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To the Editor:
Disciplines still matter. But so too do interdisciplines (“Why the Disciplines Still Matter,”
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To the Editor:
Disciplines still matter. But so too do interdisciplines (“Why the Disciplines Still Matter,” The Chronicle, May 27). We err in seeing them as opposed to or as alternatives to each other. Conceptually and substantively, interdisciplinarity is inseparable from the making of modern disciplines in the transformations of knowledge and higher education in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
While my friend Jerry Jacobs is right to criticize certain conceptions of interdisciplinarity and their exaggerations, he runs the risk of throwing out the proverbial baby with the bath water. His commentary provides a number of warning signs, beginning with his first words: “these days.” Interdisciplinarity is not new. Look at the pages of The Chronicle since the 1990s, and other evidence throughout the twentieth century. Research centers staffed by persons trained in different fields are not new. Although they predate that time, they were made famous during and after the Second World War. But mentioning their number also raises the tricky question of what is interdisciplinary as opposed to cross- or multidisciplinary? About that Mr. Jacobs is silent.
I miss any effort to place either disciplines or interdisciplines in a larger context of history or the sociology of knowledge. Disciplines are dynamic. Interdisciplines are dangerous. Yet the story, as Mr. Jacobs hints, is more interesting and important.
Mr. Jacobs’s conception of interdisciplinarity is at once too narrow and too expansive. So, too, are his conclusions. Commentators’ postings voice the same misconceptions, repeating fallacies and myths, hopes and fears, never stopping to define what they mean by interdisciplinarity.
Some of Mr. Jacobs’s points run counter to his central arguments. These include his noting the ease and speed of communication across fields and what he terms the “dynamism” and “ubiquity” of “basic liberal-arts disciplines.” Are such notions compelling at a time in which the liberal arts are so severely challenged? Is ubiquity a structural artifact? These questions must be faced in a discussion of disciplines “still matter.”
At the same time, communication and dynamism promote cross-, multi-, and interdisciplinarity. In this dynamism, in part, lies the ground where interdisciplines develop, and disciplines and interdisciplines meet. We need to see them in relationship.
Indiscriminate interdisciplinarity, rooted in unfounded exaggeration and improbable expectations, cries out for criticism. It is common. It damages scholarship in general, careful approaches to interdisciplinarity, and grounded efforts to answer pressing questions of theory and application. It creates expectations that go unfulfilled. Interdisciplinarity seldom receives the constructive criticism it needs from either proponents or opponents.
Harvey J. Graff
Professor of English and History
Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio
