Abstract
If we could visually trace how the entire stock of knowledge has expanded over the past half century, the spread of the exterior boundaries and the increase in overall mass would be considerable. An equally striking change would be seen in the internal geography. Knowledge has been in a state of flux—a continual process of reconfiguration, with existing subject domains merging and seceding, and new ones emerging. As the structure of knowledge grows i n both scope and specificity, the conduct of research is also changing. Increasingly researchers are importing and exporting information, techniques, and tools across disciplinary boundaries and working together to apply more powerful and sophisticated approaches to the questions they ask. They manage to continue to solve important research problems by adapting their methods of inquiry to the breadth and complexity of knowledge.
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References
For the most comprehensive body of work see Klein’s (1990, 1996) two major integrative studies. Her extensive bibliographies in themselves stand as the consummate record of research and scholarship on interdisciplinarity.
Quoted from an informational brochure produced by the Center’s external affairs department.
Industry has had a longstanding concern with the design and construction of productive research environments. See for example Carlson’s (1991) study of Elihu Thomson at General Electric between 1870–1900.
Fisher develops his concept of integration from Bernstein’s (1977, 1982) work on integrated educational codes.
For example, in a review of “yet another” festschrift honoring the life and work of Dobzhansky, Jerry A. Coyne (1995) comments on how “ancestor awareness” has become a form of “ancestor worship” in the field of evolutionary biology.
See Clarke and Fujimura (1992) for a comprehensive review of influential works on the situated technical culture and practice of science, and Becker (1982) for a similar approach to the “sociology of occupations applied to artistic work.”
See, for example, Chubin, Porter, and Rossini 1986, McCain 1986, Choi 1988, and Hurd 1992.
The import measure was based on a sample of 50% of each researcher’s publications identified from their recent vitae and by searching the Institute for Scientific Information’s SciSearch and Social SciSearch databases to find additional recent items. Works that had multiple authors were included since collaboration is a common feature of interdisciplinary research. Technical reports issued by the Center were also included in the analysis process.
See, in particular, Small 1977 and Small and Greenlee 1980.
English was a second language for a number of the researchers interviewed. On occasion I have slightly altered their sentences to improve readability, but for the most part I have reproduced quotations as they appeared in the interview transcripts.
The gender ratio for the sample differs slightly from the .11 ratio for the entire Center membership.
In a study of biochemists, entomologists, and statisticians, Judith Palmer (1991) identified five information styles, three of which roughly correspond with these modes. The characteristics she attributes to “lone-wide rangers” are generally in line with the information practices associated with the generalists. Both the team leader and collaborator modes seem to be congruent with her “confident collector” category.
This reference is to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, a science fiction television series about a remote station at the edge of a new frontier in outer space. “Travelers of all kinds are drawn here, and with hostile alien empires bordering every side, Deep Space Nine becomes the most strategic point in the galaxy.” (Description from a Paramount Television Current Productions web page, July 2001.)
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© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Palmer, C.L. (2001). The Context of Interdisciplinary Science. In: Work at the Boundaries of Science. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9843-9_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9843-9_1
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