between scholars of different disciplines (or of different topics within the same
discipline).
On the other hand,
very few deep-level scholars are able to translate their subjects all the way
into the first, surface level. (This level is, indeed, extremely important to disseminating
knowledge to the wider public. By dissemination I do not mean the sort of popularization based
just on simplification of the matter and listing final results since the proper basis of effective
popularization lies in the fact that everybody possesses to some extent the researcher's spirit of
inquiry and shares with him his amazement in the world and his longing to understand it. Shared
language is not sufficient, what is really needed is to open people's eyes.)
What remains is
the intermediate level. I believe that in order for scholars of different
disciplines to interact and unify their efforts they have to shift to a language at an appropriate
intermediate level, perhaps first after developing such a language. (By 'language' I do not mean
just a vocabulary but the whole framework of mutual understanding.) An interaction of this sort
should be given the greatest support, in particular when it spans over the gap between the
sciences and the humanities. In the current policies of grant agencies this is very rarely the case.
*
The lack of will
to find a common language at the intermediate level between the sciences and
humanities is illustrated in the recent controversy called the "Sokal Affair". Alan D. Sokal,
professor of physics at New York University, greatly disappointed with the currently
fashionable postmodernist, poststructuralist, social-constructivist and feminist criticism of
Western thought, produced a parody on that type of discourse. His text, a mixture of truths
(about physics), half-truths, quarter-truths, falsehoods, and meaningless sentences, for instance
"[...] as feminist thinkers have repeatedly pointed out, in the present
culture this
contamination [of mathematics] is overwhelmingly capitalist, patriarchal and
militaristic[...]. Thus, a liberatory science cannot be complete without a profound
revision of the canon of mathematics"
was unrecognized as such and accepted for publication in a prestigious journal
of
cultural studies. 7)
I do not intend to analyze the pros and cons of such ways of
criticizing methods of another discipline. One thing is apparent, however. On both
sides of the subsequent debate one can easily observe a lack of will to see the world
through the eyes of another culture (in Snow's sense). In other words: what is
missing is a common language.
*
The language barrier is only one obstacle, the most salient one, on the path
to
unified knowledge. There are other obstacles, too. One is mentioned by
Schroedinger in the above quotation. How could we possibly engage in a
unification when "it has become next to impossible for a single mind to command
fully more than a small specialized portion" of the whole? The more devoted a
specialist is to one discipline the less willing he is to study another discipline; simply
because of his doubts that he would ever manage to become more than a dilettante
in it (after all he well knows how long it took him to become an expert in his own
discipline). Yet the ideal of "interdisciplinarity" in its traditional sense assumes that
a
researcher acquires expertise in several disciplines at the same time - precisely
something that is nowadays almost impossible (except for a few geniuses). This
requirement was often taken rather lightly in practice which earned, among some, a
certain disrespect for the very concept of interdisciplinarity.
Moreover, the researches are always inclined to duly delineate their subject
of
study in order that their work has a clear direction. This is quite understandable but
at the same time it often leads to separation from the original motives. Contrary to
them, it often results in establishing just another specialized discipline, with its own
technical jargon, research topics, and institutions.
Take for example the above-mentioned system movement. It seems to me (I may
be mistaken) that system scientists gradually drifted away from the four proclaimed
goals by developing their own specific subject of study (if nothing else, then the
very concept of a "system". By doing so, system science has become a science on
something, a discipline like any other. Its action can easily be justified: after all, any
respectable scientific discipline must concern itself with a subject. Similar to the
situation in other disciplines, the development of a separate subject of study by
system science resulted in its isolation from other fields, in development of its own
technical jargon hardly comprehensible to its neighbors, and, finally and inevitably,
in the emergence of its own university departments, study programs, research
projects, conferences, technical journals and learned societies.
Unquestionably, as a separate discipline, system science had enjoyed great
success; that aspect is, however, extraneous to my present focus. Let us note
something else: nowhere in the four original goals quoted above is specified any
subject of inquiry (even the word "system" is not mentioned). The proclaimed
approach had never been meant to yield another science (understand: science on
something). It was meant to be a "collective effort to resonate across the borders
of disciplines". Such effort deserves a name. Let us call it the "transdisciplinary"
approach.
*
Since the term is established, allow me to expand on its definition. We can
differentiate between three different ways that disciplines can interact, cooperate,
or even fuse. The ways differ, e.g., in the extent of required expertise in other
specializations, in mutual trust of scholars of different participating disciplines, and
in agreement on a common language.
A multidisciplinary theme, problem or study should imply something which
necessitates a collaboration of several or many disciplines; these, however, do not
have to mingle or even fuse together (Fig. 4). It is enough when researchers in one
discipline are aware of the existence and advances of others. Examples of
multidisciplinary subjects: Earth, health, nature, society, mind.
In contrast, an interdisciplinary (in the narrower sense) field or study
should imply
anything which emerges at the borderline, in between or at the overlap of (typically
two) pre-existing disciplines (Fig. 5). Examples: biochemistry, psycholinguistics,
sociobiology, astrobotanics.
Finally, by the term transdisciplinary we may call insights, motives,
themes,
principles, concepts and ideas which each appears again and again in a number
(typically in many) of disciplines and perhaps even transcending them, repeatedly,
in many shapes, forms and variations (Fig. 6). (Indirectly, we also label
transdisciplinary the study of such themes.) Examples: feed-back, information,
representation, complexity, hierarchy, complementarity, evolution, stability,
fluctuation, chaos, collective behavior, emergence, self- reference, self-
reproduction, self-organization, adaptation, order.
Many of the new directions and movements in the last half of the century, from
cybernetics on the one side to the science of complexity on the other side, are in
their essence transdisciplinary. It is quite characteristic that they all lean strongly
towards mathematical abstraction. That is certainly not surprising in view of the fact
that mathematics is an idealized and thus an ideal connection between specific
disciplines - hence, in a sense, it is the ultimate consummation of a transdisciplinary
way of thinking. It should be underlined, however, that in some sense only;
precisely because of its abstract nature, mathematics actually distances itself from
natural reality.
Three mentioned programs, independently of their prefixes, "inter",
"multi", or
"trans", are all counter-balanced by the tendency of knowledge to be fragmented
into isolated, mutually divergent disciplines and specializations. The transdisciplinary
approach, in particular in its mathematical consummation, leads to corosion of the
boundaries between the disciplines by unifying their subjects. The interdisciplinarity
and multidisciplinarity, on the other hand, leads more to gluing disciplines into larger
compounds. If the apex of transdisciplinarity is mathematics then the apex of
multidisciplinarity is natural philosophy. It learns from and feeds itself on many
different areas while fully recognizing their ties to reality. In this sense philosophy is
the opposite pole to mathematics. (As it sometimes happens, the opposite poles
may be close to each other -just note that many famous philosophers started as
mathematicians.)
*
Let us consider the question of whether we can engage in transdisciplinary research
at all when it is so hard to overcome the fear of dilettantism. The call for improved
communication among specialists would fail miserably if scholars were expected to
learn first yet another specialized discipline.
I would like to suggest a small proposal. What about locking up a few top scholars
from different disciplines (perhaps from the sciences as well as humanities) in an
inaccessible tower for a certain period of time - certainly not a few days only, more
preferably for a few months. Let them freely think and chat among themselves
while protected from the distractions and demands of their peers. They will soon
learn to understand each other's language. I bet that they would soon achieve a
resonance of shared motives, themes, principles, concepts and ideas.
Perhaps nothing specific, new or revolutionary would be gained by the resonance
achieved by our locked-up scientists. Upon release from the tower, they would
return to the safety of their familiar disciplines, where they used to be at home. That
does not matter, however. I am sure that they would take with them something: an
experience and a lesson which they would hardly ever forget. Who knows, maybe
it would even be better that way. Better than if they actually discovered something
specific, new and revolutionary, that would give rise to "Another Big Discipline"
with its own university departments, study programs, research projects,
conferences, technical journals and learned societies.
1. Integrals and Differentials
