His argument approaches the idea of a "theory of everything," a foundation of Ken Wilber's integral agenda. But Weislogel recognizes that the "whole story" (a better term than Wilber's TOE) can never be grasped because it's still in process - an interesting and insightful twist to the idea. Even so, he argues, we must make the attempt.
The Transdisciplinary ImperativeGo read the rest of the argument for the value of a transdisciplinary approach.
The problems we face today—economic collapse, environmental degradation, energy needs—are so broad and complex that they seem intractable. Plenty of brain-power is being applied to our situation, and there is no shortage of individuals trained at our blue-chip academic institutions on Wall Street , in the halls of government, and in corporate enterprises. And yet, here we are. But one might just wonder whether knowledge itself shares some of the blame for these troubles—I mean knowledge divorced from the larger view, divorced from the whole. Could it be that knowledge without wisdom causes as many problems as it solves?
The economic, moral, political, environmental, technical, intellectual, scientific, and even spiritual challenges we face demand approaches that are suitably rich in resources for tackling them. We need to learn how to take the full measure of our knowledge, to find out what it is we really know now that we know so many disciplinarily distinct things. We need to find a way of recapturing a vision of the “forest” and not just the “trees.” The negative consequences for failing to do so are obvious. Our disciplinary practices inevitably give rise to the fragmentation of knowledge. This fragmentation of knowledge leads to the fragmentation of the university, which has a significant impact on its mission to educate the next generation. The fragmented university leads—consciously or unconsciously—to training students (and faculty, too) to compartmentalize their thinking, their reality, and hence their lives.
Our situation demands we respond to the “transdisciplinary imperative,” an approach to research and teaching that would serve to mitigate the consequences of this fragmentation.
What is a transdisciplinary approach?
The term “transdisciplinarity” can be found occasionally in the intellectual landscape. There have been conferences held, manifestos published, organizations formed, and some good work has been undertaken. However, the term still lacks specificity and is often applied without sufficient theoretical reflection. As yet, transdisciplinarity has been unable to bear the weight of the profoundly important idea in names.
Physicist Basarab Nicolescu1 explains that the “trans-“ in transdisciplinary signifies working simultaneously through disciplinary practices, between the disciplines (as in multi- and interdisciplinary endeavors), and beyond the disciplines and the institutions they form and in which they reside, in the hope of approaching something like the unity of knowledge.
Transdisciplinarity depends upon rigorous disciplinary work. The various academic disciplines—the “sciences,” broadly construed to include the social and the human sciences along with the natural sciences—form around the practice of making our questions precise, focusing our investigations, and employing analytic techniques in order to come to knowledge. Transdisciplinarity rejects attempts to address broader questions in ways that ignore the undeniable advances produced by the various disciplines.
Transdisciplinarity also relies on innovative interdisciplinary work. Many areas of inquiry—and many real-world problems we need to address—can only be pursued in a collaborative manner that utilizes multiple areas of specialized expertise. Transdisciplinarity rejects attempts at “reductionism”—the idea that one area of knowledge or expertise can adequately account for the richness of nature and human experience. It recognizes that successful interdisciplinary efforts often result in the formation of new disciplines, new spheres of specific expertise, with their own canons and methodologies.
Transdisciplinarity demands something more. Disciplinary and interdisciplinary work, with their overarching emphasis on analysis (breaking ‘reality’ into its constituent ‘parts,’ around which develop methodologies, standards of practice, certifications of expertise, and quite often ‘orthodoxies’) make significant contributions to our knowledge. But they also exact a price: the fragmentation of knowledge. This fragmentation is widely lamented. Unless universities restore the idea of synthesis as a complement to (not a replacement for) analysis, unless they regain the taste for something like the unity or the “symphony” of knowledge, unless they embark once again on a quest for wholeness, unless they learn to seek wisdom in addition to knowledge—they will not live up to their name and their mission.
Some may argue that transdisciplinarity is impossible. It will result either in a homogenous, vague, superficial “theory of everything” or it will develop into yet another discipline, another parochial body of knowledge without achieving the goal of a synoptic view. The transdisciplinary desire for something like a harmony or symphony of knowledge is simply a pipe dream.
One way to think of transdisciplinarity is to see it as a quest for the “whole story.” Whole stories are impossible, however, if for no other reason than the temporality of stories. Our story is ongoing, so we can’t write the ending yet. And while our stories are being written—including the stories from all of the disciplines in the natural, social, and human sciences—there will be the rough and tumble we’ve come to expect in the highly competitive marketplace of ideas.
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