Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
(Gibbons, et al l994, 37). Over the latter half of the twentieth century, new alliances with
industry and government, think tanks, projects, and teamwork have become more
prominent. In business and industry, intraorganizational projects have been appearing more
frequently as ad hoc projects, teams, working groups, and task forces. Likewise, in academe,
matrix structures, research institutes and centers, interdisciplinary studies, networks and
invisible colleges have increased. The growing presence of hybrid communities documents
the widely perceived gap between the traditional structure of knowledge and the needs and
interests of the modern world. These structures enable collaboration, integrative problem
solving, and development of new hybrid fields. Like holisms, however, they also contribute
to fragmentation.
Boundary crossing is not strictly academic. The erosion of older nation states, the
globalization of economic activities, information technologies and networks, international
transport of goods & people, and new cultural particularisms have created a "new
constellation" (R. Bernstein l99l), often dubbed "postmodernism." One of its central features
is the reversal of the differentiating, strong classificatory dynamic of high modernity and
increasing de-differentiation, de-insulation, and hybridization of cultural categories,
identities, and previous certainties (Muller & Taylor l994, l7-l8). Contests of legitimacy
continue, systems of demarcation persist, and regulative and sanctioning mechanisms are still
enforced. However, transdisciplinarity, transculturalism, transnationalism have blurred and
reordered older binary cultural, social, political, and epistemological distinctions and
categories.
As older borders and identities have weakened, the need for transdisciplinarity has become
greater but, simultaneously, more difficult.
Developing "The Luxuriance of the Plural"
In his exposition of Transdisciplinarity, Nicolescu (l993) writes of the "luxuriance of the
plural." This "New Renaissance" will require "perpetual movement across thresholds." The
core concepts reside in the very developments in knowledge and culture that make
Transdisciplinarity necessary. While different in their particularities, they share common
features, depicted in the difference between the left column and the right:
simplicity
complexity
singularity
heterogeneity
insulation
hybridity
linearity
non-linearity
unity
unirfying approaches
consensus
agreement
fragmentation
coherence
universality
dialogue of the local-regional-global
The Transdisciplinarity project also recognizes the problem of language. Languages of
concordance exist, prominent among them general systems, mathematics, and computers.
They cannot simply be applied, however. One of the lessons from the history of
interdisciplinary experiments is that interlanguages develop from acts of integration, not
prior to them. Indeed, emergence is one of the core elements of intercommunication.
Linguistics suggests a model of how a transdisciplinary language might develop. A "pidgin"
is an interim tongue, based in partial agreement on the meaning of shared terms. A "creole"
is a language that develops within a main subculture. Transdisciplinarity, like other
boundary-crossing projects, will begin with a pidgin, with interim agreement on basic
concepts and their meanings. With development, a more stable creole may form. In an
analogy to physics, an integrative rhetoric develops by "bootstrapping" up through lower-
wrote, "we make them tools for mastering our own future" (l98l, 11). In doing so, Basarab
Nicolescu wrote more than a decade later, we are "incurable knights errant, rekindlers of
hope" (l993, ll).
Julie THOMPSON KLEIN
Interdisciplinary Studies Program (CLL)
Wayne State University
Detroit, Michigan 48202 (U.S.A.)
Muller, Johan & Nick Taylor. "The Gilded Calabash: Curriculum and Everyday Life." An
unpublished manuscript l994.
National Research Council. Physics Through the l990s. Washington, D.C.: National
Academy Press, l986.
Nicolescu, Basarab. "Towards a Transdisciplinary Education." Paper presented at a
conference on "Education of the Future." Sao Paulo, Brazil. 4-8 October l993.
Paulson, Ronald. "Literature, Complexity, and Interdisciplinarity." In Chaos and Order:
Complex Dynamics in Literature and Science, ed. N. Katherine Hayles, pp. 37- 53. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, l991.
Vosskamp, Wilhelm. "Crossing of Boundaries: Interdisciplinarity as an Opportunity for
Universities in the l990s." Issues in Integrative Studies, 12 (l994).
Bulletin Interactif du Centre International de Recherches et tudes transdisciplinaires n 12 - Fvrier 1998
Centre International de Recherches et tudes Transdisciplinaires
http://perso.club-internet.fr/nicol/ciret/ - mis jour le 10 fvrier 1998