Exploring The

A number of terms have to be defined in order to make a good start with this chapter. The chapter will hinge on the same three terms that dominate the present literature: and These will be presented in a picture in the style but not the full content of A number of supportive concepts will then be defined more The three core concepts are defined as follows, using the well-known principle that a whole is more than the sum of its

Monodisciplinarity: a single discipline working on an empirical or normative science problem, at a case study or a more general theoretical level.

Multidisciplinarity: more than one discipline working side by side on an empirical or normative science problem, at a case study or a more theoretical level, without- coming to a result that is more than the sum of the disciplinary contributions.

Interdisciplinarity: more than one discipline working on an empirical or normative science problem, at a case study or a more theoretical level, coming to a result that is significantly more than the sum of the disciplinary contributions.

In their italicized core terms, these definitions follow current In the words of Pétrie (1976), for instance:

"I distinguish between interdisciplinary and efforts. The line is not hard and fast, but roughly it is that multidisciplinary projects simply require everyone to do his or her own thing (...). Perhaps a project coordinator or manager is needed to glue the final product together, but the pieces are fairly clearly of disciplinary size and shape. Interdisciplinary efforts, on the other hand, require more or less integration (...) of the disciplinary

Pétrie draws the dividing line between 'glueing the final product' and 'more or less In practice, something more than glueing is almost always attempted, without a study being called interdisciplinary. This is reflected by Anderson (1985):

The literature study by A.W.M. and H.F. is gratefully acknowledged. Later also used by Di (1978) and Wilpert (1979).

See, for Udo de Haes (1984) and (1985) the Dutch field. The international review of Klein (1985) follows the same as well as, in different wordings, Rossini et al. (1979), Scott (1979) and many others.

"The outcome of an interdisciplinary study, if all goes well, is likely to be an account with a coherent vocabulary and sustained by an integrated theory (...)• Reports from projects are likely to comprise chapters written

from disciplinary perspectives, followed by chapters which summarize and attempt

The dividing line between and may be put anywhere between or Anderson's; therefore, I leave it open what is 'significant' in my defini- Greater precision will be seldom needed.

The non-italicized terms in my definitions are intended to keep the scope of the discussion sufficiently broad; they do not differentiate between the concepts but emphasize three issues that have been extensively treated in Chapter

(1) may take place within the empirical science family and within the normative science group as well as between them. Increasing the responsiviness of the empirical sciences to societal problems may have been a prime motivation for but it is by no means the only one. The only more or less fixed relation between participating disciplines is that they usually work together to produce insight at a higher system level, relative to the system level of the usual object of the participating disciplines. This system level may be a super- nova, the bio-chemical system of a cell, a human-ecological system, a landscape or a societal problem (De Groot, 1984b). Quoting Jantsch (1971):

"Interdisciplinarity is that a common for a group of disciplines is defined at a higher level; this concept is used to co-ordinate the disciplines". For this reason, interdisciplinary theories and methods are called 'integrative' through- out this chapter, and the tiered representation in Figure 2A indicates real higher and lower systems levels of the discipline's

(2) Mono/multi/interdisciplinarity may, as repeated in the definitions, aim at con- tributions concerning one or several concrete cases, but may also aim to build or test insights at the more general level of theory and methods.

(3) More importantly, it should be noted that a case study having a normative- science nature, that is, focussing on the analysis, explanation and solution of societal problems, can be freely combined with an aim of contributing to theory, namely, theory also focussing on the analysis, explanation and solution of societal problems. This point, trivial as it may seem, is overlooked in all literature found. This is just another way of stating what in the introductory section has been called 'the failure to visualize environmental science as a normal member of the normative sciences family' and that, in its turn, is just another way of describing the 'Cartesian trap' of Chapter

As may be found throughout Levin and Lind (1979) and et al. (1986).

It is not true, of course, that all disciplines that contribute to interdisciplinary studies or theories are lower system level disciplines. Mathematics and geography are cases in point. This does not impede our argument, however.

1.

Figure 2A illustrates the three core terms. The dotted and the solid lines indicate the

relative strengths of each discipline and the relations between them, as they occur in the particular types of research. In every picture, there is a lowest-level type of discipline. The fact that all of these have been dotted denotes that these disciplines act as more or less passive suppliers of knowledge, applied as a matter of course by the higher-level disciplinarian. This happens daily in all research, 'pure' or applied, empirical or normative, with respect to astronomy and mechanical engineering in Annex

In the case, the 'top-level' concepts, theories and results are weak, or 'insignificant' as the definition puts it, relative to those of the lower-level disciplines, and consequently exert weak integrative power. arises when these forces become significant.

Drawing from a wide array of U.S. experiences and literature, Klein (1985) and Lynton (1985) distinguish between two types of "synoptic / con- ceptual" and It is of importance to go into this distinction somewhat more deeply here, because it is relevant in itself and also because it tempts us to follow a conceptually mistaken road. As we will see, this mistake is again a conse- quence of the inability to see problem-oriented sciences as sciences, possessing their own level of problem-oriented theory.

"Synoptic" or "conceptual" interdisciplinarity, following Klein and Lynton, has a long history, driven by the desire to preserve a unity of thought against the ever- increasing fragmentation of science and the disconnection of science from responsible human life. Synoptic interdisciplinarity is therefore associated with the ideal and praxis of the 'liberal university', holistic enterprises, grand theories, the

approach, cultural studies, integrated 'area and the Bildung of students as opposed to teaching them disparate theories and data grinding Much of the material found in (1979) stands in the synoptic perspective.

interdisciplinarity, again following Klein and Lynton, has more recently arisen from the pragmatic need to integrate disciplines for studying higher system levels (e.g. bio-chemical systems, the ocean) or for analyzing and finding solutions to complex societal problems (e.g. health and environment).

As Klein indicates, both categories of interdisciplinarity are deeply entrenched in U.S. education, research and professional organisations, and the future course of insti- tutionalized interdisciplinarity may be substantially influenced by the ongoing dis- cussion between the two. This makes it all the more interesting to take a look at

Although Klein does not mention it as an example in her review, much of human ecology as it is taught, for instance, at the College of the Atlantic (Borden, 1989), is built on the same aspirations.

(MONO)

MULTIDISCIPLINARITY

INTERD1SCIPLINARITY

(MONO) DISCIPLINARITY

Figure 2A

The pattern of and The squares denote

disciplines. If drawn in a solid line, the discipline contributes its paradigm, theories and data. If drawn in a dotted line, the discipline's consists of 'finalized', non-paradigmatic products only (e.g. data and models).

Lynton's section on the "Implications of the Two this is also the juncture at which the analysis goes Lynton writes:

"Modern society has a very great and steadily growing need (...) for usable,

instrumental knowledge which can be applied by the practitioner.

Notice that the meaning of the term 'instrumental' has now shifted from 'instrumental for the study of new, complex objects (the ocean, environmental to 'instru- mental for The of oceanography, biochemistry or landscape ecology has therewith suddenly disappeared from the picture. Environmental science is of course still in it, but the shift has paved the way for the next step, the association of instrumental interdisciplinarity with applied case studies only. Lynton continues:

[The universities] have acquired an obligation to become more instrumental and more externally oriented (...). The vast majority of problems and situations to which the efforts of faculty and students must adress themselves in their applied research (...) require (...) instrumental and pragmatic interdisciplinarity." Notice that it is now no longer the practitioner outside the university who is doing ap- plied research, but the faculty and students themselves. The meaning of 'instrumental' has thus been restricted one step further, from 'useful for society' to useful for society'. This is again the crucial step: the inability to conceptualize problem- oriented sciences as having a theory level of their own, that is, as anything else but a collection of directly applied studies in which faculty and students play the practi- tioner's role.

After these subtle conceptual shifts, Lynton's argument can only go one way. It is of course quite undesirable for university departments "to rush headlong toward pragmatism and And since problem-oriented science has been conceptually deprived of a theory level of its own, there remains only one candidate to fill the theory gap: synoptic interdisciplinarity. Illustrating this, the analysis is concluded with a dichotomous schema that reads:

reflection, introspection / external interaction applied research] internal coherence / use of external resources

stability and continuity / adaptability to a wide range of problems methodological unification / contact with state-of-the-art in individual

disciplines long term exploration / finite projects.

At first sight, one might see this as representing the normal, logical characteristics distinguishing the theory level from the studies level, within any discipline or pro- gramme (ecological, engineering, or environmental science). In Lynton's analysis, however, it represents the difference between synoptic and instru- mental interdisciplinarity. In other words, environmental science, together with all

Close-reading will reveal that the authors are in fact more than my quotations suggest; I have concentrated on what most readers will pick up as the main message. (1987), is an example.

other problem-oriented work, is as occupying the part of the dichotomy only, thus constituting of no more than a series of applied studies. Thus, in order to acquire coherence and continuity, environmental science should, it is implied, turn to synoptic interdisciplinarity (philosophy, holism, grand theories,

approaches etcetera).

I do not deny that environmental science, like any other discipline, may find useful elements in the world of synoptic, 'liberal' thought. De Groot's (1992b) Chap- ters 7 and 8 are the results of excursions into this field. Environmental science should undertake these excursions, however, in order to enrich its own theories, as defined in Chapter

A few other terms are relevant to note here, not because they play a role in this chapter, but because they do so in other literature. A brief survey will help to tie up this literature better to the present study.

is defined by Jantsch and and

as something not drawn in Figure 2A: 'horizontal' dominance of concepts of one monodiscipline over those of the others, without any higher-level integration. Many others (e.g. Glesne, 1989) use the term for what is generally called interdisciplinarity, as is the case here. Scott (1979) uses the term for applied interdisciplinarity studies.

is used by some (e.g. Rossini et 1979) to denote an inten- sification of interdisciplinarity. Jantsch (1971) uses to denote a

"multi-level coordination of all disciplines and interdisciplines in a [research and education] system on the basis of a generalized and an emerging under- standing of the pattern, methods and limits in human

Interestingly, this multi-level building (in the definition of which we hear synoptic inspirations) arises in Jantsch' version of Figure 2A as the final stage at the bottom of the figure, 'beyond We will return to this shortly. In Kockel- (1979), transdisciplinarity is defined as "aiming at an overarching framework", that is, in our terms, aiming at theory, hence pure-scientific interdisciplinarity. In Darvas and Haraszthy (1979) the term denotes what is interdisciplinarity here.

Piaget (1972) uses 'transdisciplinarity' for the 'interdisciplinarity' of current usage, and applies 'interdisciplinarity' to the transplantation of concepts and theories from one discipline to another, i.e. what Klein (1985) denotes as interdisciplinary 'borrowing'. As will be explained in Section 2.5, there are reasons to distinguish two types of activities in the 'borrowing' field: the far-flung transplantations and the regular trade of concepts and

I have avoided the term transdisciplinarity for several A practical reason is that the term is not in common usage with a common understanding of its basic meaning, as is the case with the prefixes mono-, and Other reasons go deeper. The term seems to be most often triggered by a (justified) idea that there must be something 'beyond Jantsch, working with the image that interdisciplinarity works to establish (pure or applied) knowledge at a higher system level than the monodisciplines, imagines the world beyond interdisciplinarity as a multi-level, multi-relations pyramid of disciplines. For other authors, transdiscipli-

is more simply an intensification without a 'levels'

tation. Both ideas are partly right and partly wrong. As drawn in Figure 2A, going beyond interdisciplinarity does not result in something that should have a special name, nor in ever-increasing complexity, but in the return of simplicity, namely albeit at a higher level. As we will see later, this occurs because the lower-level disciplines 'fade out' under the strength of the higher-level

is a term used by Kendall and (1978) to denote all work that involves more than one discipline, hence constituting an umbrella concept for interdisciplinarity and any other variants one might wish to define. Using such a term is conceptually consistent, and is in fact more consistent than current practice, which usually lumps inter- and all other

together under the heading of interdisciplinarity (Scott, 1979).