Abstract
The paper questions both the disciplinary narrative and the interdisciplinary narrative through a re-examination of the status of disciplines in the actual practices of three different research fields: materials science and engineering which emerged in the USA in the 1960s, nanotechnology and synthetic biology, both of which became highly visible in the 2000s. Each of the cases under examination discloses a complex configuration of enabling conditions, more complex at any rate than any ‘master narrative’ of scientific change. While the master narratives suggest the existence of “a gravitational pull of disciplinary approaches and standards” followed by a kind of invisible hand that would gradually dissolve the boundaries between academic disciplines, I will argue that none of the opposite narratives – disciplinary and transdisciplinary – is adequate in light of the local configurations of these three new research fields. Despite the strong urge of science policy to create unstable research communities around specific research targets, a sense of disciplinary affiliation is still vivid and extremely resilient among, for instance, chemists.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This distinction has been promoted in the context of the development of science in higher education along with the creation of chairs of science in universities and specialized learned societies (see Bud and Roberts 1984 for the case of chemistry). Auguste Comte’s famous hierarchy of science provides an elaborate exemplar of a plea for setting rigid boundaries in science in the early nineteenth century.
- 2.
In the following, I will distinguish between ‘multidisciplinarity’ as the cooperation of several disciplines, ‘interdisciplinarity’ as an attempt to integrate or synthesize, and ‘transdisciplinarity’ as a transgression of disciplinary norms.
- 3.
Arthur von Hippel from MIT advocated a flexible and voluntary association of academics in order to promote what he called “molecular engineering” (MIT School of Engineering office of the Dean, Records received in 1988, AC 12, Box 71). William Baker, of Bell Labs, favoured academic research with long-term research contracts targeted on products with no division between academic disciplines, but investment in projects conducted at the national laboratories, the outgrowth of the Manhattan Project.
- 4.
Twelve interdisciplinary labs were funded by ARPA, three by NASA, two by AEC (Atomic Energy Commission). ARPA spent $ 157.9 million on the IDLs between 1961 and 1970, see Psaras and Langford (1987: 36).
- 5.
In the group of 12 universities with ARPA/IDL support, the number of Ph.D.’s granted in an MSE subject increased from 100 in 1960 to 360 in 1967.
- 6.
Rustum Roy who founded the MRS was also the founder of one of the first interdisciplinary programmes of Science, Technology and Society at Pennsylvania State University in 1969. This programme was explicitly meant to bridge the gap between “the two cultures”.
- 7.
For instance, Stanley Whittingham who completed his Ph.D. in England and then moved to Stanford told us in an interview: “In England, France, and Germany, solid-state chemistry was a respectable subject. Chemistry departments did solid-state chemistry. In the US you could count the number of solid-state chemists on the fingers of one hand. So I went to a materials science department, not to a chemistry department” (interview by Arne Hessenbruch & B. Bensaude Vincent, October 30, 2000).
- 8.
Similar cases instantiating the coexistence of interdisciplinarity and the (alleged) autonomy of science are presented in Barry Born and Weszkalnys (2008).
- 9.
In ten years the US National NanoInitiative has been funded with up to $ 14 billion. The budget was raised from $ 450 million in 2000 to 2,1 billion in 2012 (see http://www.nano.gov/initiatives/government ). In Asia investments, in 2012, were approximately $ 1,650 billion and in the European Union € 1,650 billion.
- 10.
In particular, the social sciences and humanities are often embedded in nano-initiatives to anticipate the ethical, legal, and societal impact of the latter’s applications (i.e., the so-called “ELSI” programmes).
- 11.
The European ObservatoryNano, in particular, adopted a scheme based on the linear model of innovation in 2011as it distinguished between (1) basic science, (2) applied research, (3) prototype, (4) market entry, and (5) mature markets for delivering the factsheets of its annual reports.
- 12.
However, one could have expected academic chemists to eagerly reposition themselves as nanoscientists or synthetic biologists, given the poor public image of chemistry. Following the triumph of chemical synthesis and the commercial expansion of synthetic products, chemistry is often associated with unnatural, pollution, hazards. In public polls chemistry has a very low profile and no longer attracts young talented students (Schummer et al. 2007).
- 13.
For instance, a researcher from the Atomic Energy Commission in Grenoble (CEA/LETI) said that “in the domain of chemistry and biochemistry those who are concerned with molecules and their reactions are de facto in the nanoworld (…).Nano has been around since a long time” (Arnaud Castex interviewed by Sacha Loeve, August 8, 2006). Frazer Stoddardt from North Western University insisted that it was “natural” for chemists to move into nanoscience: “I think it would have been a natural progression, but it happened that chemistry at some stage would move into the nanometer – if you define it by a span of length-scale, you go from one to one hundred nanometers. Inevitably people are going to make things that are bigger.” (Frazer Stoddardt interviewed by Terry Shinn, January 29, 2008). By contrast Chad A. Mirkin, chemist by training, professor of chemistry and director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology at Northwestern University, insisted that “chemists are really angstrom technologists, not nano technologists” (Chad A. Mirkin interviewed by Terry Shinn, 2008).
References
Amos, M. 2006. Genesis machines: The new science of biocomputing. New York: Atlantic Books.
Barry A., Born, G., and G. Weszkalnys. 2008. Logics of interdisciplinarity. Economy and Society 37: 20–49.
Benner, S.A. 2011. Synthetic biology: The organic chemistry perspective. Lecture at the conference SB 5.0, in the session Understanding the path of evolution. http://vimeo.com/26615522. Accessed Feb 2014.
Benner, S.A. 2012. Redesigning DNA: Fixing God’s mistakes. The Pittcon Program 2012 Conference, Capstone. http://www.pittcon.org/technical/capstone.php. Accessed Feb 2014.
Bensaude Vincent, B. 2001. The construction of a discipline: Materials science in the U.S.A. Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 31: 223–248.
Bensaude Vincent, B. 2009. Self-assembly, self-organisation: Nanotechnology and vitalism. NanoEthics 3(1): 31–43.
Bensaude Vincent, B. 2010. Materials as machines. In Science in the context of application, ed. A. Nordmann and M. Carrier, 101–114. Dordrecht: Springer.
Bensaude Vincent, B. 2011, A cultural perspective on biomimetics. In Advances in biomimetic, ed. A. George. InTech. http://www.intechopen.com/articles/show/title/a-cultural-perspective-on-biomimetics. Accessed Feb 2014.
Bensaude Vincent, B. 2013. Discipline building in synthetic biology. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44(2): 122–129.
Bensaude Vincent, B., and I. Stengers. 1993. A history of chemistry. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bensaude Vincent, B., S. Loeve, A. Nordmann, and A. Schwarz. 2011. Matters of interest: The objects of research in science and technoscience. Journal for General Philosophy of Science 42(2): 365–383.
Bertrand, E., and B. Bensaude Vincent. 2011. Materials research in France: A short-lived national initiative (1982-1994). Minerva 49: 191–214.
Brooks, H. 1971. Science, growth and society: A new perspective. Paris: OECD.
Bud, R., and K.G. Roberts. 1984. Science versus practice. Chemistry in Victorian Britain. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Cademartiri, L., and G.A. Ozin. 2009. Concepts of nanochemistry. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH.
Cahn, R.W. 2001. The coming of materials science. London: Pergamon.
Campos, L. 2009. That was the synthetic biology that was. In Synthetic biology: The technoscience and its consequences, ed. M. Schmidt, A. Agomoni-Kelle, A. Ganguli-Mitra, and H. de Vriend, 5–21. Dordrecht: Springer.
Caracostas, P., and U. Muldur. 1997. Society, the endless frontier. European Commission/DG/XII R&D. http://ec.europa.eu/research/publ/society-en.pdf. Accessed Sept 2012.
Drexler, E.K. 1986. Engines of creation. New York: Anchor Book.
Duncan, R., and B. Gaspar. 2011. Nanomedicine(s) under the microscope. Molecular Pharmaceutics 8: 2101–2141.
Elzinga, A., and A. Jamison. 1995. Changing policy agendas in science and technology. In Handbook of science and technology studies, ed. S. Jasanoff, G.E. Markle, J.C. Petersen, and T. Pinch, 572–597. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Etzkowitz, H. 2008. The triple helix: University-industry-government innovation in action. London: Routledge.
Frodeman, R., J. Thompson Klein, and C. Mitcham. 2010. Oxford handbook of interdisciplinarity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Funtowicz, S., and J. Ravetz. 1997. Science for the post-normal age. Futures 25(7): 739–755.
Gibbons, M., C. Limoges, H. Nowotny, S. Schwartzman, P. Scott, and P. Trow. 1994. The new production of knowledge. The dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies. London: Sage.
Godin, B. 1998. Writing performative history: The new New Atlantis? Social Studies of Science 28(3): 465–483.
Kevles, D. 1990. Principles and politics in Federal R&D Policy, 1945-1990 – An appreciation of the Bush report. In Science – The endless frontier – A report to the President on a Program for Postwar Scientific Research, ed. V. Bush, ix–xxxiii. Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation.
Kline, R. 1995. Constructing “technology” as “applied science” – Public rhetoric of scientists and engineers in the United States, 1880-1945. Isis 86: 194–221.
Krige, J. 2006. American hegemony and the postwar reconstruction of science in Europe. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Latour, B. 1987. Science in action. Milton Keynes: Open University.
Lenoir, T. 1993. The discipline of nature and the nature of disciplines. In Knowledges: Historical and critical studies in disciplinarity, ed. Davidow Messer-E:, D.R. Shumway, and D. Sylvan, 70–102. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
Leslie, S.W. 1993. The cold war and American science. New York: Columbia University Press.
Leydesdorff, L., and P. Zhou. 2007. Nanotechnology as a field of science: Its delineation in terms of journals and patents. Scientometrics 70(3): 693–713.
Luisi, P.L., and C. Charabelli (eds.). 2011. Chemical synthetic biology. Chichester: Wiley.
Marcovitch, A., and T. Shinn. 2012. Where is disciplinarity going? Meeting on the borderland. Social Science Information 50(3-4): 1–25.
Meyer, M., and O. Persson. 1998. Nanotechnology – Interdisciplinarity, patterns of collaboration and differences in application. Scientometrics 42(2): 195–205.
Mody, C., and D. Kaiser. 2008. Scientific training and the creation of scientific knowledge. In The handbook of science and technology studies, 3rd ed, ed. E.J. Hackett, O. Amsterdamska, M. Lynch, and J. Wajcman, 377–402. Cambridge: MIT Press.
NATO. 1963. Advances in materials research in the North Atlantic Treatise Organization. Oxford/London: Pergamon Press.
Nowotny, H., M. Gibbons, and P. Scott. 2001. Re-thinking science. Knowledge and the public in an age of uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity.
Pestre, D. 2003. Science, argent et politique. Paris: INRA éditions.
Psaras, P.A., and H.D. Langford (eds.). 1987. Advancing materials science. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Science.
Rafols, I. 2007. Strategies for knowledge acquisition in bio-nanotechnology: Why are interdisciplinary practices less widespread than expected? Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research 20(4): 395–412.
Roco, M.C., and W.S. Bainbridge. 2002. Converging technologies for improving human performances. NSF sponsored report. www.wtec.org/ConvergingTechnologies/Report/NBIC_report.pdf. Accessed Sept 2012.
Schaffer, S. 2009. Indiscipline and interdiscipline: Some exotic genealogies of modern knowledge. Journal of the History of Astronomy 40: 275–380.
Schummer, J., B. Bensaude Vincent, and B. van Tiggelen (eds.). 2007. The public image of chemistry. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co. Ltd.
Teissier, P. 2010. Solid-state chemistry in France: Structure and dynamics of a scientific community since World War II. Historical Studies in Natural Sciences 40(2): 225–258.
Weingart, P. 1997. From “finalization” to “Mode 2”: old wine in new bottles? Social Science Information 36: 591–613.
Yeh, B.J., and W.A. Lim. 2007. Synthetic biology: Lessons from the history of synthetic organic chemistry. Nature Chemical Biology 3: 521–525.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bensaude-Vincent, B. (2016). Building Multidisciplinary Research Fields: The Cases of Materials Science, Nanotechnology and Synthetic Biology. In: Merz, M., Sormani, P. (eds) The Local Configuration of New Research Fields. Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook, vol 29. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22683-5_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22683-5_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-22682-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-22683-5
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)