History of Disciplines and Interdisciplinarity
The history of interdisciplinarity is inevitably linked to the history of disciplines. Both of these are recent developments in the history of ideas. Though disciplines have gained in strength fairly steadily over the last centuries, the fortunes of interdisciplinarity have waxed and waned. There is reason to believe, though, that the future of interdisciplinarity is assured. Among the key points to stress here are:
· While there have been distinct ‘subjects’ for thousands of years, disciplines that could grant their own PhDs, hire their own professors, and publish specialized journals, have only existed for about two centuries. Before that time scholars were expected to be generalists. These disciplines emerged as universities expanded in size and especially as they came to stress research alongside teaching. In the natural sciences, at least, the hardening of disciplines was aided by industrial demand for specialized researchers.
· There have been calls for interdisciplinarity ever since the emergence of powerful disciplines.
· In the early twentieth century, calls for interdisciplinarity often focused on teaching. This was a reaction to the creation of the disciplinary major. The General Education movement in the United States and elsewhere also hoped, however, to make university education more relevant to the needs of modern citizenship. [See Interdisciplinary General Education for a discussion of how Gen Ed curricula might be improved.]
· In the 1960s again, interdisciplinarity was often advocated as a means to make university education more relevant. It was widely felt that disciplines were ill equipped to prepare students to address pressing social problems.
· By the start of the 21st century, this interest in interdisciplinary education has been matched by an interest in interdisciplinary research.
· Indeed in the last decade of the twentieth and first decade of the twenty-first century it can be said that interdisciplinarity became ‘mainstream,’ lauded widely by university presidents and granting agencies, though not always well understood. [We discuss best practices for interdisciplinary research in Interdisciplinary Research.]
· Increased interest in interdisciplinary research reflects the recognition that complex questions across the natural sciences, social sciences, or humanities (and especially those that cut across these three realms) require an interdisciplinary approach.
· The AIS, founded in 1979, has reflected, responded to, and hopefully reinforced the interest in interdisciplinary teaching and then interdisciplinary research.
· While interest in interdisciplinarity has waxed and waned over the last century, neither the existence of complex problems nor the perceived value of interdisciplinarity in addressing these will ebb, especially if best practices for interdisciplinary research, teaching, and administration can be identified.
[we invite comments on these points as well as suggestions for other key points regarding the history of disciplines and interdisciplinarity.]
One key reference here is Bill Newell’s 2008 article in Issues in Integrative Studies on the history of interdisciplinary education. See also his "Undergraduate general education," Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity" (2010), 360-71.
See also Peter Weingart, "A Short History of Knowledge Formations" The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity (2010), 3-14. Steve Fuller's "Deviant Interdisciplinarity," pp. 50-64 in that volume, discusses different ways of understanding the history of interdisciplinarity.
A video of "Interdisciplinarity Then, Now, and Into Networked Futures," a presentation by Julie Thompson Klein at the First Global Conference on Research Integration and Implementation (Sept., 2013) in Canberra, can be obtained from the conference website at http://www.i2sconference.org/ (on the website the on-demand video of this talk is available by clicking the purple ON-DEMAND VIDEO button on the right menu - a simple sign-up is required to view the video material). This presentation "identifies major developments over a century of work in an expanding variety of contexts, the communities of practices that emerged, and current trendlines. It then weighs implications of common keywords across movements, including ‘system’, ‘complexity’, ‘team’, ‘management’, and ‘integration’."
Julie Thompson Klein's classic Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory, and Practice. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990, provided the first comprehensive study of the historical development of interdisciplinarity and the relationship between disciplines and interdisciplinarity.
Atkinson, J. and Crowe, M. (eds.). Interdisciplinary Research: Diverse Approaches in Science, Technology, Health and Society. West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2006, also discusses historical developments, with an emphasis on the natural sciences.