Week 12--Interdisciplinarity/ Transdisciplinarity

This article is not really relevant (although it does have some interesting things to say about the category "women"), but I thought this point connected well to our conversation in class today: 

"Interdisciplinary borrowing has always seemed to me a difficult and risky business, requiring that we respect high standards of scholarship as we acquire new ways of analyzing and thinking. Criticism of the methods and approaches developed by other disciplines is even more challenging because it demands that we fully engage with and understand, in their terms, the ideas we want to dispute. Indeed, it seems to me that one earns the right to criticize work in another field only by the hard effort of learning that field. The glib use of technical terms, superficial familiarity with a few phrases, and schematic portrayals of main themes, do not constitute serious interdisciplinary work; rather, they represent an abdication of professional responsibility."

I have heard both of these terms many times, and usually they have been used interchangeably. Is this accurate? Is there a true difference between trans- and inter- disciplinarity?

Also, it was interesting that a lot of people brought up cross-listed classes. I actually really enjoy interdisciplinary classes. One of the things about being a potential cities major is that it was designed to be an interdisciplinary major. Every single cities class is cross-listed in another department. For the most part, I have had very good experiences with this, because I love looking at subjects from different departments' points of view. However, the one unpleasant thing in this situation is the existance of prereqs. So far, a couple of the cities classes that I have wanted to take, because they sounded extremely interesting have been impossible for me without extra background, because I did not have enough information about basic economics, for example.

I think this class is a very good example of an interdisciplinary course. It may not be crosslisted, but we have looked at feminism through various lenses, including literary analysis, social science, and natural science just to name a few.

One of the things that struck me the most about this essay is how clear it is how much professors learn from students.  It's funny because today I had a guest lecture in a class who told us that he was going to try to make the class more interactive than we might be used to, as to not only keep it interesting for us, but for him too.  And I had a professor walk into class last week, saying she was bored with the class, and so the class we had that day was very out of the ordinary.  And thinking back, that class was very interdisciplinary, bringing culture and music into my political science class. 

The idea as the professors as observers struck me, because I have always found my professors to be the main participant in my classes.  Is that the role they should be taking?  Should they be a participant at all?  Should they just sit back and let everything happen or should they guide the way?

There were many quotes that stuck out to me about this essay, but the one that hit me the most was the following:

"What is required is a paradigm that... acknowledges the inevitable interaction between knower and known, and... respects the equally inevitable gap between theory and phenomenon" (quoting Keller, 11). The inevitable gap between theory and phenomenon... I take this to mean that there are differences between theories that are developed mathematically, scientifically, or philosophically, and phenomenon that are developed socially by exploring within the classroom. I am wondering exactly what the author meant by these two terms - theory and phenomenon. Which one is the less accurate, if any?

"The action of the knower alters what we know." This is the foundation for McIntosh's phase 5 theory, and it validates her theory for me with its philosophical logic. It allows the educator to take facts for what they are... created and altered by the student, or the knower. If everyone is a knower, there should be no hierarchy between teachers and students in terms of exploring knowledge. And since there is no such thing as a "fact," even in science when teaching a transdisciplined class, that allows the knowledge to become even more free-flowing.

I really enjoyed the essay included from the student in this article. It did, however, make me wish that we would have had an exclusively creative writing assignment in which we could further explore the inner workings of our own minds in a way that is not only theory-based. The student's essay had a linear flow to it that will probably stick with the reader in a more meaningful way than my highly theory-based thesis on politics in Russia. I think it would be really great for the next set of students who take this class to be assigned something like the essay that was included in this article.

I really liked the part of the article that mentioned that "literary critics understand synecdoche (and its variants, metaphor and metonymy) not as reliably representing any whole, but rather only--and oftentimes deliberately--selected aspects of it." Such a realization and statement speaks to the exclusiveness and reduction of academia. But I also understand how synecdoche can be beneficial to interdisciplinarity. Bringing together parts of one discipline and another discipline can build a bridge of understanding, rather than a tower of exclusion. 

One part of the article that I felt needed clarification was Grobstein's inserted piece about the organization of the brain and observation (p.g. 10). 1.) What exactly is he saying and what does he mean?

2.) Also, why did you decide to write this article? How did the collaboration come about? Have you received ample support from other faculty, administration, and Bryn Mawr College in regards to your particular interests in interdisciplinarity? Where do you envision interdisciplinarity at Bryn Mawr, according McIntosh's five phases of curriculum revision?

In light of last week's class discussion about continuing to think about definitions of feminism, when I was reading this essay, I was thinking about how we as a class, or myself personally, can better define feminism after this class.  The authors discuss synecdoche, saying that "the part, or representation, will never reflect or encompass the whole of an event." (9).  Is this true for the word "feminism"?  Is it impossible for one word to encompass everything that feminism implies?  As people suggested in class last week, do we need to expand our definition of feminism, or narrow it?  Do we need to do away with the word all together?

The authors also cite Nassim Taleb, who writes that "this urge to simplify 'rules out sources of uncertainty and drives us to a misunderstanding of the fabric of the world.'" (10).  In trying to define feminism, are we trying to simplify it?  In my experience in this class, the exact opposite has been true. In attempting to define feminism, both for myself and as a general concept, I have come to realize exactly how uncertain the word and concept is, that it has so many angles and aspects.  The authors go on to say that we need "to resist the tendency to make generalization based on limited observations" (10).  To me, this has also been one of the aims of this class.  We cannot generalize about what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a feminist, what is means to have a woman's college, etc.  This class has allowed us to move beyond our "limited observations" - by studying different definitions of gender, by thinking about the links between science and literature, by learning about cultures outside of our own.  In expanding our observations and what we know, we can expand our definitions of feminism.

I agree with Amanda that this essay ("Synecdoche and Suprise") as well as "Exploring Interdisciplinarity," written with Professor Grobstein, encompassed progressive content. Thus, the essays are productively collaborative. I want to talk about a sentence written in the first few paragraphs of the essay written with Grobstein. The essay reads:

"... remember the curiosity which brought us into intellectual work in the first place....(Dalke, McCormack, Grobstein)."

This sentence resonated with me, particularly. I felt like this comment truly strengthened the argument articulated in the paper. It is very true; why not utilize each discipline's strengths to balance out another discipline's weakness in hopes to solve an otherwise unsolveable issue? This is how I feel with philosophy of mind and psychology. While the two have similar fields of inquiry and both possess a strong inquisitiveness for the human mind, philosophers think while psychologists act. Philosophical psychology is still an up and coming field of study; however, thus far the two fields have made slow, but incredible progress to explain things such as human consciousness.

While there are benefits, there are definitely more costs than "losing our harnasses." By mingling disciplines with one another, there is a sense in which you are losing the features that make certain disciplines attractive to students. For example, one of my friends recently declared a Biology major. She, like most Biology majors, is a pre-med student. She loves Biology for the natural science that it is and finds "interdisciplinary" assignments in her Bio. courses, such as writing papers, extremely unproductive and worthless. Additionally, in registering for courses, she was extremely disappointed that Grobstein's Neurobiology and Behavior course was less experimenting, more thinking. For those who don't know, Neurobio. is a 200-level course in the Biology department that studies philosophical inquiry instead of empirial study of the brain; it is like a philosophy class in a Bio. department. It is, I would say, the quintessiental interdisciplinary Bio. course. My friend LOVES biology, but dislikes writing and loathes abstract theory of philosophy. She is intrigued by neurobiology. In fact, she wants to go into medicine to study neurology. However, she resists from taking the course because she is primarily interested in empirical facet of neurobiology.

 
I brought up this anecdote because it is the type of problem that an interdisciplinary effort will encounter. For students who are interested in certain programs that the College  offers or a particular field of inquiry the change to multidisciplinary is disheartening and unproductive. For some, though, it is intellectually stimulating. The real concern, then, is finding a balance that can satisfy both types of students. We must remember that even some students of LAC's come for different reasons, not all of them seek a "liberal arts (aka interdisciplinary)" education. 

Question to the author(s):

1. Do you think the transition to a multidisciplinary academic standards will be an easy one for all types of schools (liberals arts as well as large, research universities)? If yes, then don't you think schools like MIT, Johns Hopkins, or Cal Tech among others would lose the rigorous single disclipinary aspect that sets them apart from competitive institutes of higher learning?

2. The paper (s) did not consider objections to interdisciplinary education. What are the types of difficulties that you will face in creating a new academia? What difficulties have you faced thus far in your efforts to change education at BMC?

3. How early should interdisciplinary education begin? Only in college? If so, how best can high school teachers prepare students for college (keeping in mind students hail from geographic locations with stronger college prep programs than others) ? What about magnet schools or schools with focus in math & science only? Should do, they, change academic standards?

4. How would the initative to get disciplines in conversation with one another effect the applicants to a college? Let's not get too far out, and take Bryn Mawr as an example. Do you think the interdisciplinary courses would increase applications to the College?

5. Do you think all disciplines should be all interdisciplinary all the time? Or should colleges offer more interdisciplinary courses in all subject areas?