International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

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).