http://www.newciv.org/ISSS_Primer/seminar.html
Half a century ago, Erwin Schroedinger, one of the main contributors to modern physics, made a remark that is even more valid now than it was in his time. It aptly characterizes the inherent epistemological dilemma of contemporary science. Noting that we have "inherited from our forefathers the keen longing for unified, all-embracing knowledge", Schroedinger continues: "But the spread, both in width and depth, of the multifarious branches of knowledge during the last hundred odd years has confronted us with a queer dilemma. We feel clearly that we are only now beginning to acquire reliable material for welding together the sum total of all that is known into a whole; but, on the other hand, it has become next to impossible for a single mind fully to command more than a small specialized portion of it."
Indeed, trends towards unification have a complex history of waxing and waning and of partial victories over the inherent tendency of sciences to hyper-specialize and diverge from each other. In the last decades we have witnessed a revival of attempts at universality, or at least efforts to weld together several disciplines. The well-known examples are cybernetics, structuralism, general system theory, chaos theory, fractal geometry, cognitive sciences.
However, in each case only a few different disciplines, mostly natural and exact sciences, openly joined the effort. There are several sources of failure of most of such attempts. The researches are always inclined to duly delineate their subject of study. This is understandable but often leads to separation from the original disciplines. Contrary to the original motives, it results in establishing just another specialized discipline, with its own technical jargon, university departments, study programs, research projects, conferences, journals and learned societies.
Another obstacle was mentioned in the above quotation from Schroedinger. 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.
The idea of "interdisciplinarity" in its traditional sense requires from a researcher to acquire 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.
Let us propose, therefore, two further variants of the concept, one based more on mutual trust among scholars of different disciplines and the other trying to develop a new common language. I shall call them "multidisciplinarity" and "transdisciplinarity", respectively. It is essential that both treat scientific research as a joint collective endeavor rather than just a sum of activities of individual scientists.
Multidisciplinary study is typically concerned with a problem or theme that requires cooperation between of several different disciplines; these, however, do not have to mingle or even fuse together. What is only needed is that representatives of different disciplines working on the same project, trust each other's results. Examples of big multidisciplinary themes: earth, health, nature, society, mind. On the other hand, transdisciplinary study tries to expose and explore particular ideas, motives, themes, principles, or concepts, each occuring again and again in several (typically in many) disciplines, repeatedly, in various forms, shapes and disguises. Examples of transdisciplinary concepts: feedback, information, complexity, hierarchy, complementarity, evolution, stability, fluctuation, collective behavior, chaos, fractals, emergence, self-organization, order.
I believe that the transdisciplinary approach may be a good start for attempts at universality, if properly carried out. Learning from the mistakes of our predecessors, we should not, for instance, give absolute priority to one particular universal language (as in the Vienna Circle program) and we should avoid ending in a new esoteric discipline.
How to begin? I propose to lock up a few leading representatives of different disciplines in an isolated tower for a certain time where they could freely think and talk among themselves. I bet they would soon develop a common language and soon achieve a resonance of shared ideas, motives, themes, principles, and concepts. Perhaps the story of the tower of Babel could be rewound in reverse.
Charles University in Prague
Director of the Center for Theoretical Study (CTS) in Prague
only F.Y. I Tom: He graduated in 1966 from the Czech Technical University in Prague. During 1969-71 he attended the University of California at Berkeley, earning a doctorate in Computer Science. For several years he worked as a research scientist with the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. His fields of interest include theoretical computer science, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science. Before the Communist regime collapsed in 1989, besides his semi-official scientific work, he hosted discussion groups in his apartment in Prague and cooperated with samizdat editions. After November 1989, for several months he took part in the activities of Civic Forum. He now directs the Center for Theoretical Study, a newly formed international cross-disciplinary institution affiliated with Charles University in Prague and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. He also has teaching responsibilities at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics. Since 1990 he has been the editor-in-chief of the Czechoslovak scientific journal Vesmir (The Universe). He is a board member of several academic institutions and educational foundations and a member of Academia Europea and the New York Academy of Sciences.