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Back to the Discipline: For a Future Interdisciplinarity

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Theory and Practice in the Interdisciplinary Production and Reproduction of Scientific Knowledge

Part of the book series: Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning ((LARI,volume 31))

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Abstract

Interdisciplinarity (ID) is not only a descriptive concept adapted to scientific situations in which interactions between disciplines occur, but also an epistemological norm, which seeks to gives rise to better science. Indeed, developments in science such as molecular biology, nanotechnologies or cognitive sciences appear intuitively as scientific successes, largely due to their ID. These successes justify the claim that ID is useful for epistemic advances. The problem I tackle in this article is the normative step that goes beyond mere description and which is all too easily generalized to inappropriate contexts. The successes of ID suggest that the future of science must go beyond the current status quo: “interdisciplinarity means open inquiry in order to avoid the usual blinkers of disciplinary research”. This new way of doing science should reach beyond disciplinary objects, means of investigation, evaluation, and so on. ID is thus considered both as the future of science and as a concept used to criticise the current organization of science into different disciplines.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Lindley & Maull, 1977.

  2. 2.

    Marcovich & Shinn, 2011.

  3. 3.

    Derry et al., 2005.

  4. 4.

    Riegler, 2005, p. 14.

  5. 5.

    Repko, 2011, p. 11

  6. 6.

    Jantsch, 1970.

  7. 7.

    Boix-Mansilla et al., 2015.

  8. 8.

    de Lusé, 2009; Potochnik, 2010; Jacobs, 2013; Mäki, 2016; Mäki & MacLeod, 2016; Grüne-Yanoff, 2016

  9. 9.

    Jay, 2012 and Mäki & Grüne-Yanoff, 2014 use the adjective “naïve” to characterize specific attitudes in ID enthusiasm. I radicalize this characterisation.

  10. 10.

    Klein, 2011.

  11. 11.

    Bechtel et al., 2007.

  12. 12.

    Integration is identified as certain level of interaction and which thus makes it possible to distinguish ID from pluridisciplinarity, in which interactions lack integration Klein, 1990, p. 56.; Holbrook, 2013.

  13. 13.

    See Grüne-Yanoff 2016 for an example of interdisciplinarity without integration.

  14. 14.

    I define “actual science” as the science practised today, in contrast with “other science”.

  15. 15.

    The distinction between ID research, a research that is in itself interdisciplinary, and ID studies, the study on ID research, is far from being clear (Sauzet, 2017, p. 193–197). Indeed, ID studies are often considered as a mixed between ID research and an epistemological reflection about this peculiar way to do science. I develop the confusion between description and normativity in 1.2.

  16. 16.

    This argument is more a radicalisation of classic ID’s defence than a common share view. Indeed, the trend today is to defend a complementary approach, in which ID is associated with disciplines. However, the complementary approach is problematic to keep without letting aside most of the arguments in favour of ID, considered as a way to do science differently of the disciplines’ science. It appears more as an acknowledgement of the limits of ID enthusiasm, without understanding all the implications of this.

  17. 17.

    Paletz & Schunn, 2010.

  18. 18.

    De Lusé, 2009, p. 107.

  19. 19.

    It is possible to imagine that one discipline might collaborate with another in order to obtain such things as prestige or funding opportunities. However, these cases do not appear as scientifically motivated interactions, but rather as accidental opportunities.

  20. 20.

    This focus means that it could be complementary to work in sociology or psychology. I do not, however, have the relevant knowledge to give a sociological or psychological account of ID.

  21. 21.

    “The disciplines are foundational to interdisciplinary research because they provide the perspectives, epistemologies, assumptions, theories, concepts, and methods that inform our ability as humans to understand our world. Even with the many shortcomings of the disciplines, interdisciplinarians still need to take them seriously and learn as much as they can from them”, Repko, 2011, p. 41. Even if Repko remains ambivalent regarding the positive aspects of disciplines, he does at least consider them necessary.

  22. 22.

    One can distinguish between internal unifications that intervene in scientific activities themselves, by proposing new epistemological material, and external unifications, which propose general ways of reforming science, independently of the actual work of scientists. Naïve ID proposes external unifications.

  23. 23.

    There is a way of resolving the commensurability issue: ID must be something completely distinct from science as it is today. It is difficult, however, to imagine what this new science could be.

  24. 24.

    Klein, 1990.

  25. 25.

    Zaleska, 2012.

  26. 26.

    Kitcher, 1990, p. 8.

  27. 27.

    Jacobs, 2013, p. 151.

  28. 28.

    By following my main argument, nothing is less certain than that ID activities even exist at all.

  29. 29.

    De Lusé 2009.

  30. 30.

    Foucault, 1975, pp. 219–220.

  31. 31.

    Zaleska, 2012, p. 41.

  32. 32.

    Knorr-Cetina, 1982.

  33. 33.

    Moran, 2010, Repko, 2011.

  34. 34.

    Andersen, 2015, p 1.

  35. 35.

    Kuhn, 1996, pp. 174–210.

  36. 36.

    Kuhn, 1996, p. 187. Kuhn named theses shared commitments “exemplars“.

  37. 37.

    For example, it will be possible to put forward an argument against ID by following Kuhnian ways of thinking because of the problem of incommensurabilites between different parts of science.

  38. 38.

    For further details, please refer to Sauzet 2017, pp. 22–32.

  39. 39.

    Stichweh, 1995.

  40. 40.

    Ibid, p. 44.

  41. 41.

    Ibid, p. 21. For Stichweh, these specificities are considered “insignificant”.

  42. 42.

    Stichweh thinks that science has evolved from a descriptive and empirical science toward a problematic science.

  43. 43.

    Shinn and Marcovitch have developed a model to understand the career path of scientists, which has taken into account a combination of various distinctive elements—i.e. their ideas, instruments, skills, and human resources (such as the communities that the scientists are involved. Cf. Shinn 2000.

  44. 44.

    “The discipline provides broad integrated learning in conjunction with in-depth specialization”, Marcovitch & Shinn 2011, p. 7.

  45. 45.

    Ibid, p. 8.

  46. 46.

    Jacobs, 2013, pp. 17–19.

  47. 47.

    Frodeman et al., 2010.

  48. 48.

    Jacobs, 2013, p. 15.

  49. 49.

    Frickel et al., 2016, p. 14.

  50. 50.

    Potochnik, 2010, p. 314.

  51. 51.

    Marcovitch & Shinn, 2011.

  52. 52.

    The case of Shimon Weiss is very interesting. Starting as a physicist, interested at first in optical and laser spectroscopy, signal mixing and semiconductors, Weiss began to work on single molecules, inorganic then biological molecules as markers (at a nanoscale level), before working on the replication and mutation processes that occur with respect to these molecules. Nevertheless, his main interest has always been in physics, and all his cross-disciplinary research allowed him to study issues in this field – even if some of the research needed epistemic elements from biology (M & S 2013, pp. 7–11).

  53. 53.

    Hardwig, 1985; Thagard, 1997.

  54. 54.

    Corlett, 2007.

  55. 55.

    For further details, see Sauzet 2017, p. 483.

  56. 56.

    Hutchins, 1995.

  57. 57.

    Soler et al., 2014.

  58. 58.

    Nersessian, 2008.

  59. 59.

    National Academy of Sciences, 2004, p. 39; Grantham, 2004, p. 143; Jacobs & Frickel, 2009, pp. 49–51.

  60. 60.

    Jacobs & Frickel, 2009, p. 50.

  61. 61.

    MacLeod, 2016.

  62. 62.

    Abbott, 2001 p. 143

  63. 63.

    Grantham, 2004, pp. 145–150.

  64. 64.

    Andler in Martin 2011, pp. 25–32.

  65. 65.

    Gayon, 2009.

  66. 66.

    Lindley & Maull, 1977.

  67. 67.

    Jacobs, 2013, p. 88.

  68. 68.

    Masood, 2018.

  69. 69.

    That means that it is more a down-to-earth attempt to promote ID, different to most of general promotional discourse that we can find in ID literature.

  70. 70.

    Mäki, 2016.

  71. 71.

    For example, it can be a description of an actual research project or the planning of a potential one.

  72. 72.

    Boix-Mansilla, 2006.

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  1. SHLS - Ecole Centrale de Lyon., Institut de Recherches Philosophiques - Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, Lyon, France

    Romain Sauzet

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  1. Romain Sauzet
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  1. Faculty of Sciences & Center for Philosophy of Science of the University of Lisbon (CFCUL), University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Olga Pombo

  2. Departamento de História e Filosofia das Ciências & Centro de Filosofia das Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa (CFCUL), Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    Klaus Gärtner

  3. Centre for Philosophy of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Jorge Jesuíno

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Sauzet, R. (2023). Back to the Discipline: For a Future Interdisciplinarity. In: Pombo, O., Gärtner, K., Jesuíno, J. (eds) Theory and Practice in the Interdisciplinary Production and Reproduction of Scientific Knowledge. Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning, vol 31. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20405-0_3

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