BCSSS

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

2nd Edition, as published by Charles François 2004 Presented by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science Vienna for public access.

About

The International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics was first edited and published by the system scientist Charles François in 1997. The online version that is provided here was based on the 2nd edition in 2004. It was uploaded and gifted to the center by ASC president Michael Lissack in 2019; the BCSSS purchased the rights for the re-publication of this volume in 200?. In 2018, the original editor expressed his wish to pass on the stewardship over the maintenance and further development of the encyclopedia to the Bertalanffy Center. In the future, the BCSSS seeks to further develop the encyclopedia by open collaboration within the systems sciences. Until the center has found and been able to implement an adequate technical solution for this, the static website is made accessible for the benefit of public scholarship and education.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

INTERDISCIPLINARITY 1)3)

An integrative relationship between two disciplines (Ch. FRANÇOIS, 1993, p.114)

Interdisciplinarity is less embracing than multi-disciplinarity and should not be confused with systemic transdisciplinarity.

According to Ch. FRANÇOIS: "Interdisciplinarity should be used only to describe a specific interrelation between two disciplines, as for example biochemistry, astrophysics or population genetics. This does not present many difficulties. It implies generally the bridging between two disciplines, since one needs of the other, or one brings new insights to the other. Any interdiscipline tends to become a discipline by its own right and supposes an excellent knowledge of both intervening fields and in many cases, of some mathematical models used as a lingua franca" (Ibid).

J.G. MILLER states: "The more general a scientific law is, the more powerful it can be because it applies to a larger class of phenomena. It is important, therefore, that there be more scientific effort devoted to testing a wide range of cross-level hypotheses. After all, the most recalcitrant problems now facing societies are not limited to single disciplines or single levels. Resolution of environmental problems, for example, often depends on knowledge derived from biology, the earth sciences, chemistry, biochemistry, engineering, economics, other social sciences, and the law. Increasingly, teams composed of experts in a number of fields work together.

"One difficulty that arises in so called interdisciplinary cooperation (in fact multidisciplinary) is the use of different terms, units, and dimensions, some of them applied only to a particular special field. The relationships among them are often unclear and it is difficult to translate them so that people who are not specialists in that field will understand them. One solution to this dilemma is to attempt to use the dimensions of the natural sciences as neutral reference points to which all other dimensions can be precisely related.

"It is helpful, also, to use neutral terms to recognize similarities that exist in systems of different types and levels. These should be as acceptable as possible when applied at all levels and to all types of living systems. For example, "sense organ" is one term for the component that brings information into a system at the level of the organism, but "input transducer" is also satisfactory, and it is a more acceptable term to engineers and at the society level (e.g. a diplomat or foreign correspondent). Such usage may irritate some specialists used to the traditional terminology of their fields. A language that intentionally uses words that are acceptable in other fields is, of necessity, not the jargon of the specialty. Whoever uses it may be suspected of not being informed about the specialty. The specialist languages, however, limit the horizons of thought to the borders of the disciplines. They mask important intertype and interlevel generalities" (1986, p.76).

Thus, for MILLER, even interdisciplinary cooperation needs a meta-Ienguage.

This does not however seems to be enough to save simple interdisciplinarity from its narrow limits. In D. McNEIL's words: "… we can be certain that our work will fail if it is not… centered around generality rather than "interdisciplinary" or any other arbitrary juxtaposition of particulars" (1993a).

Synthetically, a new language of general character, understandable by everybody, is urgently needed in order to put an end to disciplinary deafness, to "babelization" of the scientific community and to hermetic compartmentation between scientific and social actors.

This is particularly true in management sciences, as expressed by P. CHECKLAND: "What we need is not interdisciplinary teams but transdisciplinary concepts, concepts which serve to unify knowledge by being applicable in areas which cut across the trenches which mark traditional academic boundaries" (1976, p.127).

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

Publisher

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).

To cite this page, please use the following information:

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]


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