Modeling the demands of interdisciplinarity:Toward a framework for evaluating interdisciplinary endeavors

• Main Author: Zachary Stein
• Format: Article
• Language: deu
• Published: ARINA, Inc. 2007-06-01
• Series: Integral Review
• Subjects: cognitive development; epistemology; integral methodological pluralism; interdisciplinary; language of evaluation; levels-of-analysis; perspectival; transdisciplinarity
• Online Access: http://integral-review.org/back_issues/documents/Stein,%20Modeling%20the%20Demands%20of%20Interdisciplinarity%204,%202007.pdf

I suggest there are two key factors that bear on the quality of interdisciplinary endeavors: the complexity of cognition and collaboration and the epistemological structure of interdisciplinary validity claims. The former suggests a hierarchical taxonomy of forms of inquiry involving more than one discipline. Inspired by Jantsh (1972) and looking to Fischer's (1980) levels of cognitive development, I outline the following forms: disciplinary, multi-disciplinary, cross-disciplinary, inter-disciplinary, and trans-disciplinary. This hierarchical taxonomy based on complexity is then supplemented by an epistemological discussion concerned with validity. I look to a handful of philosophers to distil the general epistemological structure of knowledge claims implicating more than one discipline. This involves differentiating between levels-of-analysis issues and perspectival issues. When all is said and done, we end up with a “language of evaluation” applicable to interdisciplinarity endeavors. Ultimately, this suggests an ideal mode of interdisciplinary endeavoring roughly coterminous with Wilber's (2006) Integral Methodological Pluralism.