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Pathways of Interdisciplinary CognitionAuthor(s): Svetlana NikitinaSource: Cognition and Instruction, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2005), pp. 389-425Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3568096 .Accessed: 25/01/2011 23:42

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COGNITION AND INSTRUCTION, 23(3), 389-425 Copyright ? 2005, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Pathways of Interdisciplinary Cognition

Svetlana Nikitina Worcester Polytechnic Institute

In this article, I propose that at the juncture of disciplines, the mind is involved in at least 3 cognitive activities: overcoming internal monologism or monodisciplinarity, attaining provisional integration, and questioning the integration as necessarily par- tial. This claim is supported by interview data I collected primarily from faculty involved in the development and teaching of interdisciplinary courses in programs in-

cluding the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics, Swarthmore College's Interpretation Theory, and the NEXA Program at San Francisco State University. I

suggest that interdisciplinary thinking is fundamentally similar to dialogical ex-

changes occurring in language and in collaborative activities in which

epistemological positions are bartered. Bakhtin's (1981) theory of dialogic under-

standing and subsequent linguistic theories of conceptual metaphor and blending serve as a constructive theoretical framework for the understanding of interdisciplinary cognition. Viewing disciplines broadly as languages, epistemologies, and collaborative practices helps uncover some underlying cognitive mechanisms that deserve further investigation.

Are there educational institutions left in this country that do not engage in interdis-

ciplinary work? Is the spread of interdisciplinary programs just a fad or a reflection of a changing pattern of knowledge production? If ubiquity of interdisciplinary learning and teaching is indicative of an important intellectual shift, what does it

represent cognitively? What kind of cognitive process is involved in interdisciplinary work? Is it something unique and sui generis, or does interdisciplinary thought follow some basic cognitive pathways involved in other intellectual activities? These questions served as a staring point for this investigation.

When one thinks of interdisciplinary insight, one typically thinks of it as an in- stantaneous flash of imagination that intuitively and inseparably blends ideas and creates a striking new synthesis. However, this image of different perspectives

Requests for reprints should be sent to Svetlana Nikitina, Department of Humanities and Art, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 30 Russell Road, Wellesley, MA 02482. E-mail: [email protected]

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coming seamlessly together in a flash is often far from the reality of daily efforts to make many disciplinary ends meet. In reality, interdisciplinary thought goes through a complicated chain of operations before it reaches (if it happens) a satisfactory synthesis. This process remains little explored and understood, as few studies have looked at individual thinking in interdisciplinary classrooms in a sustained and systematic way. What are the cognitive operations in which an interdisciplinary mind engages on the path toward the integration of disciplinary ideas? To what extent is interdisciplinary thinking a unique process, and in what way does it resemble other forms of collaboration, communication, and knowledge sharing that take place in any good classroom, organization, or conversation? This article is a modest attempt to parse this complex phenomenon of interdisciplinary cognition and to propose a theoretical framework in which to consider it in the future.

Thus, my goal is to accomplish three things: (a) to identify recurrent mental moves that university instructors go through when they develop or teach interdisciplinary courses regardless of their topic or disciplinary background; (b) to put forth a hypothesis (to be further substantiated by new empirical studies) that these processes may be fundamentally similar to our common linguistic and communicative behaviors, which happen to be dialogic in their nature; and (c) to propose that dialogic behaviors, so explicit in interdisciplinary work, form the basis of our cognition in general. To achieve its goal, in this study of interdisciplinary cognition, I centered on the description of the three major elements or moves in the interdisciplinary thought. These include (a) overcoming monodisciplinarity; (b) achieve- ment of provisional integration, and (c) critical questioning of such integration. Each of these moves in turn involves a host of activities associated with it, some of which I outline here, whereas others remain to be captured in future research.

RESEARCH STUDY AND DATA COLLECTION

This study of interdisciplinary cognition is part of a larger 3-year Harvard Interdis- ciplinary Study examining exemplary practices of interdisciplinary work at the collegiate, precollegiate, and professional levels. The overarching goal of the larger project is the empirical investigation of the psychological, organizational, pedagogical, and epistemological aspects of interdisciplinary work.1

The inquiry into interdisciplinary cognition I present here relies on a collegiate sample of interdisciplinary programs including the NEXA Program (San Fran- cisco State University [SFSU]), Interpretation Theory (Swarthmore College), Center for Bioethics (University of Pennsylvania), and the Human Biology Pro-

1Harvard's Interdisciplinary Study is carried out at Project Zero, a research branch of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and is supported through funding from Atlantic Philanthropies.

INTERDISCIPLINARY COGNITION 391

gram (Stanford University).2 These programs and institutions have been selected based on the following criteria:

1. Existence of the program for at least 5 years. 2. Solid commitment to doing interdisciplinary work stated in the mission or

articulated by key personnel. 3. Continuity in direction and execution of the program. 4. Explicit pedagogy and assessment criteria designed to support interdisci-

plinary learning. 5. Appreciation of the complexity of the interdisciplinary work (on a cogni-

tive, institutional, and pedagogical level) and continued critical questioning and development of the program.

Although meeting these general criteria, programs differed substantially in their organizational structures, forms of collaboration, and intellectual focus. The NEXA Program (NEXA), for example, has been set up with a distinct mission to

promote dialogue between the "two cultures" (Snow, 1959). This goal is realized

through a series of courses, which are team taught by a scientist and a humanist (with a few exceptions). The Interpretation Theory (IT) concentration at Swarthmore College pursues as its goal the deliberate and sustained examination of the act of interpretation itself represented in various modes of inquiry and hermeneutic traditions. It offers capstone seminars, which are also team taught by rep- resentatives of the two disciplines, mostly in the humanities and the social sciences, with recent forays into computer science and biology. Courses at the Center for Bioethics at University of Pennsylvania (Bioethics), on the other hand, are typically taught by one instructor (a sociologist or a philosopher) who brings together biomedical, ethical, anthropological, and legal thought to inform the issues of human cloning, organ transplantation, and genetic engineering. The uniqueness of each program in terms of its organization and disciplinary focus was not at all a

handicap for this study. On the contrary, it provided an opportunity to ask whether the cognitive pathways of participants would differ as a function of different disci-

plinary backgrounds or the organization of the program. Data collection took place during one research visit to selected colleges in the

fall of 2002. Two researchers (including myself) conducted one interview with each faculty and student participant in the course of a 3- to 4-day visit to each site. Visits also included classroom observations, meetings with program administra- tors, and collection of samples of student work. In total, 30 faculty participants and 28 students were interviewed at all specified institutions. Overall, 10 classroom

2Although I did not specifically use the data from Stanford University (Human Biology Program) in this writing for reasons of space and focus, it has richly informed general thinking about the cognitive processes and the larger study of interdisciplinary pedagogy.

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observations took place including observation of one joint grading session with two faculty members. Faculty publications yielded additional data for analysis. I provide the list of key informants in Appendix A as the Core Research Participants table for ease of orientation. Not all interviews and not all programs were used to the same degree, as I selected interviews that contained extended descriptions and reflections on the evolution in participants' thinking.

Interviews with faculty and students lasted on average between 1 and 2 hr and centered on questions related to (a) the organization of the interdisciplinary programs, (b) teaching that goes on in the interdisciplinary settings, and (c) the cognitive impacts of interdisciplinary learning or collaboration. I provide a more detailed list of these three sets of questions in Appendix B.

Descriptions of faculty collaborations as well as of the individual thought process for integrating the different disciplinary perspectives (in which bridges were attempted, crumbled, tried again, tested in front of students, and a new way of thinking and teaching emerged) were found to be the most useful data. It was help- ful that most collaborations were long-term (lasting from several months to several years), giving participants time to take stock and develop a more objective perspective on what took place. Still, reliance of this research primarily on self-reflection and retrospective self-reporting naturally raises methodological concerns, which I share. The way in which this study attempted to secure some validity for its preliminary conclusions was through triangulation of findings across (a) a variety of programs with different disciplinary orientations and organizational structures, (b) a range of instructors from different departments who worked together as teaching partners, and (c) including two students' testimonies to shed light on the courses offered by faculty members.3

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

This study of a multistep process of interdisciplinary cognition is guided by a theoretical premise that there exists an important similarity-and possibly a fundamental connection!-between the interdisciplinary efforts and other mental operations that involve internal or external dialogue such as metaphoric thought, collaborative work, and other forms of negotiating of differences and merging of ideas. Thus, be- sides a descriptive role, this study is also an attempt as systematization. The people involved in this study attempt to find a cogent theoretical frame, which would link interdisciplinary cognition with cognition in general, and they find this link in the dialogical tendency of the mind of humans as described in the work of psycholin- guists, educational theorists, and other scholars.

3Student interviews were not nearly as numerous and are therefore used only as support data for triangulation of instructor's experiences.


What helped establish the connection between interdisciplinary and general cognition was the rather broad definition of discipline entertained both by the researchers and the research participants in this study. Both the researchers and the

participants used the word discipline in at least three overlapping meanings: (a) discipline as culture, referring to an academic or department affiliation or to a collaboration of people within the institutional structure; (b) discipline as epistemology, referring to shared methodological tools and ways of knowing; and (c) disci-

pline as language, referring to communication that uses a similar language or

symbol system. The interview protocol itself, as outlined previously, prompted participants to consider all three aspects of interdisciplinary work-organizational, epistemological, and cognitive. Table 1 summarizes the three bodies of literature and sets of terminology that can inform the understanding of interdisciplinary cognition.

TABLE 1 Multiple Sources of Theory and Terminology That Can Inform

the Understanding Interdisciplinary Thinking at Different Levels

Understanding of Discipline Sources of Theory Terminology Used

Discipline as language Interdisciplinary exchange is

viewed as interactivity of Voices Utterances Discourses Semiotic systems Symbols Worldviews

Ideologies Discipline as epistemology

Interdisciplinary exchange is viewed as interactivity of

Methodologies Belief systems Validation criteria

Ways of knowing Theory and practice Worldviews

Ideologies Discipline as culture

Interdisciplinary exchange is viewed as interaction of

Teaching partners Departments Organizational structures Academic cultures

Cognitive linguistics Literary theory Cultural studies

Cognition studies

Educational theory Philosophy

Studies of disciplinary and

interdisciplinarity education

Education and educational administration frameworks

Organizational development Anthropology Sociology

Dialogue/dialogic Conceptual blending

Metaphor Discourse

Pidgins, creoles Rival hypothesis

Semiotic communities

Metalanguage

Distributed cognition Epistemologies Trading zones

Boundary crossing Domain specific cognition

Epistemic practice Dialogic classroom

Inquiry Rival hypothesis Activity theory

Communities of practice Cultures Conflicts

Shared practice Knowledge-sharing

Peer learning

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Conceiving of a discipline or "an interdiscipline" in such broad terms helped me see the relevance of the organizational and educational theories of "communities of practice" and linguistic theories of "conceptual blending" as potential parallels to interdisciplinary thought offering a theoretical framework of explanatory power. The closest parallels seemed to be offered by the linguistic theories of Bakhtin (1981), Vygotsky (1963, 1978), and Lakoff and Johnson (1980) as well as of Fauconnier and Turner (1994, 2002), all of which target individual cognition at its fundamental level. Thus, terminology and concepts that anchor such theories were borrowed liberally.

Organizational and educational theories, however, provided a useful support, too. Viewing interdisciplinary work as collaboration among people, for example, makes some ethnographic, anthropological, or organizational frameworks particularly insightful. Wells (2001a, 2001b, 2001c, 2002); Wertsch (1998); Mercer (2002); Engestrom, Engestrom, and Karkkainen (1995); Engestrom, Engestrom, and Sunito (2002); Duschl (1990); and Duschl and Hamilton (1992) have all written about the importance of collaborative inquiry and joint activity as the organizing point of learning. A proponent of "cultural historical activity theory," for example, Wells and Claxton (2002) wrote about the value of "developing dialogues" in which "... individual investigations are ... embedded within a collaborative framework of joint activity and the dialogue of knowledge building within the community as a whole" (p. 201). Likewise, Engestrom et al. (2002) recognized the collaborative and dialogic nature of knowledge and "the power of multi-voicedness" (p. 211) in their "activity theory" framework.

In addition to this literature, organizational theories also emphasize the key role of the communities of practice in successful businesses. Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder (2002) defined communities of practice as groups of people who over time develop "a tacit understanding that they share" and "a body of common knowledge, practices, and approaches" (p. 5). Thus, organizational theorists make a powerful case for "knowledge as social as well as individual" (Wenger et al., 2002, p. 10). Some of them have gone even further in their emphasis on the crucial role of dialogue and multivoicedness in business and education. They have suggested that argument, conflict, debate, and the use of rival hypotheses is what students or working teams need to achieve excellence. Graff (1992, 2003) and Flower, Long, and Higgins (2000) have all argued that institutions have to understand "the cen- trality of controversy to learning" (Graff, 2003, p. 12) and teaching. Echoing organizational and activity theorists, Graff (2003), for example, insisted on "tapping ... into students' youthful argument cultures, which are not as far removed as they look from public forms of argument" (p. 155). Flower (2000) championed the view that "learning to rival" is at the foundation of genuine learning. Following the view of classical rhetoric, Flower (2001) regarded conflict as a positive "communal practice that leads to the creation of meaning" (p. 31).

Literature in which disciplines are viewed as epistemologies can also be help- ful in lending insight into the cognitive paths of people involved in interdisci-


plinary work. Such literature explores rules of exchange that govern the

epistemological trade. Galison (1997), for instance, described the interaction between the different cultures of physics-experimental, theoretical, and instru- mental-as the process of creation of "trading zones," "border languages" or "pidgins" to allow for "characteristic forms of argumentation" to evolve "around specific practices" (p. 806). Literature on disciplinary education (Duschl, 1990; Gardner, 2000; Palmer, 2001) has emphasized the value of bringing into subject area learning methodological and epistemological perspectives from other disci-

plines. Duschl (1992), for example, argued for bringing into science

"epistemological metaknowledge" (p. 489), which some participants in this

study attempt to do in their teaching of science.

Experts on interdisciplinary education (Klein, 1990; Klein & Doty, 1994; Kocklemans, 1979; Lattuca, 2001; Newell, 1998) have developed sophisticated categorizations of the different forms of disciplinary exchange based on how different methodologies are linked, what is being "traded" in "multi-disciplinary," "transdisciplinary," "meta-disciplinary," and "interdisciplinary"4 transactions. Al-

though one might expect this literature to provide an important theoretical guide for the study of interdisciplinary cognition, such a guide is generally still lacking. Empirical studies of interdisciplinary thought on the individual level have largely remained outside of the scope of this literature. So far, it has addressed the issue

mostly by generating descriptive lists of thinking dispositions such as "flexibility, patience, resilience, sensitivity to others, risk-taking" (Klein, 1990, p. 183). Sum-

marizing her analysis of such studies, Klein (1990) observed that the empirical studies and thick descriptions of "the complex actuality of doing interdisciplinary work" (p. 184) are generally underrepresented. An exception may be Newell's

(1998) study (Klein & Doty, 1994) of interdisciplinary pedagogy, which attempted to describe the interdisciplinary process5 itself. Although useful for this study, it does not provide a theoretical framework beyond these observations. In this inves-

tigation, I hoped to take a step in that direction. What arguably yields the deepest understanding of the workings of the mind

and its cognitive operations is the view of the discipline as a language in the broad sense of the word. Focus on individual cognitive transformation rather than on or-

ganizational collaboration or teaching practice makes semiotic shifts and symbol exchange a promising parallel to what goes on in interdisciplinary thinking. Also, language here signifies more than the rules of grammar and syntax-rather, it is a carrier of belief systems and a representation of ideological, disciplinary, and per-

4This literature has defined interdisciplinary work (and I subscribe to this definition) as more than a simple aggregation of epistemologies but rather their active and transformative interaction (Boix Mansilla, Miller, & Gardner, 2000; Gardner, 2000; Klein, 1990; Kocklemans, 1979). Two elements, in this view, are crucial for interdisciplinary efforts: (a) deep disciplinary knowledge and (b) its substantive exchange. All programs and all participants profiled in this study were carefully selected to meet both of these criteria.

5Newell's (1998) focus was primarily an interdisciplinary classroom practice.

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sonal positions. Bakhtin (1981), Vygotsky (1963, 1978), Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Lakoff (1993), and Fauconnier and Turner (1994, 2002) have all written extensively on how different utterances, ideological platforms, and symbols inter- act in the flow of natural speech and what the underlying mechanism of their exchange might be.

Bakhtin's (1981) writings on dialogic imagination are particularly useful as his views on dialogue closely capture the two core features of interdisciplinary work: (a) its rootedness in deep disciplinary knowledge (or individual voice) and (b) the substantive exchange and transformation of this voice or disciplinary perspective in the course of interaction. Bakhtin described the dialogic mind as the mind that attains "polyglot consciousness" (p. 274). Bakhtin's view of language evolution and the evolution of literary genres describes the growing ability of the mind in the cultural history to overcome monologic tendencies, to achieve "heteroglossia and multi-languagedness" (p. 274) in which several ideas or disciplinary inputs are sustained in a dialectic and nonrelativistic way.

This conception seems to suggest a constructive platform from which to view interdisciplinary cognition. In the light of Bakhtin's (1981) theory, overcoming monodisciplinarity may be seen as similar to overcoming monologic thinking. Bakhtin's descriptions of dialogue run parallel to our participants' reports of the interdisciplinary synthesis they achieved, expressed as balancing among several perspectives without abandoning one's core positions. Bakhtin's terminology (dialogue, dialogic, monoglossia, and heteroglossia) and its reference to internal cognitive operations make it a natural choice as vocabulary to describe epistemologically multivoiced interdisciplinary thinking. Bakhtin's concepts and notions (dialogic, multivoiced, collaborative) are also profitably applied by educational and organizational theorists (see previously) to describe foundational values in classroom or business practices. For example, Sidorkin (1992), Galin and Latchaw (1998), Wells (2002), Engestrom et al. (1995), Engestrom et al. (2002), and Mercer (2002) have constructively built on Bakhtin's and Vygotsky's (1963, 1978) ideas on the relation "between the social and the psychological uses of language" to conceive classrooms in which one can "cultivate the polyphony of student voices and backgrounds and use language as a means for thinking collec- tively" (Mercer, 2002, p. 153).

Writings by cognitive linguists Lakoff and Johnson (1980) on the metaphoric structure of cognition and by Turner (1996, 2001) and Fauconnier and Turner (1994, 2002) on conceptual blending have been built on the Bakhtinian notion of dialogue and heteroglossia and provide further weight to Bakhtin's (1981) theory by tapping language itself. Lakoff and Johnson (1980), for example, described humans' ordinary conceptual system as "fundamentally metaphorical in nature" in the sense that we understand "one kind of thing in terms of another" (p. 5). Similar to Bakhtin, Lakoff (1993) thought of metaphor not just as a linguistic phenomenon but as a defining feature of thought: "The locus of metaphor


is not in language at all but in the way we conceptualize one mental domain in terms of another. The general theory of metaphor is given by characterizing such cross-domain mappings" (p. 203). Lakoff and Johnson (1980), followed by other cognitive scientists, posited that we conceptualize abstract notions by "cross-mapping" them on to concrete experiences. For example, we routinely represent ideas as substances ("I am going to pieces"), time as matter ("living on borrowed time," "I lost a lot of time"), mental processes as mechanical actions

("grinding out the solution"), and emotional states as upward or downward movement ("feeling down," "sinking fast," "peak of health"). This kind of

dialogic cross-mapping or substitution takes place not only in language or literature but in science as well. Writing about the use of metaphor in science, Brown (2003), for example, asserted that the scientist "understands complex systems in nature in terms of conceptual frameworks derived from experiential gestalts, ways of organizing experience into a structured form" (p. 12). Cognitive scientists Fauconnier and Turner (2002), whose theory of conceptual blends fluidly builds on the work of Lakoff and Johnson (1980), described that the central ac-

tivity of our "backstage cognition" is conceptual blending, by which they mean

fusing in everyday speech and thought of "at least two influences" or "contribut-

ing spaces." These two different contributions or concepts get cross-mapped with the result that a new space or meaning emerges. A linguistic example of this might be the emergence of the notion of incompetence from blending the

concepts a surgeon and a butcher in the phrase "this surgeon is a butcher." Educators, too, have also been drawing for a long time on metaphor, conceptual

models, and maps as "aids to cognition" and as a way to explore the unknown in terms of the known (Moreno & Mayer, 1999). Remarkable similarities can be no- ticed both in terminology and in substance between the descriptions of psycholin- guists, educational theorists, and interdisciplinarity experts despite their different areas of focus.

With all of the useful parallelism between language behaviors and interdisci-

plinary work, however, the psycholinguistic frameworks need to be applied with caution as an ambient, not a task, light. Voices in dialogue, words, or even ideolo-

gies colliding in the literary text are not disciplines with their epistemological depth and sophisticated methodologies, which take years of concerted study. Inter-

disciplinary work, although similar in fundamental ways to other forms of collaborative or linguistic activity, has important distinctions. Bakhtin's (1981) insight about human thought as evolving toward greater dialogicity, for example, referred to cognition as distributed in historic time and linked to the evolution of national

languages that went from being "deaf to each other" in ancient Greece and Rome to becoming irreversibly mixed in Renaissance Europe. This historic insight cannot be transferred to the development of knowledge systems, which seemed to

grow with time toward greater specialization rather than the reverse. Interdisciplin- ary thought may be a case of conceptual blending on a large epistemic (rather than

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linguistic) scale, with unique features of its own that need to be explored further. Interdisciplinary work perhaps involves greater effort and is more visible as compared to subtle backstage activities of a linguistic nature. As such, it may lend itself to easier study and may eventually prove useful in validating, elaborating, or sub- stantiating psycholinguistic theories. Only further research into the nature of interdisciplinary cognition can show if a fundamental causal link exists between conceptual blending and epistemological exchanges across disciplines.

The overlap between the cultural, epistemological, and linguistic perspectives on interdisciplinary work is hard to overlook (see Table 1). All three levels of interpretation reveal the core underlying process of evolving dialogization and a growing ability of the mind to sustain equilibrium between different inputs.

METHOD

Focus on the thinking process and its evolution prompted the method for this study. The bulk of data comes from personal interviews with university faculty6 who re- flect on their interdisciplinary collaboration either with another faculty member (from another department) or with another discipline. As a result of this focus on individual cognition, participant descriptions of their thought processes in the interviews were the primary source of analysis and systematization.

To establish recurrent patterns and stages in interdisciplinary thought, interviews with scholars engaged in interdisciplinary teaching were subject to rigorous analysis and coding. An example of such an analysis is presented in Vignette 1 (see Table 2) representing how a philosopher, Don Provence, and a physicist, John Burke, at SFSU go through the process of avid learning about each other's position (demonologization), uncovering their own disciplinary assumptions and attempting a merger (integration) although aware of the fact that it will not be "definitive" (questioning integration).

To arrive at this parsing of data, researchers subjected interview material to several coding passes. The first coding pass targeted such broad categories as "definitions of interdisciplinary work," "cognitive challenges of interdisciplinary work," "moments of integration," "benefits of interdisciplinary learning," and so forth. Close attention was paid to descriptions of collaborations among faculty in which participants detailed how specifically their thinking has changed over the course of collaboration. Once these general categories were established, the second coding pass involved analysis of specific cognitive moves. Subcategories such as "developing appreciation," "admitting ignorance and need for learning," and "rejecting integration as final," were established. Attention was paid also to the sequence of

6Accounts of collaborative efforts and student interview data are only used as support data to help validate instructors' personal reflections and classroom observations.

TABLE 2 Evolution of the Understanding of Light and Color

From Monodisciplinary to Interdisciplinary

Vignette I

John Burke Physics and Astronomy Professor, NEXA Program

San Francisco State University

My five-year experience of teaching Reality in the New Physics with Don is an example of having the two minds approach the same subject from different directions. It was a marvelous experience for me of finding out how good philosophers are at pinning weak arguments. [Appreciation of alternative disciplinary views]. Being a

physicist, I've got lots of things in my head that are obvious, except of course they aren't. Don and I would get to this question of reality, which philosophers basically don't want to talk about, the reality of the universe. So I would come on and just without thinking proceed as if something were obvious. What is mass? Isn't energy the real stuff? Don was picking up on how does the physicist actually look at these things. And the answer to that is it's sort of a

grubby-hands-on-whatever-works method of trying to figure out what's going on in the universe. We, physicists, use color, for

example, in a very sloppy way. [Identification of strengths and weaknesses in disciplinary perspectives]. We talk about red shifts and blue shifts, red and blue as if that meant wavelength of light. It took Don three years to get to see the sense of the conclusion [of the book on colora] that color is an illusion, albeit a well-founded illusion. And then after he did, he said, "Yeah, but I don't accept that!" Had another two years of that. [Choosing to accept or reject a different disciplinary perspective]. Why do philosophers care about color? And the historical answer is, it seems to be a given truth about the world.

We found out pretty quickly that philosophy has really ceased in large measure to be informed by the physical sciences. So, Don was learning the physics, and I was realizing that a direct empirical correlation turns out to be a falsehood about the world. I was exposed to these experiments that show, here are two wildly different spectra of light that produce precisely the same color experience. That basically smashes the idea that color is directly connected to the physical attributes of what is coming in. It was to be viewed as some sort of cooperative things between brains and the world. We went for the ferment. The color perception is a combination of the light that enters the eye and what the brain does with it. [Emergence of a hybrid understanding of assimilative type]. We found at the end of the five years we could bring the students a lot further along toward the goals of the class, because we had come further along.

Overcoming monodisciplinarity: Recognizing limits in

disciplinary perspectives

Integration: Seeking an integrated view of the issue

(continued)

399

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TABLE 2 (Continued)

In order to hope for a melding of the ways of thinking, you just sort of have to put it out a bit explicitly what constitutes the way a

philosopher approaches a problem? [Appreciation of alternative views]. What constitutes the way a physicist approaches a problem? If that were all we did, it'd be a dullsville course. The notion that somehow there is a war between the humanities and the sciences is, I think, disastrous. [Rejection of monologism, commitment to

demonologization]. I used to think, "Physics is God." I got disabused of that idea pretty quickly. On the other hand, I do not uphold a point of view that science is just one more story. Newton's theory wasn't the last word, but Newton's story did put men on the moon within centimeters of where the predictions said they would go. Newton's

story gives you very, very precise predictions of where an asteroid will be a hundred years later. And as of yet, there is no existing observation inconsistent with Einstein's theory of general relativity. Humanists and scientists need to ask together: What is color? What's real stuff? What is time? What is consciousness? Consciousness isn't

physics, it's not philosophy, but it's something we can both say what we think about it. So you actually see the two methods, the two

approaches coming together and fermenting, neither one being definitive. [Rejection of provisional integration as final].

Sustaining dialogue: Questioning dominance of any one field while pressing for a better joint understanding

aGilbert, for example, insists on using metaphors in his teaching of biology, which is richly informed

by history of science and cultural studies perspectives. Such notions as sperm, egg, and fertilization, for

example, are offered to students loaded with cultural and mythological meaning. "You have the heroic

sperm, which really follows the myth of the hero very well, you can show alternative stories, you can deconstruct this one and show its social background," he describes. However, he also points out the limits of such literary analogy and cultural metaphor in conveying the biological reality, citing the different

epistemological goals of the two kinds of discourse. "Biologically, a sperm is not a military hero; a sperm is not the victor. To see the sperm as active and the egg as passive is biochemically incorrect." To explore how metaphor is used in the science versus the humanities classroom and especially what uses it is put to in interdisciplinary environments would be a fascinating topic for future empirical study.

different cognitive moves, although no specific pattern here was conclusively established. As can be seen from Vignette 1 (Table 2), which shows the final coding stage of the interview, coding could be tricky and individual stages hard to isolate.

Participants often included the description of their appreciative stance

(demonologization) into their portrayal of a tentative merger of ideas or of its questioning. In one case, an interviewee confessed failure to achieve satisfactory inte-

gration but showed commitment to both continued questioning of synthesis and to

demonologization. Still, all 11 participants included in this article (100%) pointed to demonologization efforts in their work (some several times during the inter-

view), 8 interviewees (73%) described their aspiration for some kind of synthesis or productive merger (even if it failed to come about this time), and 10 participants (91%) talked about their need to strive for a better resolution of differences. Vi-

gnettes 2 and 3 (Appendix C and D) provide additional examples of the data and the coding method.


OVERCOMING MONODISCIPLINARITY

We had the discussions on science and religion, science and creationism. When you ask somebody, "Why is it you believe that the earth is not four and a half billion years old?"-they would talk about faith. "What does faith mean to you?" I think the student really, really considered for the first time

something that he had never had the freedom to do before. Then he said, "I know at such a profound level." And I had to stop and try to consider what that must feel like. Did the student leave this class in ignorance? No. The student considered. It didn't shake or alter his belief, but it gave the student a chance to understand why I, a scientist, believe something. I can think of in- stances with my colleagues in the humanities capitulating to me saying, " I will tell you a story and then Ray [Pestrong] will tell you how it really is." There is often a capitulation to the science. (Ray Pestrong, NEXA instructor and professor of Geosciences at SFSU)

The first stop on the way toward interdisciplinary synthesis of ideas, according to

participants' interviews, seems to be overcoming a monodisciplinary perspective. This is exemplified linguistically in the theories developed by Bakhtin (1981), Lakoff and Johnson (1980), and others and is practically similar to the first steps of

learning a foreign language. All 11 participants (100%) we interviewed signaled that they came to realize

early in their interdisciplinary process that they needed to make a move from sin-

gle-language existence (anchored in one discipline) to a polyglot life. The way they did it differed from participant to participant, but involved in one form or another (a) the development of an appreciation of alternative disciplinary views; (b) the identification of strengths and weaknesses inherent in one's disciplinary position; and (c) the forming of a decision about what to accept, adapt, or reject. Seven interviewees (64%) mentioned all three processes, whereas the others (36%) mentioned one or two of these steps. Any one of these mental actions could lead participants away from a monological to a more dialogical conception of the phenomenon.

Appreciating Alternative Disciplinary Views

Synthesis of ideas is arguably impossible without some degree of regard and appreciation of alternative epistemological system as worthy of exploration. Profes- sors Pestrong, Scott Gilbert, and Paul Wolpe all demonstrate intellectual charity toward their teaching partners and their disciplines. They seek out alternatives to their own disciplinary perspective on the course material and try them on.

Pestrong, for example, comes "to consider what that [creationist view of the world] must feel like." Collaborations among scientists and humanists in our study often revealed an effort to establish status of equality between the sciences and the humanities. Seeing your teaching partner in terms of epistemological equity thus

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seems to be an essential part of overcoming monodisciplinarity. However, how is it achieved practically?

Pestrong at SFSU, Gilbert at Swarthmore (Vignette 2), and other college professors in the study see it as part of their teaching mission in interdisciplinary courses to convey to students that the story of the world can be told in many disci-

plinary tongues, all worth considering before staking one's own ground. Accord-

ing to Gilbert, for example, the body may be "defined by the human genome project," by an immunologist, and also by a politician, each telling their own story. Appreciation does not mean capitulation of one's own disciplinary beliefs to the views of another discipline. Gilbert firmly believes in the higher power of science to account for genes or sperm, but he actively uses myth and metaphor to demonologize science in his teaching, making students aware of more than one way to account for the natural phenomena.

Burke sees the process of teaching a NEXA seminar as having "the two minds approach the same subject from different directions." Similarly, historian of science Zajonc (1993) described how in the history of scientific exploration, the philosophical and psychological arguments influenced the understanding of the nature of light waves. It became increasingly clear to people such as Faraday, Planck, and Einstein that perceptions are informed by the social and inner context of the perceiver (Zajonc, 1993). In Catching the Light: The Entwined History of Light and Mind, Zajonc captured the crossing of scientific and philosophical paths in inquiries into the nature of light. Zajonc ended his investigation in a similar vein as Burke finishes his story of collaborative inquiry into color with Provence-by claiming that integration of physical and psychological perspectives is the only way to go, even though it does not fully reconcile views or obliterate disciplinary differences. Zajonc wrote

Light ... has been treated scientifically by physicists, symbolically by religious thinkers, and practically by artists and technicians. Each gives voice to a part of our experience of light. When heard together, all speak of one thing whose nature and meaning has been the object of human attention for millennia. During the last three centuries, the artistic and religious dimensions of light have been kept severely apart from its scientific study ... the time has come to welcome them back, and to craft a fuller image of light than any one discipline can offer. (p. 8)

In the same vein, sociologist Wolpe (Vignette 3) came to learn "an enormous amount" from philosophers at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Penn- sylvania. Wolpe learned that "there is a case to be made for clearly reasoned logical thinking about ethical issues leading to a recommendation," and became skilled at thinking "very systematically about things." This is not the skill in which sociologists are rigorously trained, but it is crucial in the field in which one is routinely part of policy debates.


As many educational theorists such as Engestrom et al. (1995), Wells (2001c), Engle and Conant (2002), and Duschl (1990) have pointed out, charitable regard for alternative views and a broad curiosity are thinking dispositions in any good classroom, not specific to interdisciplinary environments alone. "Productive disciplinary engagement," Engle and Conant (2002, p. 401) concluded, does not necessarily mean accepting all disciplinary norms and positions without question, but it may involve informed challenging or extending of such views with proper justifi- cation. Although there are many ways to be dialogue oriented and appreciative of other positions, interdisciplinary openness to challenge is of a special nature. It involves deeper exploration of the epistemological roots of one's understanding, critical comparison of different disciplinary methods, and substantive transformation of views as a result. Yet at its cognitive core, it bears resemblance to the best disciplinary work and to dialogic communications, which involve attending to differences and extending a respectful regard to clashing views.

In practice, appreciation of alternative disciplinary views also means realizing the limits of one's own monoglossia. Thus, the interdisciplinary dialogue is not just about general receptivity to alternative views. It involves active selection and critical judgment. For example, learning a new disciplinary language is not about

memorizing every word in the dictionary or hearing every sound in the stream of speech; it involves knowing what to listen for. Burke, Pestrong, Wolpe, and Gilbert have all heard and carefully considered alternative disciplinary arguments but in the end have staked their own ground.

Identifying Strengths and Weaknesses in Disciplinary Perspectives

In the Bakhtinian (1981) framework, high receptivity to other voices does not mean obliteration or subjugation of one's own voice. The salience of both self and other is what makes true dialogue both tenuous and rewarding. Bakhtinian dia-

logue as well as Fauconnier and Turner's (1994, 2002) conceptual blending is a constant balancing act. The same unsettling process of sorting out strengths and weaknesses in different positions against each other seems to characterize interdis-

ciplinary work, according to our participants. Sometimes it leads to a realization that one's own disciplinary tools cannot quite handle the subject, and sometimes one begins to see clearly the weakness in the other discipline's position.

Working side by side with a philosopher, Burke begins to see the filters that his disciplinary assumptions as a physicist impose on his approach to the understand-

ing of color. He has never questioned broad concepts such as mass, energy, and material reality because they seemed "obvious" to him as a physicist. It took philosopher Provence to point out to him how "sloppy" and "grubby-hands-on-whatever-works" were his answers to these fundamental questions. Zajonc (1993) described a similar realization achieved by scientists when the quantum theorists

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failed to account for the nature of light and color: "What are the primary qualities of light that vouchsafe its unambiguous existence? The extraordinary response given by quantum realism is that there are none. Light, as enduring, well-defined, local entity vanishes" (p. 315). Working side by side with the humanities faculty, involved in "the mangle of practice" (Pickering, 1995) of their sciences, Burke and Pestrong come to realize that scientific answers to the question of color, mass, and energy are not powerful enough.

At the same time as he discovered failings in physics, Burke realized that philosophy, too, does not have all the answers. "Philosophy has really ceased in large measure to be informed by the physical sciences," whereas physics is weak in its definitions of mass, energy, and reality. In a similar fashion, Gilbert, in his class, exposed the weaknesses and strengths of both biology and critical theory by bringing them into close contact. He used science "to limit interpretations" with experimental data while at the same time turning to the humanities to prevent simplifica- tion of an issue and to remind science of its social responsibility. Appreciation of the alternative discipline in his case goes hand in hand with the critical comparison of different disciplinary tool kits. This process of sorting and weighing is a crucial step toward provisional integration of ideas.

Accepting or Rejecting Disciplinary Perspectives

Following consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of individual disciplinary positions, a natural move is to make a decision as to which positions to accept and which to reject. Neither the interdisciplinary thinkers in the study nor theorists describing dialogic thinking point in the direction of relativism. After long study and appreciative consideration of the scientific data, Provence came to reject its arguments as unsupported by human experience. Color, in his view, does convey "a given truth about the world," despite the fact that science is un- able to quantify it. Burke, on the other hand, refused to buy into the view that science "is just another story" about the world, with the same explanatory power as myth.

Burke, Pestrong, and Gilbert ended up regarding the mythological explanation of the world's origins as valuable but unequal to science. "The creationist story," Gilbert asserts, "is not equal to the evolution story-one is supported by a hundred years' worth of research and data and the other is not; and, one is based on certain rules of evidence and the other is not." Gilbert draws a clear line between postmodernist assertions that science is no more than a social construction or "product of the mind" and his own view of science as coconstructed with society and ultimately capable of asserting certain limited truths.

Overcoming disciplinary monoglossia through picking and choosing among many alternative voices seems similar to the interdisciplinary work of sorting


among possible disciplinary perspectives. It is also one of the most consistent features of the interdisciplinary process reported in 10 interviews (91%).

PROVISIONAL INTEGRATION

My five-year experience of teaching Reality and the New Physics with Don is an example of having the two minds approach the same subject from different directions. It was a marvelous experience for me of finding out how good philosophers are at pinning weak arguments. ... Physicists, use terms like "mass" and "color," for example, in a very sloppy way. We talk about red shifts and blue shifts, red and blue as if color were identical with the wave-

length of light. In order to hope for a melding of the ways of thinking, you just sort of have to put it out a bit explicitly. What constitutes the way a philosopher approaches a problem? What constitutes the way a physicist approaches a problem? Then, humanists and scientists need to ask together: What is color? What's real stuff? What is time? What is consciousness? Consciousness isn't physics, it's not philosophy, but it's something we can both say what we think about it. So you actually see the two methods, the two

approaches coming together and fermenting, neither one being definitive. (Burke, NEXA instructor and professor of Physics and Astronomy at SFSU)7

The second turning point in interdisciplinary thinking takes place when participants attempt to actually bridge different disciplinary perspectives into an inte-

grated whole. Although this step has been described as the ultimate goal and pur- pose of an interdisciplinary enterprise by most participants (73%), few interviewees felt they had actually achieved a satisfying closure in the end. Simi-

larly, in the Bakhtin-Vygotsky frameworks, a dialogical exchange-the goal of

any communication-is not easy to achieve, as it requires the two distinct ver-

bal-ideological utterances to mesh and blend and to behave "as if they actually hold a conversation with each other" (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 324). Both in dialogic and in interdisciplinary thinking, this goal seems to be as elusive as it is compelling. On one hand, Bakhtin (1981) found the development of "polyglot consciousness" as inevitable and omnipresent in our language and culture: "The word in living conversation is directly, blatantly, oriented toward a future answer-word: it provokes an answer, anticipates it and structures itself in the answer's direction" (p. 280). At the same time, dialogue (which fluidly connects social and individual cognition,

7See Vignette 1 in Table 2.

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the functioning of a culture with the interior thought of its single representative) involves constant dynamic reconciliation of differing positions:

The word, breaking through its own meaning and its own expression across an envi- ronment full of alien words ..., harmonizing with some of the elements of this envi- ronment and striking a dissonance with others, is able in the dialogized process, to shape its own stylistic profile and tone. (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 277)

In the words of Bakhtinian scholar and education researcher Sidorkin (1992), dialogue for Bakhtin is achieved not just by averaging the two ideas but rather it is revealed when one can hear and comprehend both or all voices simulta- neously-when one's own voice joins in and creates something similar to a mu- sical chord. In a chord, voices remain different, but they form a different type of music, which is a principle unachievable by a single voice. The idea that dialogue is being continually crafted and depends on the individuality of each note provides a powerful parallel to what happens at the interface of disciplines or in inquiry-based classrooms. Wells (2001b) pointed out that Vygotsky's and Bakhtin's ideas of "responsivity" and multivoicedness underlie the practice of dialogic inquiry, which he would have liked to foster in every classroom (p. 185).

The parallel between interdisciplinary thought and language may be more pronounced at the point of merger because a move toward synthesis involves explicit blending of ideas and languages. As in metaphors or conceptual blends in which the composite meaning emerges from different verbal inputs, the ultimate understanding to which scholars arrive in an interdisciplinary process tends (as in the case of Burke and Provence) to result in new approaches toward the subject. Also, the case of Burke and Provence, a physicist and a philosopher evolving a new synthetic understanding, is not unique. A number of prominent physicists grapple seriously with the fundamental concepts of energy and reality (Hawking, 1998; Wheeler, 1990); there is as well a growing group of philosophers whose work is deeply informed by biological or physical data, such as the work of Dennett (1991) and others. In all of these efforts, integration of disciplinary ideas is seen as the ultimate goal of interdisciplinary work. Burke describes how he and Provence "went for the ferment" and eventually came to see color "as some sort of cooperative thing between brains and the world." They ar- rived at a view of color as a psychophysical unity, informed both by physics and by individual perception, with neither perspective being definitive. Their mental journey (moving through appreciation, sorting out the strength and weakness of philosophy and physics as ways to account for the phenomenon of color, to active learning from each other and attempting a merger of perspectives) is marked by a striking similarity.


Synthesis, however, does not mean the same thing for all participants. Although Burke and Provence hybridized ideas from different disciplines, other participants focused more on extending and complexifying their disciplinary tool kits by incor-

porating some practices from other disciplines. Both of these pathways toward in-

tegration-hybridization and complexification, as I have called them-are prominent in all eight interviews that featured integration.

Emergence of Hybrid Understanding

In the case of Burke and Provence, getting to the ferment in their understanding of color meant reaching a view of color informed both by the material (physics) and

subjective (psychology of perception) perspectives. Hybridization involves the

melding of the disciplinary views in which the positions of the two disciplines be- come inseparable. Gilbert talks of a similar process of hybridization of historical and biological perspectives, which produces a view that science is coconstructed with society and is neither the product of social forces nor completely independent of them.

Cognitively, hybridization of disciplinary views may manifest itself in easing of tensions and differences among disciplines and in their exaggeration for the sake of constructing a bridge. Burke demonstrates both tendencies, which I term assimilative and contrapuntal. He first describes how he uses one discipline as a

counterpoint to another by "dumbfounding the position A (philosophy) with the

position B (physics)" in front of the students. Then, he and Provence move to the harmonization (assimilation) of the two perspectives in their psychophysical con-

ception of color. Some interview participants showed a clear predisposition to either the contra-

puntal or the assimilative approach. Gilbert, for example, is generally not predis- posed to exacerbate differences between biology and the humanities. He prefers to

go straight "for the ferment" and downplay the disciplinary differences. His col-

league at Swarthmore, philosophy professor Rick Eldridge, on the other hand, would like to see more contrapuntal encounters among disciplines, at least in IT.

Eldridge sees positive value in clearer demarcation of disciplinary lines, as a productive strategy for achieving a complex understanding of phenomena. "I would love to teach interdisciplinary classes that were framed in terms of a fundamental

disciplinary debate," Eldridge stresses. "I think the students, as long as they have mastered some home disciplinary paradigms, would benefit immensely from ... an all semester long examination of how different disciplinary paradigms engage di-

vergently with common objects of study." Entire programs explored by the Harvard Interdisciplinary Study sometimes dis-

played a preference for either an assimilative or contrapuntal approach to integrating knowledge. This may be linked to the core mission to promote dialogue among

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members of the two cultures or, by contrast, to prepare students for public debate and taking a stand on divisive issues. The NEXA program at SFSU may be a good example of an assimilative type of program. Most of the faculty and students who were interviewed were attracted to "the convergence" of disciplinary views. "The point of convergence," describes the founder of NEXA, Michael Gregory,

... is first of all to give an exercise to a scientist and a humanist in getting to know each other in terms of a common investigation. In convergence, there is no new discipline, but the application of two existing disciplines and their protocols upon an object of attention that lies outside and beyond these disciplines as such.

Other programs, such as the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsyl- vania, bring out the counterpoint in different disciplinary ideas about complex bioethical issues. Although their goal too is to ultimately reach a "consensus" and propose a policy solution that integrates the voices of many constituents, instruction often takes the form of "performative" disagreement among different parties to the issue. Professors build their curriculum around combustible issues such as a patient's right to die or human cloning and purposefully polarize students by push- ing them to take a stand on issues. Research at the Center is informed by the distinct, often contrasting, contributions of philosophers and sociologists. Sociologist Wolpe explains

The philosophers and the theologians see it as their business to make those ethical recommendations. The social scientists do not. So when you're really wearing that sociological hat squarely on your head, your job is to refute or support philosophical or theological points not because you can agree or disagree with them ethically, but because you can support or not support them empirically or culturally. I think the clear contribution of the social scientist is grounding ideas in the actual experience of people. A kind of inductive rather than deductive understanding of ethics. The critique of some philosophical perspective by sociologists is not just a critique based on data, but is also a critique based on what is sometimes disembodied intellectual and logical thought leading to a conclusion, which is entirely disconnected from the lived experience of the people who actually make ethical decisions.

However, although personal or institutional predisposition might slant scholars toward assimilation or counterpoint, the two approaches often form a continuum. Burke, for example, starts his move toward an integrated understanding of color by first considering how his and Provence's disciplinary approaches clash or possibly address different aspects of the phenomenon. Gilbert uses a similar strategy. Be- fore Gilbert arrives at an integrated view of biology as "the queen of liberal arts," to use his description, he exposes the disconnect among different subdisciplines of biology:


Biologists interpret a cell or a plant very differently depending on their training ... you take say a heart cell, that's an appropriate example-and the way a physiologist looks at that cell, the way a developmental biologist looks at that cell, the way a ger- ontologist looks at that cell, it could be a different cell!

This outline of integrative moves shows that the interdisciplinary mind (at least in 73% of cases) at this point goes beyond mere appreciation for other disciplinary perspectives, comparing and contrasting their capacity to address the problem, or even assess their relevance. The real dialogue begins when the mind attempts to actively fuse those understandings together into a coherent whole. Similar to what is happening at the border or in the trading zones between cultures, exchange of disciplinary goods leads to the emergence of common currencies or intermediate languages. As Galison (1997) described,

In the logical context of the trading zone, despite the differences in classification, sig- nificance, and standards of demonstration, the two groups can collaborate. They can come to a consensus about the procedure of exchange, about mechanisms to determine when goods are "equal" to one another. (p. 803)

This need for barter is what Burke and Provence experience when they talk about

coming to depend on each other in unraveling the notion of color for students.

Emergence of Complex Disciplinarity

Emergence of a complexified view of the discipline means stretching of the core

concepts and theories to respond to the challenge offered by another discipline. In

complexification, the mind does not try to stake out new ground outside the disci-

plines or on the borders of disciplines but rather takes the dialogue into the interior of the field and changes it from within. This process may be indicative of the fact that dialogic quality can be the property of a discipline itself, not just of an interaction among disciplines. Future studies may find it productive to consider the

dialogic openness of the disciplines to include new perspectives, to apply "for-

eign" methods, and to revolutionize accepted paradigms (Kuhn, 1962) from without or from within.8

After their interdisciplinary adventure, Burke and Provence did not return un-

changed to physics and philosophy. Provence, in Burke's account, came to view re-

ality in a new and more material light. Burke, following 5 years of coteaching an

interdisciplinary course called "Reality and The New Physics," reported that he

8It may be interesting to explore whether particular openness to dialogue and susceptibility for self-revision is a symptom of a particular stage in the life of a discipline (preparadigmatic, paradig- matic, or revolutionary), to use Kuhn's (1962) conceptualization.

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came to realize the crucial need to be more consistent and precise in speaking about the core tenets of his discipline such as energy, mass, light, and color. Burke's teaching of physics changed "to include a tremendous amount of writing as compared to calculation" and to demand much more clarity of thinking and argumentation than he ever expected of students. He came to see "clarity in the language" as something that is "crucially important to [students'] understanding of what's happening in physics." He acquired a new appreciation for the Einsteinian equations as the expression of profound truth about matter. "After about five years I finally decided, OK, I've got to say it. Real stuff is energy-momentum four-vector density." He came to see that hidden in this formula was "the best thing that one has going in physics for the answer to that question [about the nature of reality]." In other words, a philosopher and a physicist not only forged a hybrid understanding of light and color, they also complexified their respective fields and added substantially to them.

An example of complexifying disciplinary views is the work and teaching of Gilbert at Swarthmore.9 His history background and collaborative teaching in IT helped him realize how much biology actually relies on interpretation and that "there's no such thing as an uninterpreted cell." Biology in his hands becomes a more complex field involving storytelling and metaphorical thinking as well as hypothesis testing. Gilbert does not want his students to leave his class with a narrow view of biology as "mere interpretation," nor does he want students to see biology as purely factual. He is always challenging his discipline to incorporate both scientific and interpretive traditions.

Complexification can result from a transforming encounter with another field. A case of this in our data is the work of the sociologist Robin Wagner-Pacifici who after coteaching an IT course with professor of literature Phil Weinstein became more deeply "reattached" to her home field of sociology. However, what she became reattached to was not the same old sociology she used to practice but a sociology aware of its larger humanistic roots and issues and a sociology reminded of the importance of the individual in the social fabric. Wagner-Pacifici reported being reconfirmed as a sociologist because she realized sociology's larger role in the humanities and social sciences as the revealer of the "social embeddedness" of subjective experiences.

Hybridization and complexification are by no means the only ways to engage in an interdisciplinary dialogue. Integration or disciplinary heteroglossia, to use Bakhtin's term, can be attained via different routes. Undoubtedly, close longitudinal studies of interdisciplinary work will uncover variant paths toward provisional synthesis of ideas.

9See Vignette 3, Appendix D.


REVISING INTEGRATION

At some points in this course, I emphasize science as interpretative. At other

points, I emphasize science as having a path to certain conclusions and certain ways of knowing that are really important to get right. It's a very thin line. Be-

ing a scientist on such a program [IT] is skating on very thin ice. I don't want the students to go away thinking a) that science is mere interpretation to-ev-

ery cell is interpretation, before you know DNA is an interpretation, sperm is an interpretation; and b) I don't want them going away thinking science is

completely out of the realm of interpretation theory because it's all about facts and numbers. Those are the two things I don't want them to come away with. (Gilbert, IT instructor and professor of Biology at Swarthmore College)10

Although integration of disciplines is a defining moment in interdisciplinary work, it is no means the point of closure. A prominent third step in the development of an

interdisciplinary thought is the point of revision and questioning of the provisional synthesis. All forms of hybrid or of complexified knowledge are necessarily par- tial, often unsatisfying, and always open for further questioning. It is interesting to note that even participants who did not directly talk about integration did mention the danger of settling down and accepting one kind of merger of ideas without con-

tinually revising it. Thus, although only 8 (73%) participants I have mentioned in this article talked about synthesis, 10 (91%) referred to the importance of continued search.

Likewise, dialogic situations, as described by Bakhtin (1981), never quite reach the point of full settlement. Dialogue, in Bakhtin's description, is characterized by a state of irresolution, where "fewer and fewer neutral, hard elements ... remain that are not into dialogue. Dialogue moves into the deepest molecular and ulti-

mately, subatomic levels" (p. 300). Fauconnier and Turner (2002) and Lakoff and Johnson (1980) also have seen conceptual consistency as anomalous, with conceptual blending, metaphorical crossovers, and dialogic structures forming the foundation of our cognition, ultimately marking us as human species.

Rejection of Integration as Final and Complete

At the end of Vignette 1, Burke, Physics and Astronomy Professor, NEXA Pro-

gram, talks about emerging from the interdisciplinary collaboration with a philosopher with a new perspective on physics and on the theory of color. He is no longer content to regard such notions as light, color, or consciousness as domains of phys-

I?See Vignette 2, Appendix C.

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ics alone. In Burke's view, if "consciousness isn't physics, it's not philosophy," it is but a bit of both, then physics and philosophy need to continue their conversation, even though a definitive answer may not be found in any individual or blended field. There is no expectation on Burke's part that physics will one day completely subsume philosophy or that the differences between these two disciplines will ever be reconciled. Neither do biology and critical theory come together in Gilbert's classes in a way that resolves differences among them. Balancing the two perspectives involves at some points bringing out the interpretive nature of science and at others, claiming science's power to limit and weed out weak interpretations. He treads this thin line not to deliberately baffle his students but rather to put them on the path of continual searching for complex answers.

His student, Sophia Accord, answers the call. Her interview offers a measure of validation to the experiences of her teacher. In the IT seminar, Sophia ends up treading a similar thin line, weighing the arguments of gender studies on one hand against the arguments of science on the other. After considering "gender as merely a performance," she observes that this is not biologically the case. She realizes, "Everything is not a social construct. We have to acknowledge physical realities." She does not end up rejecting either perspective, nor does she relativistically accept them both as equal. In other words, she, as her professor Gilbert, are held in a dialogical space between seeing science as a social construct and seeing it as being above social discourse.

In bioethics, differences between pragmatic philosophers and sociologists are also never completely resolved. Wolpe works through this tension every day. Mir- roring Wolpe's epistemological difficulty in the resolution of differences between sociology, law, and philosophy, Claire Robertson-Kraft, a bioethics student at Uni- versity of Pennsylvania, describes consensus as "one of the most difficult prob- lems faced by bioethicists" and something of which she has trouble conceiving. Robertson-Kraft points out, "When you're dealing with something as complex as human cloning, you can't really expect the general public to understand the science behind what it means to clone a human being. You can only hope that they understand that there's a difference between therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning." According to her, "consensus may be impossible because those coming from a religious perspective are never going to be of the same mind as those coming from a scientific perspective, who will never understand the anti-abortion pro- testers who fail to see eye to eye with pro-choice supporters." Thus, both an instructor and a student see harmonization of different views as a daunting task.

Rejection of integration as final and complete is typically not a sign of despair, although a few participants shared such feelings. More frequently, it is perceived as an impetus to finding better bridges between disciplinary ideas or including a wider scope of disciplines. The vision of a stable merger of disciplines may actually be antithetical to the interdisciplinary convergence ideal, pursued by the


NEXA program, for example. The whole point of convergence, in the view of the program founder Gregory, is that the participants both maintain "fidelity" to the disciplines and at the same time substantively inform and transform them by bringing them into close contact with each other. This strikes a chord with the Bakhtinian conception of the dialogue as an ultimately positive and constructive way to give many voices a hearing or in the conceptual blending theories, to create new meaning out of several inputs. The dialectical unity of disciplinary integrity and transformation, stabilizing and destabilizing forces acting on the disciplinary synthesis, propel the participants to defy cognitive closure and continue their inter-

disciplinary efforts.

DISCUSSION

Research on interdisciplinary cognition brought about three kinds of findings. First, careful observation and in-depth interviewing helped to identify the major steps that appear recurrent in most participants on the path toward interdisciplinary integration of ideas. These included overcoming monodisciplinarity (which involved appreciation, careful sorting, and critical selection of the most productive approaches), attempting a tentative synthesis (either through complexification or

hybridization of ideas), and questioning it as necessarily incomplete. Although not all of these stages were present in all interviews or were present in that sequence, they appeared sufficiently recurrent to allow this preliminary systematization. The results of this study are summarized in Table 3.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of steps. Overcoming disciplinary mo- nism, for example, may involve more than development of an appreciative attitude toward other disciplines, defying the limits imposed by one discipline, and decid-

ing to reject or accept theories based on their relevance and credibility. Also, real- izations that one frame of reference is not enough took different forms in different

TABLE 3 Three Major Cognitive Moves in Interdisciplinary Efforts

Overcoming Monodisciplinarity Provisional Integration Revising Integration

Appreciation of alternative Emergence of hybrid Questioning and critical

disciplinary views understanding probing of integration Identification of strengths and (contrapuntal or Rejection of the provisional weaknesses in disciplinary assimilative) Emergence of integration as final and

perspectives Acceptance or complex disciplinarity complete rejection of different

disciplinary inputs

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participants. Some participants developed an investigative interest in another discipline, others expressed tolerance to alternative methods of inquiry, and still others started a careful comparison between disciplinary tools and the estimation of the degree of usefulness of one versus another to shed light on the issue.

Second, the study traced a close parallelism (which needs to be further tested and substantiated) between interdisciplinary cognitive moves and dialogic behaviors described in psycholinguistic, educational, and organizational theories. These theories, especially psycholinguistic ones, can potentially serve as a theoretical framework for the understanding of interdisciplinary cognition. Especially useful are the insights of Bakhtin (1981) and his followers (Lakoff, Johnson, Turner, Fauconnier) into the dialogic, metaphoric, and blending tendencies of our language and thought. Although there are considerable differences between the interaction of disciplines and the interaction of words in speech, there may be some underlying cognitive mechanism that shapes and explains both. More research in cognitive linguistics and communicative behaviors in interdisciplinary classrooms may help shed light on the nature and closeness of this parallel.

Third, in this study, I suggested the possibility that there exists a central cognitive process expressive of the dialogical tendency of our mind, which mani- fests itself in interdisciplinary and other kinds of thinking. Although broad gen- eralizations are perilous in a study of this size, it is notable to observe that differences among participants and programs did not seem to contribute to substantive differences in how participants met the cognitive challenge at the basic level. Whether they taught a science-centered or an ethics-centered curriculum, they journeyed a similar path from demonologization to questioning their tentative synthesis of ideas. More studies will need to fully support this finding. It will also be fruitful to investigate whether inquiry-based disciplinary classrooms and interdisciplinary classrooms differed substantially in terms of the cognitive paths of their participants.

Instructors and designers of interdisciplinary curricula are encouraged to use the findings of this study to monitor students' progress in reaching the cognitive goals of overcoming monodisciplinarity, attaining integration, and questioning the provisional synthesis of ideas in a more systematic and deliberate way. Asking such questions as are students making truly integrative moves?, what is the product of their synthesis?, and how open are they to revising the synthesis and searching to find a better fit of ideas? can make the educational impact of this study more tangible.

Equally tangible can be the impact of interdisciplinary thought on teaching as described by the college instructors participating in this study. Faculty reported becoming more sensitive to terminology and argumentation, gaining theoretical depth, and becoming more willing to recognize the methodological assumptions on which their conceptions were based. Sandra Luft, a Humanities professor at


SFSU and her teaching partner, James Peters (Physics), insist on a more "complex and sophisticated" view of science and aim for an appreciation of ambiguity and uncertainty in some of its tenets to emerge from their students. Thus, this research, showing the positive effects of interdisciplinary thinking on learning and teaching, may lend additional support for quality interdisciplinary programs on college campuses.

DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

This study generated many more questions than it could possibly answer. This may be an expected outcome given the preliminary and framework-setting nature of the

study. Although triangulation across schools and instructors revealed strong reso- nances across different data, it also sharpened the awareness that more research is called for to corroborate the results of this study. Certain mental behaviors (e.g., in-

tegrative moves or questioning of integration) were absent in the work of some participants, and their sequence varied widely across interviewees. The fact that the

study did not produce any generalizable evidence regarding the sequence of mental events in interdisciplinary work may be indicative of the fact that the three processes are continually reinforcing and reestablishing each other in a spiral fashion, echoing the spiral of growing knowledge described by Wells (200 la). This parallel requires pointed examination. Future studies relying on more direct observation

may be able to clarify the complex dialectics at work here. Currently, a longitudinal, close-observation-based study is under way at the Harvard Graduate School of Education to compensate for some of these deficiencies.

Parallels drawn between interdisciplinary teaching and educational theories, literary analysis, and organizational behavior prompt intriguing questions for further research. Are inquiry-based classrooms different from interdisciplinary environments? What can interdisciplinary programs learn from highly dialogical com-

munity-of-practice-type disciplinary departments? Do genuinely interdisciplinary classrooms develop conflict and dialogue skills to a greater degree than other classrooms? Hopefully, future research will illuminate these questions.

Thus, new research on interdisciplinary cognition should attempt to (a) obtain more empirical, quantitative, and longitudinal data on interdisciplinary collaborations and interdisciplinary learning to help validate and develop this framework, and (b) track differences and test similarities between interdisciplinary and general communicative behaviors to determine the nature of an underlying cognitive mechanism at work in all. Productive questions to guide new studies might be the

following: How do we develop "boundary concepts" and languages? What rules of

exchange govern them? Are metaphors, analogies, visual imagery, or conceptual blending used more in interdisciplinary teaching or collaborative activities than in

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other learning environments?'1 A longitudinal inquiry into how disciplinary barter occurs on the linguistic, social, and epistemological levels should thus yield valuable insights. The importance of this categorization is in providing a basic theoretical platform for such studies.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Research on interdisciplinary cognition was made possible by generous funding from the Atlantic Philanthropies. My colleagues Howard Gardner, Veronica Boix Mansilla, Jeff Solomon, Caitlin O'Connor, Liz Dawes, Matt Miller, and Michael Schacter have all contributed to the development of the ideas contained in this article. I also acknowledge my indebtedness to the participating faculty and students who were able to comment on their thinking processes with rare insight and intro- spection. I am well aware that this was not a trivial effort on their part.

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APPENDIX A Core Research Participants

NEXA Program, San Francisco State University

Since 1975, NEXA's mission has been to offer students an interdisciplinary curriculum demonstrating the interaction of the historical, philosophical, and literary modes of thought with those in the physical and social sciences. NEXA's courses, typically team-taught by faculty members in the sciences and in the humanities, strive to provide a point of convergence and a forum for dialogue between the "two cultures." Course offerings include: Mythic and Scientific Thought; The Nuclear Revolution; The Visual World of Science and Art; Cosmologies and World Views; The Darwinian Revolution


John Burke

Michael Gregory

Sandra Luft

Ray Pestrong

Interpretation Theory, Swarthmore College

Sophia Accord

Physics and Astronomy Professor at SFSU, Burke has taught, in partnership with Don Provence (philosophy), NEXA's Reality and the New Physics course exploring core concepts in physics and their transformation in the 20th century

Long-time director of the NEXA, Gregory is currently instructor in The Darwinian Revolution course, which tries to unpack the biological, philosophical, literary, and sociopolitical implications of Darwin's evolutionary theory

Humanities Professor at SFSU, Luft for many years has co-taught with physics professor James Peters NEXA's Origins of Modern Science course, which explores methodological assumptions of science and how they evolved in the culture of modem Europe

Geology Professor at SFSU, Pestrong has partnered with several humanities (classics) professors in

teaching NEXA's Mythic And Scientific Thought course, which looks at different natural

phenomena (landforms, volcanoes, earthquakes) from the mythological and scientific perspectives

From its inception in 1992, Concentration in

Interpretation Theory (IT) has provided a forum for students and faculty to explore "the nature and politics of representation." Students get exposed to a range of classical and modern hermeneutic traditions through a variety of six courses, which culminate in a team-taught capstone seminar. IT courses and capstone seminars include: Critical Study in the Visual Arts; Critical and Cultural Theory; The Production of History; Language and Meaning; Reading Culture; History in/and Anthropology; Mind, Body, and Machine

IT student, Accord took the Mind, Body, and Machine capstone seminar co-taught by French literary and critical theory scholar Jean-Vincent Blanchard and biologist Scott Gilbert, which brought together the perspectives of gender studies, critical theory, technology, and biology

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Richard Eldridge

Scott Gilbert

Robin Wagner-Pacifici

Mark Wallace

Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania

Paul Wolpe

Professor of Philosophy, Eldridge is interested in the

topics of aesthetic, linguistic, and philosophical expression. He has taught IT's Aesthetics, Language and Meaning, 19th century Philosophy, Interpretation and the Visual Arts (with art historian M. Cothren)

Professor of Biology, Gilbert teaches courses in

embryology, developmental genetics, and history and critique of biology. In partnership with the French literary scholar Jean-Vincent Blanchard, Gilbert has co-taught the Mind, Body, and Machine capstone, focusing on the relationship between mental, technological and biological phenomena

Sociology and Anthropology Professor, Wagner-Pacifici has taught Discourse Analysis; Power, Authority, and Conflict; and IT capstone Mapping the Modern (with English Literature

professor Philip Weinstein), which explores the modern city as expressed in literature, sociology, and critical theory

Associate Professor of Religion, Wallace focuses on the intersection between philosophy of religion, critical theory, environmental studies, and postmodernism. In partnership with English Literature professor Philip Weinstein, Wallace has taught the IT capstone seminar Visionaries of Spirit, Masters of Suspicion

Center fosters informed dialogue about the ethical, legal, social and public policy implications of advances in the life sciences and medicine. Its interdisciplinary faculty (sociologists, pragmatic philosophers, medical researchers, etc.) engages in analysis, reflection, and public discussion of the critical biomedical issues of our time, such as organ transplantation, genetic engineering, etc.

Professor in the Department of Sociology and Department of Medical Ethics, senior Fellow at UPenn's Center for Bioethics, Wolpe examines the ideology and culture of medical thought; neuroethics; religion and its role in bioethical debate


APPENDIX B Three Sets of Interview Questions Posed to Participants

(a) Organization and administration of the interdisciplinary program-Partici- pants' background and participation in the interdisciplinary work in the program.

* What is your role in the interdisciplinary program design and understanding of its mission?

* How has the program evolved over time? * How does the program/institution support or facilitate faculty collabora-

tions? What are the provisions for joint research and teaching? * What specific recruiting policies, reward and promotion systems and evalua-

tion practices are in place in the interdisciplinary program? * What is the relationship between the program and academic departments-

How do their cultures differ?

(b) Pedagogical design-Description and critical analysis of interdisciplinary pedagogy.

* How are different bodies of knowledge brought together and integrated in

your classroom? How do you specifically facilitate connection making? Could you describe a project or a unit which successfully brought different "modes of thinking" together?

* Could you compare your teaching of an interdisciplinary course to teaching a traditional disciplinary curriculum?

* Why do some interdisciplinary units/projects fail? How would you describe the particular challenges of an interdisciplinary classroom?

* How is interdisciplinary work assessed? What evaluation criteria do you set for students? How do teaching partners arrive at a joint grade?

* Can you describe your collaboration with your teaching partner in this course? What were its impacts on your teaching?

(c) Cognitive impacts of interdisciplinary learning or collaboration-Description of challenges and opportunities offered by an interdisciplinary inquiry for students and faculty.

* Could you comment on what is difficult about teaching/learning in the inter-

disciplinary program as compared to other kinds of instruction? * How would you describe the outcomes of an interdisciplinary course? How

has this mode of learning/teaching impacted you as a learner or a teacher? * Could you describe moments of integration and disconnection or confusion?

What do you think contributed to them? * Is there anything in the cognitive profile of a learner that predisposes him or

her to interdisciplinary exploration? What cognitive qualities need to be in

place to cope with the challenges of interdisciplinary work?

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APPENDIX C Vignette 2

Scott Gilbert Biology Professor

Swarthmore College

I'm a biologist and one of the things that I feel very strongly is that biologists have to learn about their own discipline and to interpret it. There's no such thing as an uninterrupted cell. A lot of teaching in biology is story telling. They're wonderful stories and I think that they're stories, which are validated by data, especially data coming from many sources. My main role in this class is to unpack for students that we can tell what isn't so. Science is a very good way of getting rid of false interpretations.

One of the things that I have done in Interpretation Theory is go through historically how interpretations of fertilization have changed. You have the heroic sperm, which really follows the myth of the hero very well, you can show alternative stories, and you can deconstruct this one and show its social background. Biologically, a sperm is not a military hero; a sperm is not the victor. To see the sperm as active and the egg as passive is biochemically incorrect. They are both as active, both as passive, the sperm is actor and acted upon, and the chemicals involved are very similar. So you get a different view. We can socially deconstruct Bernoulli's principle and say it was a product of the early Renaissance. We can talk about him being a mystic and a Pythagorean. But you know, you got here by airplane! At some level things came together so that very heavy aircraft can fly. My argument is that science not only is constructed, science also helps in the construction of the society as well. Yes, it has its metaphors, but that doesn't mean that it's false. Within a particular area, we have knowledge, which has been validated by multiple points of view. When all these things converge on a set of inferences, I am willing to use that, and so are you.

Overcoming monodisciplinarity: Constraining conclusions of one discipline with the other

Integration: Complex mutuality between science and society


I got involved in Interpretation Theory largely through feminist critiques of biology. What I try to bring to the course is a notion of responsibility. That you are responsible for your data, responsible for the way that you present your data and that there are things that we know are not true. It was interesting to bring this type of thing into an Interpretation Theory class because what I'm talking about is how science is used to limit interpretations. We talked about the differences between science and humanities in terms of interpretations, and I pointed out that one of the things that science does is to say it isn't this and it isn't that. Whereas in the humanities many times, the more interpretations you can give a work, the richer it is. There are very different interpretative traditions.

Being a scientist on such a program is skating on very thin ice. I don't want the students to go away thinking a) that science is mere interpretation to - every cell is interpretation, therefore you know DNA is an interpretation, sperm is an interpretation; and b) I don't want them going away thinking science is

completely out of the realm of interpretation theory because it's all about facts and numbers. Those are the two things I don't want them to come away with.

Sustaining interdisciplinary dialogue: Continuing efforts to balance respect with responsibility

APPENDIX D

Vignette 3

Paul Wolpe Sociology Professor, Center for Bioethics

University of Pennsylvania

In the seventies, it was decided resolutely that you should tell people about their cancer and the philosophers celebrated the triumph of their position on people's autonomy. The only problem was that when sociologists went out and looked at it they found that there were vast sub-cultures in this country where they didn't want to be told. Korean-Americans, Mexican-Americans, a number of Asian and Latin American cultures. It never even occurred to philosophers that there might be some

Overcoming monodisciplinarity: Challenging conceptions of one discipline with data from another

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populations where their moral pronouncement would be

problematic culturally. Philosopher Glenn McGee in our Center with his pragmatic bioethics began to say you can't do ontological bioethics, it doesn't work. And some social scientists who have a philosophical eye or ear, like me, were trying to say the same things from the other side.

I've learned an enormous amount from the philosophers. Which is that there is a case to be made for clearly reasoned logical thinking about ethical issues leading to a recommendation. Philosophers tend to think very systematically about things -'let's tear things apart into sections, follow each one to its logical conclusion'. That's not how sociologists are trained to think. Clarifying of thinking is the content of philosophical discourse, while it is simply a byproduct of sociological discourse.

I think the clear contribution of the social scientist is grounding ideas in the actual experience of people. A kind of inductive rather than deductive understanding of ethics. The critique of the philosophical perspective by sociologists is not just a critique based on data, but is also a critique based on what is sometimes disembodied intellectual and logical thought leading to a conclusion. Which is entirely disconnected from the lived experience of the people who actually make ethical decisions. I enjoy arguing with philosophers about whether the me that was manic is the same me as the me now for a day, but this by itself is going to get us absolutely nowhere. There are legal issues, there are social justice issues, in some cultures this would be very acceptable and in some it wouldn't.

It's a tougher role for the sociologist and the anthropologist in bioethics because the product has got to be an ethical recommendation. That's what you want at the end of the day. The philosophers and the theologians see it as their business to make those ethical recommendations. The social scientists do not. So when you're really wearing that sociological hat squarely on your head, your job is to refute or support philosophical or theological points not because you can agree or disagree with them ethically, but because you can support or not support them empirically or culturally. The sociological part of my

Recognizing strengths and weaknesses of two fields

Integration: Recognizing need for joint understanding

Sustaining interdisciplinary dialogue: Continuing to deal with differences in methodology


course on Jewish Bioethics is not about whether it's right or wrong to take the dying off life support, but about how the issue is framed, what kinds of people are taking which sides on this and why. What institutional bodies have investments in this? What is the historical precedence? Who are the powerful and powerless in this particular argument?

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