Academic Journal of Suriname 2012, 3, 221-226

Extra disciplinary Short communication

Path Dependency as a Justification for the Abolition of Disciplines?

Danil A. Lachman1
1

Institute for Graduate Studies & Research, Anton de Kom University of Suriname, Paramaribo

Abstract
Throughout the ages, people have always tried to bring order in their reality. Scientific disciplines are a manifestation of this, in order to tackle looming challenges. This division originated during the Enlightenment and was globalized, and is therefore a form of path dependency. Using the Multi-Level Perspective it is shown that regimes in the existing systems that are affected by these disciplines attempt (consciously or not) to keep this paradigm at the center stage. However, the division of reality in scientific disciplines results in poor communication between the disciplines, path dependency within the disciplines themselves, and questions surrounding the extent to which disciplines are able to conquer challenges in practice. On the other end, scientific disciplines have not been without their merits, especially concerning relatively easy to solve issues. This paper therefore attempts to open up the discussion whether the current prevailing paradigm should be followed or whether the existing system is in need of an overhaul, and if so to what extent. Keywords: Path Dependency, Scientific Disciplines, Regimes

1. Introduction
Man has always had the habit of dividing the environment in which he lives into different categories with the objective of bringing order into his complex surroundings. Ordering the environment has enabled him to better digest the complex reality. In this way throughout the ages, different realms could be distinguished, such as the social, technical, managerial, political, economic and environmental realm, to name a few. This has actually been a popular approach to solve problems; the problem was divided into different portions and each portion was separately attacked (in Dutch they have a saying hakken in vakken en zagen in lagen). But lets take a step back from this otherwise seemingly sensible approach and reflect a bit on this division of reality and the habit of addressing each portion separately. If one looks closely at technical systems, then it could be seen that this system is actually

intertwined with perceptions, beliefs, values, procedures, rules, institutions, etc., all items associated with the social portion of reality. Examining a typical technical infrastructure, for instance the electricity network, then it can be seen that typical characteristics of this infrastructure are given shape by social phenomena, such as locations where people live, utility operator shift durations, legislative agreements on voltage, health and safety; and the list goes on. However, the reverse is also true, namely that the technical realm shapes its social counterpart; shift operator routines, maintenance procedures, operator and maintenance skills, behavior regarding electrical hazards, etc. etc. One could say that technical artifacts influence social reality, and that social reality gives meaning to technical artifacts: an alarm clock can be used to wake someone up, or to trigger a bomb, but possibilities for its use are limited by its design.

Correspondence to: Danil A. Lachman. Institute for Graduate Studies & Research, Leysweg 86, Paramaribo, Suriname. Tel: 597 323281. E-mail: danny_lachman@yahoo.com Available online January 23, 2012

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2. Socio-Technical Systems and the Multi-Level Perspective

If then seemingly technical entities (factories, infrastructures, etc.) are intertwined with social reality, to what extent can problems on a system level be effectively solved? This is actually a rhetorical question, since the logic above states that it cannot; social and technical intertwinement makes that problem solving cannot just exclude either the social or the technical. It is therefore better to speak of socio-technical systems, which is a term first coined by Thomas P. Hughes in the 1980s in order to exhibit the fact that artifacts also inhibit immaterial and epistemic elements, apart from their technical specifications. It is a technological system impregnated with ideology and integrating actors and institutions, and is dependent on the social context; its design is shaped in an historical context and is in some measure mirroring the distribution of power in society. To illustrate this point, once again the energy infrastructure is placed under scrutiny. Currently there is a lot of focus on transitioning from the current fossil fuel-based energy system towards sustainable alternatives. Lately, awareness has risen that this not only means a change in technical infrastructure, but also a change in habits (for instance the fact that electric cars have shorter ranges than their fossil fuel-based counterparts), legislation (e.g. the provision needs to be created that collected solar energy on the roof of a home can be sold to the utility), procedures and routines (for example maintenance and operation of wind turbines), etc. etc. Processes of change within sociotechnical entities can be visualized using the so-called Multi-Level Perspective (see figure 1) consisting of the landscape level and the levels of regimes and niches. Regimes are defined as rule-set or grammar embedded in a complex of engineering practices, production process technologies, product characteristics, skills and procedures, ways of handling relevant artifacts and persons, ways of defining problems; all of them embedded in behavior, mindsets, institutions, infrastructures etc. (Geels 2004).

Rules refer to normative rules: -

formal,

cognitive

and

Formal rules refer to standards, regulations, etc.; Cognitive rules refer to search heuristics, guiding principles, etc.; Normative rules refer to behavioral norms, role expectations, etc.

Figure 1: The Multi-Level Perspective (Geels 2002)

Niches can be defined as structures formed by a small group of agents that deviate from the regime and that might build up a new regime that is able to break down and replace the incumbent regime, or in other words, the niche level can be defined as the locus for radical change, i.e., the locus from which new trajectories originate. The landscape level conceptualizes the influences from the exogenous environment that affect regimes and niches, or in other words, provides an influential backdrop with ramifications across a variety of regimes and niches.

3. Path Dependency
More or less resembling evolutionary processes, niches attempt to dethrone regimes by becoming the rule-set. This can be facilitated by pressures exerted from the landscape level, which destabilize regimes or by internal destabilizing processes (e.g. disagreement between regime actors on rules). An excellent example is the recent emergence of the electric vehicle (facilitated by fears for climate change a landscape factor due to fossil fuel use) as a contrast to the earlier doomed emergence in the mid-1990s when tire, steel and oil companies (the regimes) pressured General Motors (and other car
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manufacturers) to pull the plug on the (niche) project which had a strong following from socalled early-adopters. Thus changes come about when processes at multiple levels link up and reinforce each other, creating a window of opportunity, resulting ultimately in a change of the socio-technical entity. Regimes have the built-in tendency to protect their reign within the system and will thus prevent niches from taking over. This phenomenon leads to a situation where sociotechnical entities tend to stick to regimedictated rule-sets (e.g. policies, procedures, beliefs, etc.), leaving little room for other possibilities. This is called path dependency (also known as lock-in). The earlier example of the electric car is a textbook example of path dependency (as a result of an obstruction of niches) regarding the transportation infrastructure, viz. a dependency on fossil fuels. The concept of path dependency shares great similarity with Thomas Kuhns notion of normal science. He makes a distinction between revolutionary and normal science, where the former not necessarily represents a period of accelerated progress, but rather a qualitative different approach than normal science. Normal science in itself is compared as puzzle-solving in the sense that the puzzle solver is confined within the boundaries (in terms of space, rules, number of players etc.) of the puzzle itself (whether it be a crossword or jigsaw puzzle or a game of chess). Thus, regardless of ones puzzle solving skills, he/she is restricted to the nature of the game, or in other words is path dependent in his/her road to reach a solution (Kuhn 1970).

4. Scientific Disciplines as a Manifestation of Path Dependency

The paper started off with the notion of the division of reality into different realms and the statement that this division is actually counterproductive when looking at solving problems regarding technical artifacts (such as factories and infrastructures) since these should be regarded as socio-technical entities with their own regimes, niches and path dependencies. A form of path dependency that

takes central stage in this paper is the use of scientific disciplines within academia. Though reality has been studied throughout the ages, the dominant manner currently in use originated from the West, which dug up the natural sciences and conceptualized the social sciences around the time of the Enlightenment and the rise of Capitalism (Sankatsing 2001). The social sciences represented a response that Europe faced in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Western societies devised disciplines according to their criteria as a manner to bring order within the study of reality, and as a way to part with criteria, norms and rules from the metaphysical era which contained too many speculative elements for positivists (and scholars of the natural sciences). Through various means, this dominant way of studying reality was propagated as the only appropriate manner; deviations from this standard were deemed unscientific by the majority of academics from the developed world (Lachman 2011). Thus, the use of disciplines has spread all over the world and though many more disciplines have been conceived or have spun-off from others, it is clearly evident that the use of disciplines is almost unthinkable in our educational system. As a matter of fact, the educational system and society are adapted to the paradigm of disciplines: disciplines have given shape to professions, institutions, legislation, curricula, design of learning facilities, etc. On the other hand, developments in (primarily Western) societies give rise to new disciplines or form existing ones (since science is used to overcome problems facing societies.) To put it another way, disciplines and society co-construct each other. The fact that this way of addressing the study of reality can be has been upheld for centuries, concluded that this paradigm has garnered a strong foothold. In other words, the paradigm of disciplines constitutes a strong regime within academia. The fact that the division into disciplines originated a couple of centuries ago, has since been globalized, and is still in use today, is evidence of a strong path dependence within academia. However, this constitutes three major problems: 1. Due to the complex nature of reality, it is unthinkable that it can be split up into

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separate realms for study (the whole is more than the sum of its parts). This is the main logic behind the notion of the earlier mentioned socio-technical entity. Even within the realm of natural sciences it is almost impossible to categorize a problem under the banner of a particular discipline. Engineers are confronted with this all the time, when they are engaged in problem solving exercises; technical systems are always a complex of parts which hail from different disciplines, for instance in the fields of chemical, civil, mechanical and electrical engineering. Thus, an engineer who is involved in problem solving must be able to expand his frame of reference outside the confines of his own discipline; 2. The disciplines developed over the decades relatively separate from each other. Therefore, another form of path dependency within academia exists within the fact that this rigid system of relatively autonomous disciplines fostered respective regimes within each discipline. This has led many times to situations where disciples from different disciplines do not agree upon a set of methodological tools proposed from within one particular discipline, often because the rule-set within one discipline differs from another, and thus communication and consensus between different disciplines is problematic since they each have a different view on things, which in turn is caused by their focus on a portion of reality and their respective autonomous development (this is again frequently encountered within the sphere of problem solving by engineers). With this in mind, one might question the notion of multiand trans-disciplinary approaches, since these still use the autonomous disciplines as their foundation; Regimes within the autonomous disciplines themselves have each led respectively to path dependency within that particular discipline. This has led to the contemporary situation where students, researchers, professionals and firms, all guided and formed by the existence of disciplines, are guided (path

dependent) in their search for answers: they are engaged in localized searching instead of exploring the entire search space. They stay close to what they already know, viz. the regime, which also provides an explanation for the difficulty in communication between different disciplines. These three outcomes from the use of disciplines within academia have led to a situation where science cannot adequately serve its purpose, i.e. provide answers for challenges stemming from reality, since the use of its disciplines questions the efficiency and effectiveness of contemporary problem solving by practitioners of these disciplines. This problem tends to become more serious in the contemporary age, which is characterized by an increasing rate of intertwinement of previously non-related aspects of reality; nowadays even the notion of convergence technology, technology which is a melting pot of different technologies (c.f. energy technology and nanotechnology in the development of renewable energy technologies) is becoming more apparent. It thus seems evident that effective and efficient problem solving in a more complex becoming reality requires a reflection of reality within academia which is more accurate than the sum of the existing disciplines. 5. Disciplines: to be or not to be? At first glance, one would say that the answer to the problem placed under scrutiny above is the rejection of disciplines altogether and the transition towards an educational system that is bent on the production of experts. For example this would be in line with a current trend in the medical sector in developed countries (which originated in India) to have hospitals and medical centers specialize in the prevention and cure of certain diseases and symptoms, rather than being able to attend to all diseases and symptoms. In this manner, a start has been made in the Netherlands to have each hospital specialize in a different form of cancer. Sankatsing (2011) even goes farther by saying that the proper way to examine

3.

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reality is by utilizing a so-called extradisciplinary approach which stands outside of the traditional system of disciplines, but without discarding in advance any of its achievements or its methodological tools which have been accumulated over the course of time. The basic premise of this approach is that social processes and phenomena can only temporarily be isolated as objects of study, but that immediately afterwards they must be set again within the network of interrelationships in which they are to be found in social reality. ... The extradisciplinary approach rejects the procedure common among present-day social sciences of sharing out a field of study among relatively autonomous disciplines, which isolate fields of study, processes or phenomena as pertaining to their special expertise, without attempting subsequently to reinsert them into their natural context. Specializations are necessary for a systematic study of such a complex reality, but only as interrelated fields of study, which will not infringe on the integrity and unity of social reality, as do existing social science disciplines. Another rejection of disciplines and the subsequent rule-sets, search heuristics and path dependency can be found in Feyerabends Against Method (1975) where he states that people should not become proficient in the use of a particular tool (regardless of the fact how successful it has been) but must be trained in the use of several (even conflicting tools) and above all gain the ability to assess which tool must be used depending on the circumstance. On the flipside of the coin, most will agree that disciplines have brought forward the existence of professions which seem to do fairly well in solving relatively easy problems. A general practitioner is well equipped in addressing a typical case of the flu; he doesnt have to be a flu-expert. This leads to the following questions: - To what extent is there a need for experts / specialists? - To what extent is there a need for simple professions coming directly out of the disciplines? - Would a system of experts and disciplines cover the entire spectrum of problems, or is the whole notion of specialists versus
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disciplines nothing more than a dog chasing his own tail? Who makes the judgment if a particular problem calls for a specialist or someone directly hailing from a discipline? This question becomes even more important when considering the sometimes long time span that is required to see the full effects of intervention come to fruition. Based on the questions above, to what extent must the educational system, which is still heavily founded on the use of disciplines be altered in order to address problems in a more efficient and effective manner?

6. Concluding Remarks This paper has made an attempt to indicate the path dependency inherent in the use of disciplines in academia. This path dependency does not guarantee that problems will be solved, only in the most efficient manner, but also in the most effective way, even in the case of multi- or trans-disciplinary approaches, since these still utilize the disciplines as their foundation. Combining this remark with the notion of the faster increasing intertwinement of different aspects in reality (e.g. convergence technology), questions the validity of the use of disciplines. On the flipside of the coin, disciplines have their successes, though these are to be found more in addressing less complex problems. So what should the future development of our (higher) learning institutes look like? Will the path dependent dominant paradigm be kept alive, or is a transition required towards a new educational system? This paper does not attempt to answer that question, since it is fairly complex to fit within one paper, but nevertheless it is an important question in need of an answer. What this paper does try to achieve however, is to open up this discussion and bring forward (alternative) ideas, paradigms, models, schemes, etc. in order to arrive at what might seem to be the most acceptable solution for the time being. Such a process of analysis and synthesis of (an alternative for) the disciplines-paradigm is quite a gargantuan task, but one that can

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significantly help in encountering future challenges. However, there is one tricky part in all this. Who should take the initiative and guide this process of analysis and synthesis? The likely candidate that first comes to mind is the university as the primary research institute; however, the university is dominated by the same regimes that try to keep the disciplines alive and obstruct any niches that attempt to change this. One likely scenario might be the window of opportunity: the inability to effectively and efficiently confront challenges (landscape factors) weaken regimes and provide opportunity for niches (alternatives to the disciplines-paradigm) to break through. Or might there be a possibility that one should not have to wait for such an unpleasant scenario, but that change starts to occur within the regimes themselves? That might be the start on a trajectory towards promising futures where our learning institutes are geared to tackle threatening problems.

References
Feyerabend, Paul 1975. Against Method. Outline of an anarchistic theory of knowledge. Verso, s.l. Geels, F.W., 2002. Technological transitions as evolutionary reconfiguration processes: a multi-level perspective and a case-study. Research Policy 31 (8/9), 12571274 Geels, F. W. 2004. From sectoral systems of innovation to socio-technical systems: Insights about dynamics and change from sociology and institutional theory. Research Policy 33 (67): 897920 Lachman, D. A. 2011. Domination of the Mind. Imposition of Scientific Paradigms. The Academic Journal of Suriname, Vol. 2, p. 133-138, Anton de Kom University of Suriname, Paramaribo Sankatsing, G. 2001. Social Science as a Victim of Its Own Disciplines - The English- and DutchSpeaking Caribbean. In: Caribbean sociology: Introductory Readings. Eds.: Barrow C. and Reddock R., Ian Randle Publishers, Kingston Kuhn, T. S. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Second edition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago

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