Introduction1
Exploring being in the world, proclaiming life signified nothing, analyzing assumptions and developing syntheses were once the domain of philosophy and literature. Attempts were made to understand the whole of human existence. Gradually, grand theories about life became replaced by adoration of science. Whether or not there was a palace of wisdom seemed less relevant to some when empirically grounded academic disciplines rose to the fore. Specialization succeeded speculation; reduction overthrew integration, fragmentation dominated interconnection.
Extraordinary scientific discoveries revolutionized the conception of truth and understanding. “The progress of knowledge,” Peter Bol declares, “depends on specialization” (Bol, 2004, p. 1). The formerly prominent seven liberal arts were replaced by three broad liberal arts academic cultures: the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. The newer liberal arts cultures developed separate academic disciplines, sub-disciplines and interdisciplines.
Still there remains a tension in intellectual life between specialization and generalization, between scientism and the humanities, between insulated disciplines and cross disciplinary fertilization. Some, like the 2002 Greater Expectations report, complain about the “disconnected fragments” rather than “coherent plans” in American higher education (Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2002, p. x). Efforts to bring things together run into obstacles. To James Engell, the way the disciplines are connected looks “like an airplane route map, or the route map of several airlines superimposed upon each other” (Engell, 2004, p. 4). In an age where specialized expertise is the mark of professionalism, how can these overlapping routes be untangled, how can the gaps be bridged between knowledge from individual sub-disciplines, the parent discipline, the academic cultures and the search for the larger meaning of life?
Informed disciplinary specialists have their virtues and limits. Aristotle wrote: “a good judge in each particular field is one who has been trained in it, and a good judge in general, a man who has received an all-round schooling” (Aristotle, 1962, p. 5). Specialists may not be good judges beyond their area of expertise. Yet All-round schooling today is not at the center of academic life. People are needed who can see both the trees and the forest. Today there are many experts on kinds of trees, but few who concentrate on the forest. When examining an issue, whether it is disciplinary or interdisciplinary, there is benefit from exploring the whole picture, including how each liberal art academic culture might illuminate the subject. There will be many topics that are in the domain of one subject area, but other topics may well be illuminated by other disciplines and academic cultures. Specialization and comprehensiveness may be combined.
How do we get from disciplinary fragmentation and specialization; from the “kingdom of knowledge” as Rustum Roy says, being “balkanized, nay feudalized, divided into a hundred fiefdoms,” and back to addressing, what philosopher Joel Dupre calls “the most interesting and important aspects of human behavior” (Roy, 1979, p. 162, Dupre, 2001, p. 132). If there is a way to return to the larger questions of existence, it is not only through the specialized and divided disciplines, it is also through the interconnections between the disciplines and keeping our eye on the overall picture.
Many issues require attention from more than one specialty. There is an interdisciplinary condition; it is when an issue or question requires more than one academic subject to adequately address the problem. Once the necessity of interdisciplinary investigation is recognized, any single disciplinary approach to the issue will be insufficient. For example, take the question: Is there an Oedipus complex, and if there is, is it universal? This question cannot be addressed without incorporating concepts and findings from at least biology, psychology, psychoanalysis, and anthropology. Whether or not the exposition of the subject follows an interdisciplinary research process, the questions still remain interdisciplinary in nature If the questions are interdisciplinary, what makes the answers interdisciplinary? It depends on what is meant by interdisciplinarity and what grounds there are within the disciplines to bring about sufficient convergence to answer the questions. At first, I will address the second of these questions, and return to the first later.
Interdisciplinary investigations rely on the information and perspectives of the individual disciplines. “Interdisciplinarity,” as Robert Scott says, “presupposes disciplinarity” (Scott, 1979, p. 326). The fate, then, of interdisciplinarity is entwined with that of the disciplines. The quest for addressing the larger meaning of life needs to go through the disciplines in order to get to the other side. Understanding the nature of the disciplines is also an essential part of proceeding with the interdisciplinary process.
How then can a discipline be comprehended? Exploring individual disciplines will give some insight into disciplinarity. A discipline can be approached synchronously by seeing its current state, and/or it can be examined diachronically, by looking at it over time, by understanding the history of the discipline. To understand disciplinarity I will be discussing what historians and scholars of various disciplines and subdisciplines have written about their subject matter. To be comprehensive, I have chosen to examine at least one discipline from each of the three liberal arts academic cultures. The fields examined will be biology, literature, and psychology. Comprehending disciplinary realities will illuminate interdisciplinary prospects.
Biology
Harvard professor Ernst Mayr says that since the biologist studies animate subjects (living organisms) it needs to be distinguished from physics and chemistry, which study inanimate objects. As such the philosophy and methodology of biology, Mayr believes, are somewhat different than the physical sciences. There is an overlap between the inanimate and animate sciences, as biology is divided, Mayr says, between mechanistic, functional and historical biologists. “Functional biology deals…particularly with all cellular processes, including those of the gene” and these processes “can be explained mechanistically by chemistry and physics,” while historical or evolutionary biology cannot (Mayr, 2004, p. 24). Mechanical biologists are more in tune with the reductionist, experimental outlook of the physical scientists while evolutionists rely more on observation and explanation.
“Reductionism,” Mayr declares, “is the declared philosophy of the physicalists. Reduce everything to the smallest parts, determine the property of these parts, and you have explained the whole system. However, in a biological system, there are so many interactions among the parts…that a complete knowledge of the properties of the smallest parts gives necessarily only a partial explanation” (Mayr, 2004, p. 34). Biologists studying living organisms and evolution often cannot rely on experimentation or reduction and turn, Mayr says, to historical narratives, which are tested for explanatory value. Biology, Mayr concludes “is very different from the exact sciences in its conceptual framework and methodology” (Mayr, 2004, p. 32). Biology then has a divided soul; it is torn between the functional biologists who are aligned with “the natural sciences” while “evolutionary biology” is attached “to the science of history” (Mayr, 2004, p. 13).
When the branches of biology overlap the different concepts and methodologies often do not mesh. Mayr says that “throughout biology there are numerous unresolved controversies” including “the use of reduction” (Mayr, 2004, p. x.). MIT professor Evelyn Fox Keller goes further. An “analysis of the literature on biological development over the course of the century reveals not only great variability in criteria – over time and between different research schools – for what might count as an explanation of biological development, but also how flexible these criteria can be” (Keller, 2002, p. 6).
The field is split conceptually and methodologically. As Mayr has previously remarked, a “reason why consensus is hard to achieve is that disagreeing scientists adhere to different underlying ideologies making certain theories acceptable to one group which are impossible for another group” (Mayr, 1997, p. 103). Years earlier chemist Michael Polanyi stated: “All formal rules of scientific procedure…will be interpreted quite differently; according to the particular conceptions…by which the scientist is guided….For within two different conceptual frameworks the same range of experience takes the shape of different facts and different evidence.” Conceptual opponents “do not accept the same ‘facts’ as facts, and still less the same ‘evidence’ as evidence” (Polanyi, 1962, p. 167).
The customary term interdisciplinarians use to describe such differences is “perspectives.” According to Allen Repko: “Perspective is a discipline’s overall view on that portion of reality that it considers within its research domain. Perspective determines how a discipline approaches a problem in terms of the methods it uses, the theories it advances, the concepts it generates, and the insight it develops” (Repko, 2005, p. 137). Repko’s definition of perspective is quite similar to one meaning Thomas Kuhn assigns to the term paradigm, which he says “stands for the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques and so on shared by the members of a given community.” Kuhn calls this conception of paradigm a “‘disciplinary matrix’” because “it refers to the common possession of the practitioners of a particular discipline” (Kuhn, 1970, pp. 175, 182).
The term that Mayr uses, ideology, captures something additional in academic controversies. The late Ernst Mayr is not the only Harvard biologist who applies the term ideology to scientific endeavors. His one time colleague, R.C. Lewonton, authored a book entitled Biology As Ideology. How does ideology enter into science? “Modern biology” Lewonton writes, “is characterized by a number of ideological prejudices that shape the form of its explanations and the way its researches are carried out” (Lewonton, 1991, p. 41). To Lewonton, “a particular ideological bias of modern biology….is that everything that we are…are ultimately encoded in our DNA.” This view about our genes “is part of a deep ideological commitment that goes under the name of reductionism” (Lewonton, 1991, p. 107).
A well-known proponent of reductionism is another Harvard biologist, the founder of sociobiology, Edward O. Wilson. “The cutting edge of science,” he writes, “is reductionism, the breaking apart of nature into its natural components….reductionism is the primary and essential activity of science” (Wilson, 1998, p. 54). To Wilson: “all tangible phenomena, from the birth of stars to the workings of social institutions, are…ultimately reducible…to the laws of physics” (Wilson, 1998, p. 266).
Both Mayr and Lewonton take exception to Wilson’s claims. Mayr says Wilson’s “suggestion was based on a faulty analysis of biology….none of the autonomous features of biology can possibly be unified with any of the laws of physics” (Mayr, 2004, p. 36). Lewonton labels Wilson’s creation, sociobiology, as the “most modern form of naturalistic human nature ideology” (Lewonton, 1991, p. 89). It underplays the social component in human activities, confuses observation with explanation, and often employs circular reasoning. The “sociobiological explanations of the evolution of human behavior are like Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories of…how the elephant got his trunk. They are just stories” (Lewonton, 1991, p. 100).
Whatever the scientific merits of Wilson’s brand of reductionism, it is clear that there are deep divisions within the discipline of biology. After three decades of debate and discussion, the common ground and common vocabulary between these conflicting viewpoints within one of the premier scientific disciplines has not been found. Wilson’s conception of biology has it reducible to the laws of physics and Mayr says the complications of organisms cannot be known through reduction. How much of this disagreement is resolvable and how much of it is conviction?
Ideology is a good concept for describing the divisions within biology and other academic fields. There are many beliefs that are connected to and yet go beyond data and discoveries; they are convictions of how things work and what is important in investigations. “The replacement of ideologies,” Mayr observes, “meets far more resistance than the replacement of erroneous theories” (Mayr, 1997, p. 103).
Ideology is not only bias, prejudice, or conviction. As Terry Eagleton notes: “ideological discourse typically displays a certain ratio between empirical propositions and what we might roughly term a ‘world view’” (Eagleton, 2007, p. 22). If we say that reductionism is an ideology, then we can also say that it has had an extensive research agenda that has scientifically illuminated many aspects of animate and inanimate phenomena. Ideologies may open up certain areas of understanding; develop methodology and criteria for gathering and evaluating evidence, standards for explanation and/or narration, and provide insights into certain aspects of existence. Ideologies, though, can also overextend their point of view, and not recognize either the limits of their outlook or the legitimacy of differing paradigms.
The recognition that academic disciplines not only have divergent perspectives, concepts, and ideas, but also can contain conflicting ideologies is an important lens through which to view what happens within academic disciplines. It also has strong implications for interdisciplinary studies. The interdisciplinarian investigating a problem that goes beyond the confines of one discipline needs to be cognizant of the differing ideologies within a discipline and its sub-disciplines. In evaluating claims it is important to recognize both the data, paradigms, perspectives and ideologies that organize the information. The interdisciplinarian is not only analyzing disciplinary insights but often conflicting paradigms. For frequently facts are understood within explanatory frameworks, and there is often more than one framework utilized.
Facts, it is often remarked, are theory laden. Well, maybe not all facts, but once facts are strung together in explanations and/or narratives theory is employed. From time to time, these explanations and/or narratives are also paradigm and/or ideologically laden. When investigating a problem, whether it is a disciplinary or interdisciplinary inquiry, the researcher needs to be aware of the different paradigms and/or ideologies within the field. Analysis of the issues at hand requires awareness not only of the information but of the organizing ideas. The insights of one school of thought within a discipline are mistakes from another perspective within the discipline. These controversies over facts and theories make up much of the discussions within academic life. Interdisciplinary researchers should not only be in the business of comparing conflicting insights but competing ideologies. Insights cannot be understood without placing them in the context of the diverging outlooks within and between disciplines.
Interdisciplinarians have to work their way through the mine field of disciplinary disagreements. At times, when addressing an interdisciplinary question the common ground between the disciplines can be created and a single integration forged. On other occasions, say as when a social constructivist encounters a biological determinist, incommensurability rather than common ground are likely. Not infrequently, given the divergent ideologies and paradigms around, there may be more than one equally good integration possible. It would then be the responsibility of the interdisciplinary investigators to report all these ideologically grounded integrated perspectives on the problem at hand.
The recognition of the plurality of equally good explanations is an example of the scientific concept of the underdetermination of theory by evidence. As philosopher Paul Klee explains, there can be “a case of two incompatible theories each consistent with all actual and possible observational evidence.” It is then said that “the evidence cannot by itself determine that some one of the…competing theories is the correct one” (Klee, 1997, p. 66). “Empiricists argue,” Peter Godfrey-Smith reports, “that there will always be a range of alternative theories compatible with all our evidence. So we can never have good empirical grounds for choosing one of these theories over others” (Godfrey-Smith, 2003, p. 220).
Given that evidence itself cannot always determine which is the best explanation, one question arises as to whether or not the work of the interdisciplinary investigation is done when all the possible integrations of the question are noted. If the task of the interdisciplinarian is to attempt to unify the various possible integrations, there are epistemological problems that accompany this process. For one, the interdisciplinarian is likely to have his or her own ideological commitments and methodological criteria, and they play a part in the analysis. There is, of course, no completely neutral observer. There are times when the integration of different perspectives will result, and other times when different paradigms will produce competing theories. In a world of plural outlooks, this alternation between single and multiple solutions to the same problem is the everyday stuff of academic life. Given the multiplicity of paradigms, perspectives and ideologies within disciplines, sub-disciplines and across the three liberal arts academic cultures, in order to complete their investigations, interdisciplinary studies needs to explore the epistemological similarities and differences between these various outlooks, to clarify what divides and what interconnects them. The basic task of interdisciplinary studies to rigorously compare insights and perspectives of different disciplines cannot be finished without analyzing ideologies as well as insights. If we are ever going to be able to get back to seeking the broader understanding of the human condition, we need to be able to face irreconcilable plural perspectives without falling back on an empty relativism.
Literary Studies
The academic discipline of English, when it became professionalized, was, according to Robert Scholes, “structured by an invidious binary opposition between writing teachers and literary scholars” (Scholes, 1998, p. 35). My focus will be on literary studies and the study of literary texts, which is clearly part of the humanities. Joe Moran believes that “literature is about everything – love, sex, friendship, family relationships, aging, death, social and historical change….In short, it is about life in all its diversity” (Moran, 2002, p. 21). The distinguished literary scholar, M.H. Abrams, sees “the site of literature” as “the human world, and a work of literature is the product of a purposive human author addressing human recipients in an environing reality” (Abrams, 1997, p. 133). “English,” Terry Eagleton writes, “was an arena in which the most fundamental questions of human existence…were thrown into vivid relief and made the object of most intensive scrutiny” (Eagleton, 1996, p. 27).
Yet for all the focus on humanity in all its diversity, literary study is a conceptually and ideologically divided field. The study of literature and related phenomenon is its central focus. Literature departments, Gerald Graff states, are “aggregates arranged to cover an array of historical and generic literary fields” (Graff, 1987, p. 6). How to bring the various parts of the discipline together has been problematic. In discussing the discipline of English, literary scholar Harold Rosen writes: “When we inspect the practices which cluster together uncomfortably under its banner, they appear so diverse, contradictory, arbitrary and random as to defy analysis and explanation” (Rosen, 1981, p. 5). Cultural studies guru, Richard Hoggart, proclaims: “there is no recognizable discipline of ‘English’, no genuine whole, but only a set of contrived frontiers and selected approaches” ( Hoggart, 1982, p. 125). “The present crisis in the field of literary studies,” Terry Eagleton writes, “is at root a crisis in the definition of the subject itself.” Eagleton notes that there is a “lack of methodological unity in literary studies” and “not all these methods are mutually compatible” (Eagleton, 1996, pp. 186, 172).
Marjorie Garber traces the successive trends in twentieth century writing on literature: “in the course of the past century of literary study, philology and editing have given way to literary history; then to ‘character criticism’ and psychology; then to close reading and the pursuit of images and themes; then to archetypal criticism; then to philosophical and psychoanalytic theory, then to historicism and an emphasis on socially and culturally produced categories…; and now once again to philology and editing…as well as to appreciation…and value” (Garber, 2004, p. 65). M. H. Abrams lists various approaches to studying literature in the last century, including the New Criticism, archetypal theory, phenomenological theory, structuralism, reader-response, reception theory, semiotics, speech-act theory, postmodernism, deconstruction, Lacanianism, and neo-Marxism (Abrams, 1997, pp. 132-133). Eagleton views the “story of modern literary theory” as “a flight…into a seemingly endless range of alternatives” (Eagleton, 1996, p. 171).
With this plethora of disciplinary approaches, it should not be surprising that Gerald Graff maintains that “academic literary studies…is not a coherent cultural tradition, but a series of conflicts that have remained unresolved, unacknowledged, and assumed to be outside the proper sphere of literary education” (Graff, 1987, p. 15). These theoretic conflicts engender problems in communication. Abrams again: as a result of the “new intellectual and cultural ethos in the faculties of English….criticism is often at a loss to discover enough common ground in assumptions and vocabulary, and in the standards of what counts as evidence for an assertion, to support profitable – or sometimes even mutually intelligible – discussion” (Abrams, 1997, p. 131). The ideological, methodological and evidentiary divisions in biology are present in literary studies.
Terry Eagleton goes as far as to claim: “Literature…is an ideology.” What he means is that in “our own time literature has become effectively identical with the opposite of analytic thought and conceptual enquiry: whereas scientists, philosophers and political theorists are saddled with these drably discursive pursuits, students of literature occupy the more prized territory of feeling an experience.” As such, literature is “admirably well-fitted to carry through the ideological task which religion left off” (Eagleton, 1996, pp. 19, 22). If Eagleton’s claims are to be affirmed, literary studies not only has ideological, paradigm and evidential conflicts that divide the discipline, but the ideological claims of literary studies are in contrast to the academic cultures of science and social science. Ideological pluralism, if it does not reign in academia, is certainly prominent and pervasive. For the interdisciplinarian, this means that the common ground required for integration within a subject area, between disciplines and across academic cultures is often lacking. Interdisciplinary studies functions within a paradoxical reality, and must recognize that disciplinary patterns create a contradictory intellectual environment. Interdisciplinary theory ignores the evidence of such realities at its own peril.
Psychology
While there is consensus that biology is the science of life, and English studies writing and literature, finding agreement on the scope and definition of psychology is more difficult. “At various times in history,” B. R. Hergenhahn writes, “psychology has been defined as the study of the psyche or the mind, of the spirit, of consciousness, and more recently as the study of, or the science of behavior….Clearly, no single definition of psychology” can account for all that American psychologists do. “It seems best to say simply that psychology is defined by the professional activities of psychologists” (Hergenhahn, 2000, p. 1.). A good d