[Fis] CONSILIENCE & Interdisciplinarity

Dear FIS colleagues,

In my second cent this week, let me expand the arguments on possible
enlarged acceptations of consilience (I hope that better informed parties
will progressively enter in the discussion of its strict logical sense too).

I will start with a short "time travel". During recent decades we have
witnessed a number of intellectual fashions and scientific schools that
have emphasized the importance of interdisciplinarity, multidisciplinarity,
transdisciplinarity, etc. For instance: systems science, nonlinear science
(irreversibility), "new age" science, complexity sciences, etc. Earlier on,
logical positivists were engaged in similar discussions around the unity of
science and its methods against a motley crew (holists, organicists,
idealists, etc.); several types of "reduction" within a hierarchical scheme
of the sciences were advocated. We might go earlier on --perhaps to the
time where Ortega y Gasset, Whitehead and other scholars (unfortunately
"full of dust" nowadays) made eloquent allegations on the evolution of the
social system of knowledge (its lack of balances), the "barbarism of
specialization", the "overextension of paradigms" (outside their proper
disciplinary bounds)...

To sum up, in spite of elegant writing and a number of classification
schemes of the sciences (Comte, Dilthey, Carnap, Bertalanffy,
Hempel, Bunge...) one can find not much substance about the much
publicized phenomenon of interdisciplinarity (for simplification I drop all
the multi-trans- terms). While, in fact, the interdisciplinary mixing has
been widespread as most of scientific progress occurs following the
turbulences of those disciplinary encounters (origins of computers,
'molecular biology', bioinformatics, neurocomputation... to name but a
few). How could one find out about the "systematization" of such
interdisciplinary phenomena or ponder about interdisciplinary ways of
"explanation", or about some general interd. "method"?

Following the dominant metaphor of disciplines as "fields" I presented in
FIS Madrid 1994 a scheme of the systematic emergence of
inter-subdisciplines out from the vertical overlapping of the basic
sciences --the big "canonical" ones that we usually assume as models on
what science is or should be. See an interesting series of figures at
http://fis.iguw.tuwien.ac.at/fis94/introduction.html
that show how can systematically emerge up to a couple of dozens, or so, of
different subdisciplines. In the figures, every number corresponds to an
existing subdiscipline formed by a basic science working outside its
"preferred" level e.g., 1: chemical physics, 2: biophysics, 5:
biochemistry, 8: psychobiology, 10: psychosociology, etc. (see figures and
complete text). Horizontally, there appear the 'object oriented'
integrative disciplines: e.g., engineering, physiology, anthropology, and
so on. The proposed information science and its vertical overlappings with
the other basic sciences also appear in the figures. Some of these info
sci. overlappings might roughly correspond with recent interdisciplinary
explorations (molecular computing, bioinformation, artificial intelligence,
artificial life, etc.)

Apart from a possible systematicity or taxonomy in the occasions of
interdiciplinarity, the questions on the interdisciplinary methods look
much pressing. Let us note that the previous "field" metaphor of science
has been carried over to the social discourse with relevant success, eg.,
by Vannevar Bush and his "Endless Frontier" --the emphasis was then, many
decades ago, on exploring the outside, expanding the 'borders' of the sci.
territories. Whereas that image may be more or less appropriate for the
expansion of the canonic sciences (or to discuss about the "limits" of
science), one could argue al least about a contemporary change of emphasis.
If one witness the literature on sustainable development, climate change,
ecosystem dynamics, sociopolitical and entrepreneurial management,
etc., the crucial importance of interdisciplinarity becomes obvious. So to
speak, it is the INTERNAL FRONTIERS of sciences that have ostensibly become
of importance for our collective survival.

Let me venture an opinion on the workings of those internal frontiers, on
the "interdisciplinary methods" that are established there (although the
term "Int. Meth." could be close to be an oxymoron), and perhaps about its
relative absence in the literature. For a long time I thought that in
actuality interdisciplinarity becomes an "art" ---somehow, only criteria of
economy, aesthetics and intellectual pleasurability could help in such
navigation. Sort of "the Art of Interdisciplinary Explanation". I already
made several postings in this list close to that intuitive idea.

But the approach to consilience after reading several publications on its
enlarged version (Wilson, Emery, Berthoz, Ceccarelli), including the recent
exposure to Malcolm's more rigorous stuff, would suggest me that in those
few crucial places at the borders between disciplines --genuine
'checkpoints' where an efficient traffic and even an autonomous production
may be established-- a deep logicality is at work. There, the consilience
dynamics between very separate "inductions" (heterogeneous
conceptualizations and methods) does not return empty or with irrelevant
stuff, but full of insights and pathways to explore. Strict consilience
might be used to explain the enlarged one. And in that line, it is also
probable that quite a few of the fis discussions on the conundrums of
informational dynamics could help to establish a new interesting doctrine
of interdisciplinarity...

Thanking your patience!

Pedro

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Received on Thu Sep 23 14:47:32 2004