What does interdisciplinarity look like in practice: Mapping interdisciplinarity and its limits in the environmental sciences |
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| Authors: | Miles MacLeod Michiru Nagatsu |
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| Institution: | 1. University of Twente, The Netherlands;2. University of Helsinki, Finland;1. Environmental Change and Governance Group, University of Waterloo, 200 University Ave W, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada;2. Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research, Av. Italia 6201 – Ed. Los Tilos 102, 11500 Montevideo, Uruguay;1. Electrical Engineering Dept. and Advanced Environmental Research Institute, University of North Texas, Denton, TX 76203, United States;2. Center for Simulation and Modeling (CESIMO), Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida, Venezuela;3. School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, The University of Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU UK;4. Department of Social Sciences, University of the Philippines at Los Baños, College, Laguna, Philippines;5. International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines;1. University of South Carolina and University of Helsinki, Department of Philosophy, 901 Sumter Street, Byrnes Bldg., Columbia, SC 29208, USA;2. Département de Philosophie, Université de Genève, 2, rue de Candolle, CH-1211 Genève 4, Switzerland;1. Department of Strategy, Marketing and Innovation, Kingston Business School, Kingston University, London, UK;2. Kingston Business School, Kingston University, Kingston Hill, Kingston Upon Thames, Surrey KT2 7LB, UK |
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| Abstract: | In this paper we take a close look at current interdisciplinary modeling practices in the environmental sciences, and suggest that closer attention needs to be paid to the nature of scientific practices when investigating and planning interdisciplinarity. While interdisciplinarity is often portrayed as a medium of novel and transformative methodological work, current modeling strategies in the environmental sciences are conservative, avoiding methodological conflict, while confining interdisciplinary interactions to a relatively small set of pre-existing modeling frameworks and strategies (a process we call crystallization). We argue that such practices can be rationalized as responses in part to cognitive constraints which restrict interdisciplinary work. We identify four salient integrative modeling strategies in environmental sciences, and argue that this crystallization, while contradicting somewhat the novel goals many have for interdisciplinarity, makes sense when considered in the light of common disciplinary practices and cognitive constraints. These results provide cause to rethink in more concrete methodological terms what interdisciplinarity amounts to, and what kinds of interdisciplinarity are obtainable in the environmental sciences and elsewhere. |
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