Interdisciplinary slides from Research Methods.

1. Musings of a Mad Man
Muddled in Mire
A Personal Reflection on the
Emergence of an Interdisciplinary
World

2. Questions???????
• What is knowledge?
• What is a discipline?
• What is interdisciplinarity?

3. Guiding Principle
Search for the patterns that connects.
Gregory Bateson

4. Drivers of Change
• unsolvable problems
• compression of time/space
• challenges to authority (knowledge)
• reclaiming experience and authority
• shifts in governance
• knowledge production/construction
• modes of production and social organization
• structures of governance
• our relationship to nature
• organizing metaphors

5. Contemporary Drivers of Change
• Challenge to science (positivism)
• Compression of time-space continuum
• Postformal Operations
• Dialectical Logic
• Government to Governance
• Bureaucracies to networks
• National modes of production and ownership to global
modes of production and ownership
• Continuous with nature
• Sustainable development

6. My Assumptions and Beliefs
• humans are part of the evolutionary
project
• the noosphere (realm of consciousness) is
an active part of the evolutionary project
• the evolution of consciousness is
characterized by modes of knowing the
world that are increasingly inclusive

7. My Assumptions and Beliefs
• the evolution of human consciousness is in
response to changing environmental
circumstances, with a particular emphasis on
encountering difference
• modes of knowing the world are institutionalized
• Eventually things change and existing modes
evolve into a new mode of knowing the world
and the whole cycle starts again

8. The Pattern that Connects
Modernism and Postmodernism
• confronted with problems which existing
knowledge system could not deal with
• refutation of existing canon
• a reclaiming of experience
• the emergence of a new way of knowing
the world
• technological developments

9. The Pattern that Connects
Modernism and Postmodernism
• new modes of production
• changing relationship with nature
• changing social structures and structures
of governance
• emergence of a new metaphor for
understanding the human journey

10. The Pattern that Connects
Transition to
Modernism
Transition to
Postmodernism
Unsolvable
problems
Black plague and
agricultural crises,
Urbanization
Ecological crisis
and increasing
poverty
Challenge to
authority
The “Church” and
scholasticism
The Cult of
Expertise and
“Scientism”
Source of
Challenge
Merchant class and
science
Those on the
margins

11. The Pattern that Connects
Transition to
Modernism
Transition to
Postmodernism
Experience and
Knowledge
Experience
reclaimed
(empiricism)
Experience
reclaimed (the
margins)
Modes of
Production
Artisan to mass
production
Mass production
to post-fordism
Structures of
Governance
Representational
democracy
Dialogic
democracy (?)

12. The Pattern that Connects
Transition to
Modernism
Transition to
Postmodernism
Mode of
Knowing
Empiricism and
disciplinary
knowledge
Epistemological
pluralism and
Interdisciplinary
Knowledge
Organizing
Metaphor
Progress Sustainability
Relationship to
Nature
Dominance
Over
Embedded
within

13. What is a Discipline?
• a constellation of topics, perspectives and
methods
• dominance of a particular approach (along
with critical perspectives)
• institutional recognition
• a community of self-proclaimed scholars
• methods for compelling adherence to the
discourse of the discipline

14. The Cognitive Foundation of
Disciplinary Knowledge
• no longer need to be grounded in the
actual but can begin with the theoretical
(abstract)
• can ponder situations contrary to fact
• develop hypotheses, propositions and test
them
• invent imaginary systems
• conscious of one’s own thinking

15. The Cognitive Foundation of
Disciplinary Knowledge
• reflect on one’s thinking in order to
provide logical justifications
• based upon the assumption of a fixed
reality, basic elements and immutable
laws
• takes place within the context of a
bounded system

16. The Psychology of Disciplinary
Knowledge
• self is characterized by self-authorship
• need confirmation of psychological
autonomy
• need to construct boundaries to preserve
one’s self system (self’s standards must
prevail)
• there is an unwillingness to compromise
one’s values, beliefs or purpose

17. Limitations of the Psychology of
“ This” Self
• unable to examine assumptions for to do so is to
threaten one’s own identity and requires getting
out of the system
• unable to integrate differing systems of thought
• coordination of action through assimilation and
the use of coercive power
• operates on an either/or or dualistic logic

18. Approaches to Interdisciplinary
Knowledge: An Instrumental
Approach
• viewed as a practical solution to unsolved
problems
• borrow tools and methods from other
disciplines to address the needs dictated
by the problem

19. Approaches to Interdisciplinary
Knowledge: Creating New
Disciplines
• fissioning of knowledge into more
specialties (at the borders – biochemistry)
• rejection of the unification of knowledge
or the ideas of comprehension and
breadth
• any integration and synthesis is a
collective by-product

20. Approaches to Interdisciplinary
Knowledge: Critical
Interdisciplinary Knowledge
• disciplines seen as fragmenting and have no
bearing on real social problems
• linked with the ideals of scientific objectivity and
scientism
• disciplines serve the status quo and knowledge
is the power to maintain the social order

21. Approaches to Interdisciplinary
Knowledge: Critical
Interdisciplinary Knowledge
• a quest for critical and transformative
knowledge
• concerned not only with the content of
knowledge but the process of knowledge
construction
• responsive to political and social needs
• characterized by communication among
different knowledge domains

22. Building a Model of
Understanding Interdisciplinary
Knowledge
Interior Individual
intentional
I
Exterior Individual
behavioral
it
Interior Collective
Culture (Worldspace)
we
Exterior Collective
Social or Communal
its

23. A Working Model of
Interdisciplinary Knowledge
Individual-
Subjective
• truthfulness
(sincerity, integrity, and
trustworthiness)
Individual-Objective
• truth
(correspondence,
representational,
propositional)
Collective-
Subjective
• justness (cultural fit,
mutual understanding)
Collective-Objective
• functional fit
(systems theory, social
networks)

24. Interdisciplinary Knowledge as
Process
Interior Individual
• introspection and
reflection
Exterior Individual
• observation
Interior Collective
• interpretation and
dialogue
Exterior Collective
• observation

25. Implications
• The actions of individuals cannot be understood
independent of the systems in which they are
embededded within (ecological understanding).
• The actions of individual and the development
and action of systems cannot be understood
independent of the cultural systems of which
they are part (cultural understanding).

26. Implications
• Within in any cultural system individuals will
have a unique constellation of differing
experiences (gender, class, etc.) that result in
unique perspectives on any one phenomenon or
issue (stakeholders).
• The unique constellation of experiences gives
rise to differing individual actions within any
system.
• Therefore changes in one quadrant require
changes in the other quadrants.

27. Implications
• What we see and how we act in light of
“empirical” evidence will be dependent upon the
cultural system of which we are a part and our
position within that cultural system.
• Challenges and changes from various
positionalities can alter cultural systems (new or
alternative worldviews) that then alter what we
see in the empirical world.
• Knowledge of the “empirical” world can facilitate
reflexivity and reflectivity which results in the
development of new worldviews and ways of
being in the world (individual and collective).

28. Implications
• Knowledge is a process of construction
and negotiation and not discovery.
• Knowledge is always embedded within
power relationships.

29. The Cognitive Foundations of
Interdisciplinary Knowledge Self
• the ability to structure inherently logical formal
systems
• the acceptance of more than one logical system
pertaining to a given event
• the commitment to one set of a priori beliefs of
many sets
• awareness that the same manipulation of the
same variable can have varying effects due to
temporal and environmental contexts

30. The Cognitive Foundations of
Interdisciplinary Knowledge:
The Inter-Individual Self
• awareness that the concept of causal linearity is
erroneous when reality is multicausal
• an understanding that contradiction, subjectivity,
and choice are inherent in all logical objective
observations
• the need to take into account that contradictory
multiple causes and solutions can be equally
correct in real life within certain limits
• an awareness that an outcome state is
inseparable from an outcome process-leading-
to-state

31. The Psychology of the Inter-
Personal Self
• identity is no longer bound by the system
• exists outside the systems rather than
feeling a need to choose a system
• develops a capacity to reframe
perspectives, problems or solutions

32. The Psychology of the Inter-
Personal Self
• tolerates negative feedback
• understand that other perspectives are logically
justifiable
• a tolerance of difference and actively moves
towards integration of perspectives
• assumes no universal order but that orders arise
as a result of history and culture and across time

33. Dialectic Reasoning: The
Foundation of the Inter-
Individual Self
• dialectic reasoning is the process whereby
one creates more inclusive categories in
response to the perspective of others
• knowledge is local and contextual
• dialoguing across difference becomes an
important activity for knowledge
construction

34. Challenges to an
Interdisciplinary Program
• What is the role of theory?
• What constitutes quality?
• What are “valid” and reliable methods?
• What constitutes a contribution?
• What are the implications for training
interdisciplinary researchers?