‘Interdisciplinarity’. What a wonderful buzzword.1 On the one hand, there can be little doubt that drawing inspiration from various scientific approaches is central to developing and expanding our understanding of reality in the broadest sense. Indeed, the history of science is rich with cases of successful scientific achievements which can reasonably be considered interdisciplinary in one way or another. On the other hand, everybody has his or her favourite horror story featuring some obviously misguided (or even faux) interdisciplinary collaboration.
Curiously, however, very little effort has been put into the development of ways to distinguish between “good” and “bad” interdisciplinarity. In the words of Nancy Cartwright:
There is no lack of academic interest in interdisciplinarity, though. Indeed, there is a large and growing literature on the topic. One might even speak of a virtual discipline of Interdisciplinarity Studies . But the Interdisciplinarity Studies literature is mainly focused on the social aspects of interdisciplinary collaborations, whereas the epistemic vices and virtues of interdisciplinarity are only rarely and cursorily discussed. Consequently, if we aim to understand whether and under which circumstances interdisciplinarity leads to beneficial epistemic results, we need to develop the required tools of assessment more or less from scratch. That is the primary goal of this book, then: To develop a framework, an articulated methodology, for evaluating epistemic aspects of interdisciplinary science.Within each of the disciplines separately, both pure and applied, we find well developed, detailed methodologies both for judging claims to knowledge and for putting them to use. But we have no articulated methodologies for interdisciplinary work, not even anything so vague and general as the filtered-down versions of good scientific method we are taught at school. (Cartwright 1999, p. 18)
To develop a more adequate way of capturing what is at stake in interdisciplinary science, I suggest drawing inspiration from the contemporary philosophical literature on scientific representation. A representation-based approach to the analysis of interdisciplinary science, and the discussion of the consequences of representing interdisciplinarity in this way, are the two main contributions I offer with this book.
To add one final, important qualification: This book offers a novel framework for analysing interdisciplinarity. Though it is a good one, it is only one of several possible and relevant frameworks. In the framework of this book, integrations of distinct scientific activities are idealised and represented in a certain way—one which emphasises aspects of interdisciplinarity which are out of focus in most other existing ways of analysing this phenomenon. That I focus on different aspects of the analysis of interdisciplinarity does not mean that I consider the standard approaches completely misguided. Still, I hope the reader will agree that viewing interdisciplinarity in the perspective developed below draws out interesting and relevant aspects, which may have the potential to alter the way in which we view interdisciplinary science.
The (Epistemic) Fundamentals of Interdisciplinarity
Let us start off with the following, somewhat banal observation: The concept “interdisciplinarity” presupposes, as a minimum, that some sort of inter-action and integration between at least two relevantly different parent disciplines takes place. Further, and at least as banal, there is a temporal aspect: “Interdisciplinarity” presupposes that there is a pre-interaction state of affairs in which the involved disciplines are distinct, and that there is a post-interaction, or integrated, state of affairs in which, unless the effort has been completely futile, some product of the integration of the parent disciplines has come into existence.
The basic idea in interdisciplinarity is, thus, to combine two or more scientific disciplines into some integrated approach (loosely speaking). The motivation for this kind of scientific crossbreeding is that through the combination of different scientific disciplines it might be possible to construct hybrids, which are in some respect superior to (at least one of) the parent disciplines.
Scientific quality is, of course, a difficult and controversial philosophical issue in itself and can be construed in many, quite different ways. Ultimately, determination of whether superiority has been achieved is, at least to some extent, dependent on the purposes the scientific enterprises in question are intended to serve. If one were to think of paradigmatic examples of improved scientific quality, reasonable examples might be increased explanatory power, the addition of detail or nuance, improved accuracy (for instance, in terms of prediction and/or distinction), improved reliability, improved validity, increased scope, more general implications, increased conceptual coordination, improvements in terms of cognitive economy (sometimes called ‘simplicity’), or improvements in ability to intervene in relevant processes and produce, prevent, or control specific phenomena.
These are all2 more or less standard textbook suggestions for evaluating scientific quality, which might all be relevant to discussions of epistemic enhancements due to interdisciplinarity. It bears emphasising once again that explicit discussions of how and to what extent interdisciplinary activities result in scientific or epistemic improvements are rarely encountered in existing treatments of the topic of interdisciplinarity.
In this book, then, the terms ‘interdisciplinarity’ and ‘interdisciplinary science’ are used to refer to scientific activities which involve integration of (elements of) theoretical representations picked from different scientific backgrounds. By epistemic assessment of interdisciplinarity, I mean the evaluation of how the integrated “knowledge” fares when evaluated along dimensions of scientific quality such as those listed above. This may reasonably involve a comparison with the epistemic vices and virtues of the parent disciplines.
Apart from epistemic issues, various other aspects of the activities involved in scientific practice may be considered good or bad by the involved scientists or other stakeholders. For instance, it is valuable to be able to maintain a living and it is quite attractive and very difficult to obtain (and retain) a job in academia. Consequently, one might expect that there is ample motivation for opportunistic interdisciplinarity. This possibility has received little attention in the existing literature—possibly because it presupposes a critical examination of whether interdisciplinary collaborations are implicitly good. Further, as the literature within Interdisciplinarity Studies clearly demonstrates, there are lots of non-epistemic issues relevant to analyses of interdisciplinarity. So, to be clear, even though focus is on epistemic aspects of interdisciplinarity in the following, other analytical dimensions should not be disregarded. Certainly, various kinds of aspects of scientific collaborations may have important implications for the development of science.
In this book, however, I primarily address epistemic aspects of interdisciplinarity. It is a central assumption of the book that epistemic aspects should be included in analyses and evaluations of interdisciplinary collaborations. It is a further assumption that interdisciplinary research activities, as other research activities, ought to be carried out cautiously and systematically in order to get the most out of the effort, while at all times maintaining a clear view for what benefits are gained through a specific effort. Throughout the book, I will provide examples which illustrate the predicaments one might end up in, if one’s attitude towards certain epistemic pitfalls is too lax.
To be able to evaluate the extent to which particular cases of interdisciplinarity live up to the above-mentioned ideals, there are many issues which require considerably more attention than they usually get. If, as it is sometimes argued,3 interdisciplinary work should be allowed to proceed in a less stringent manner than more traditional disciplinary science, at least there should be some sort of argument for why and in which respects such an attitude is considered beneficial. Indeed, such an argument might be carried out within the framework developed below.
Interdisciplinarity Studies
One of the basic reasons for developing an alternative approach to the analysis of interdisciplinarity is that epistemic issues are insufficiently dealt with in the existing literature on the topic. Despite all the merits of the Interdisciplinarity Studies literature, it does have significant shortcomings, since a number of philosophical, and most pressingly epistemic, issues related to interdisciplinarity are largely unaddressed.
The absence of measures, or apparent attempts to develop measures, for the epistemic benefits of interdisciplinary collaborations may be partly due to that Interdisciplinarity Studies draw considerably on work by scholars from sociology and/or science studies. As science studies icons Collins and Evans have stated, “[t]he dominant and fruitful trend of science studies research in the last decades has been to replace epistemological questions with social questions” (Collins and Evans 2002, p. 236). There is no doubt that this trend has been dominant, and it has certainly also been successful—at least when measured in terms of popularity. But determining the extent to which it has been fruitful is, of course, a more difficult matter, which is closely related to the evaluation of science in general. I will argue that the focus on social aspects has blocked the light for (more) relevant epistemic concerns.
My Alternative
So, what is the alternative approach to the analysis of interdisciplinarity advocated in this book? As a starting point, I confront the conviction that conventional taxonomies of disciplines provide fruitful ground for analysing combinations of scientific approaches. I move on to suggest that a focus on activities of representation4 reveals a much more interesting level of detail. A fundamental assumption of the argument below, an assumption which I take to be endorsed by a large group of influential contemporary philosophers of science (e.g. Cartwright 1999; Giere 2006; Godfrey-Smith 2009; van Fraassen 1980, 2008; Weisberg 2013), is that representation is an indispensable and central part of scientific activity. The further claim I make is:
Representation is an indispensable and central part of scientific activity, and if interdisciplinarity has any significant effect on scientific practice, then the effect of inte...