Speech on Transdisciplinarity PDF Print E-mail
By Sebastian Hirsch   
Sunday, 14 November 2004
Thursday evening the Campus Center hosted a lecture by Prof. Dr. Jürgen Mittelstraß. As a distinguished philosopher with a special interest in the philosophy of science, he dedicated his talk to "Transdisciplinarity - Idea and Institutional Reality." Although it took place in the conference hall, this lecture attracted surprisingly few undergraduate students. They were actually outnumbered by graduate students and professors, who followed Mittelstraß's talk with great interest. Reasons for this may be the recent rise of events on campus or insufficient advertisement. Most freshmen were uninformed as they are not yet subscribed to the IUB-events mailing list.

Prof. Dr. Phil. Jürgen Mittelstraß was introduced by Dr. Immacolata Amodeo, who marked that he is probably the only philosophy professor who received an honorary doctor in engineering. With her strong German accent, she thanked him for encouraging us in 'thinking the unthinkable." Mittelstraß began his talk by referring to IUB as a 'new chapter" in the German science landscape.

He stated that with increasing complexity of science, borders between disciplines may become limits to discovery. Inter- and transdisciplinarity are widely perceived to be solutions to this problem. While the scientific disciplines have grown historically, broader scientific problems like the question of causality also have historic roots. Whereas these wider problems never readily fit a single discipline, others problems have been transferred between disciplines.

Mittelstraß highlighted energy and health as key issues in which there is an asymmetry of problems and scientific disciplines. At the same time, there is a new readiness to engage in cooperation. New research centers in Berkeley, Harvard and Stanford, to name just a few, are explicitly tackling problems from a transdisciplinary perspective. But for the individual researcher, gaining competences in a particular discipline still remains the fundamental precondition.

The field of nanotechnology was cited as one of the most striking examples for transdisciplinarity. Here physicists and chemists are successfully cooperating and advancing their understanding as they merge different approaches on a shared problem. Yet a fundamental paradigm shift has, in professor Mittelstraß's view, not yet taken place. Methods of studying even broader problems continue to be methods of disciplines.

Therefore the speaker called for deeper changes and a true methodological transdisciplinarity. Transforming institutions as well as developing new competences, transdisciplinary methods and a new thinking will be necessary.

In the Q & A session some of the IUB faculty kindly challenged Mittelstraß's ideas. Several members of the audience noted that, when it comes to implementation, many basic tensions remain. As transdisciplinarity is mainly a research-driven concept, teaching and learning persist to take place in the old-fashioned framework of disciplines.

But if we aim at a transdisciplinary science, does it make sense to preserve the disciplines in scientific education? IUB students are painfully aware of the troubles that come with attempts to teach transdisciplinarity. While this form of knowledge-formation may already be the norm in the natural sciences, it is still by and large lacking in the humanities. Mittelstraß was not able to offer a clear-cut solution for this problem, but stated that he is 'optimistic" that a way will be found.
 
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