John Updike, R.I.P.

We Pennsylvanians lost one of our great ones yesterday, and I lost one of my favorite writers.  He even once helped me in my “day job” pursuing science and religion dialogue.

A character from John Updikes’ novel, Roger’s Version, warns of a danger in pursuing something like the “constructive engagement of science and religion”:

Whenever theology touches science, it gets burned. In the sixteenth century astronomy, in the seventeenth microbiology, in the eighteenth geology and paleontology, in the nineteenth Darwin’s biology all grotesquely extended the world-frame and sent churchmen scurrying for cover in ever smaller, more shadowy nooks, little gloomy ambiguous caves in the psyche where even now neurology is cruelly harrying them, gouging them out from the multifolded brain like wood lice from under the lumber pile.

Maybe.  But it seemed to be not like that for Updike himself. Not entirely.  Not unambiguously.  In this novel, for instance, it’s the “scientist” who’s out to prove God’s existence once and for all, and the world-weary Divinity School professor who’s giving the advice above.  The professor has proof of another sort:

Indeed, it has occurred to me that in my sensation of peace post coitus, of sweet theistic certainty beneath the remote vague ceiling, of living proof at Verna’s side, I was guilty of heresy, the heresy of which the Cathars and Fraticelli were long ago accused amid the thunders of anathema–that of committing deliberate abominations so as to widen and deepen the field in which God’s forgiveness can magnificently play.  Mas, mas.  But thou shall not tempt the Lord thy God.

Updike did, I think, understand temptations well…of all sorts.  No one could conjure abominations better.  R.I.P.

Advertisement

He wrote this for me…

…Patrick Kavanagh did…just didn’t know it, is all.

Pegasus

My soul was an old horse
Offered for sale in twenty fairs.
I offered him to the Church–the buyers
Were little men who feared his unusual airs.
One said: ‘Let him remain unbid
In the wind and rain and hunger
Of sin and we will get him–
With the winkers thrown in–for nothing.’

Then the men of State looked at
What I’d brought for sale.
One minister, wondering if
Another horse-body would fit the tail
That he’d kept for sentiment–
The relic of his own soul–
Said, ‘I will graze him in lieu of his labour.’
I lent him for a week or more
And he came back a hurdle of bones,
Starved, overworked, in despair.
I nursed him on the roadside grass
To shape him for another fair.

I lowered my price.  I stood him where
The broken-winded, spavined stand
And crooked shopkeepers said that he
Might do a season on the land–
But not for high-paid work in towns.
He’d do a tinker, possibly.
I begged, ‘O make some offer now,
A soul is a poor man’s tragedy.
He’ll draw your dungiest cart,’ I said,
‘Show you short cuts to Mass,
Teach weather lore, at night collect
Bad debts from poor men’s grass.’
     And they would not.

     Where the
Tinkers quarrel I went down
With my horse, my soul.
I cried, ‘Who will bid me half a crown?’
From their rowdy bargaining
Not one turned. ‘Soul,’ I prayed,
‘I have hawked you through the world
Of Church and State and meanest trade.
But this evening, halter off,
Never again will it go on.
On the south side of ditches
There is grazing of the sun.
No more haggling with the world…’

As I said these words he grew
Wings upon his back.  Now I may ride him
Every land my imagination knew.

Lying awake at night, wondering if there’s a GED…

When is a GED better than a PhD?  Now!  Kai Ma tells yet another story of disaster and despair in the humanities.  One of her correspondents tells her:

Every single academic, especially in the humanities, has a tinge of buyer’s remorse [about their PhD]. You see your peers in law or business school make down payments on homes and buy cars and go on vacation. But as a PhD student, you’re in your 30s, still renting an apartment and driving an ’84 Corolla. It’s not cute.

Advice:  Learn a trade!

Bio-aesthetics?

Why not?  John Derbyshire reviews The Art Instinct by Denis Dutton, founder of the artsandlettersdaily website (for which we owe him a debt of gratitude).  The gist?  That we have biological, evolutionary sources for our tastes, that perhaps what we like held, at least once upon a time, adaptive advantage.  Derbyshire asks, why not?  Let a thousand conferences bloom!

Speaking of bloom, I first heard about this in a talk (notice) by Yale psychologist Paul Bloom:  the world’s “most desirable painting.”  Mentioned also in Dutton, an experiment in the nineties by Komar and Melamid conducted surveys to determine tastes in painting. Here is the most desirable painting for Americans:

The funny thing is, in almost all the world, everyone prefers paintings that contain a lot of blue, water, trees, animals, people, and historic figures.  Here, for instance, is the favorite from Kenya:

You can check out the rest of the (remarkably similar) most desired–and the least desired–paintings for different nationalities here.  Just one thing:  Can sombody please explain to me the Dutch (whom I love and yet cannot fathom)!

But don’t take it from me…

Here’s an essay on getting into and out of academia.  A taste:

[T]he life of the mind is highly portable: research and writing can be done outside the friendly confines of colleges and university, and some of us can even become better scholars for having experiences the worlds of commerce and public culture. Further, corporate life is different from the academy, but not completely alien: it has some aspects that are pleasantly familiar, as well as pleasantly different. Because of this, the skills that you develop as a graduate student and postdoc can be real assets in the private sector. Our talents, it turns out, are really quite marketable, and quite useful.

And this:

[A]lmost everyone in the humanities takes for granted that the academy is the only place in which one can pursue the life of the mind. The assumption is so pervasive as to seem perfectly natural, and thus it goes unquestioned. Immersion in things intellectual seems by nature antithetical to the coarser interests of the rest of the world, and its absurd obsessions with money and power. If that is true, then there is nothing to be done about leaving: there are and can be no alternatives to the university to (literally) speak of, and no rational policies to pursue or plans to make. Outside the ivy walls lies oblivion, and the less said about that particular abyss the better. It’s no wonder that our language for describing lives that aren’t academic, but are scholarly, is so poor.

Yes…what ARE they thinking?

One of our local publications, Main Line Today, just published a little feature on Metanexus.  In it, I am described as a “real-life philosopher,” an appellation I think I’ll keep, thank you very much.  Money quote from Hansell:  “The ideas here at Metanexus go beyond the jamming.”  I think we’ll use that for the title of our next conference:  “Beyond the Jamming:  A Transdisciplinary Approach.”

Some other observations:

• While it is true, as the article notes, that we do not “necessarily ‘foam at the mouth'” over controversy, we do contingently foam at the mouth over controversy.
• The article notes that Metanexus is “providing a forum for those passionate about discovery and cosmic fine-tuning.”  And…well…LOTs of stuff, too!
• I am quoted as saying, “It’s not a cocktail hour.”  I would never say that.  For me, it is–ontologically–cocktail hour!
• The article states (that we think, I guess) that “Everyone is an expert, and no one knows the answer to anything.” It is not a quote, and I never said it, but now I’m kinda wishing I did.  It’s a koan.

Elsewhere, I am quoted as saying,

“We’re always glad to have rich resources. Maybe there are none like we have here, but we’re still interested in these questions, and I’m convinced they should matter to everyone—academics and non-academics, young and old, the boy who works at Borders and also runs his high school philosophy club, and the churches and libraries.”

Uh…what?  What’s that about the resources?  And the boy who works at Borders? (Not me, brother.)  Also:  academics, non-academics, the young, the old, the boys and the men constitute, in part, “everyone.”  Churches and libraries do not.

The article goes on:

“Real wisdom is a collective thing,” Weislogel adds. “You draw out wisdom. The search for it is a form of intellectual and spiritual tourism—and the sun never really sets on such things.”

The quest for wisdom is NOT “a form of intellectual and spiritual tourism,” although the sun never really sets on it.  The “tourism” refers to some of those not in academia who choose to attend our annual conference, especially when we have them in interesting locales.  Not a bad little vacation, really.  But it doesn’t refer to the quest, the thing itself.

Anyway, thanks to Main Line Today, though, for checking us out and providing us a little local visibility (and me a bit of amusement).  And the picture makes us look every bit as awesome as we are!

It’s a good thing a philosopher doesn’t need a university…

…because pretty soon there’s not going to be any place for them in the university.  According to Stanley Fish, so says Frank Donoghue in his new book, The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities.

Does a Philosopher need a University?

There is a fascinating discussion going on at the Leiter Reports blog about a piece (.pdf) that ran in the Chronicle recently about young philosophers leaving the “profession” because they don’t like their circumstances.

Here’s my response (just in case it doesn’t show up over there):

I earned a PhD in philosophy at an R1 university with, at the time, a very fine faculty.  I taught classes of my own from my second semester onward, and got an adjunct job long before I finished my disseration.  Some people have the gift of teaching, and I am one of these people.  I am certain it is a gift because I’m good at it and my graduate education never taught me to do it (or even to honor it).  I taught as an adjunct for 7 years at the same place.  I never had to be a “gypsy” as many of my friends had to.  Had I chosen to, I suspose I could still be there.  Every summer, to earn a little extra money, I’d take some kind of job.  In the summer after my 7th year, I landed a consulting job in the manufacturing industry working with engineers.  I loved that job!  At the end of the summer, I asked for an unconscionably large raise and got it.  I very much liked the idea of being rewarded for my talents, rather than being on the step-scale of a collectively bargained agreement.  I “left” academia and stayed with my consulting firm.  A year or so later, the large corporation in which I had been stationed from day one hired me for themselves.  I worked there for a total of four years, and then took a position in a non-profit organization that brings me into contact with academics from around the world (and from a wide variety of disciplines), but which is not a university.  I have been with this organization for more than 7 years.

I never intended to leave academia.  I literally grew up on college campuses (both mom and dad were academics).  It was all I had ever known.  I did apply for TT jobs, but without success.  [Academia does not hire great teachers, it hires “researchers,” a term, if we were really philosophers, we’d be a tad bit suspicious of when applied to philosophy.]  But I felt very disappointed about not being offered a TT job.  Being turned down for an academic position for a philosopher is not being told “you cannot have this job;” it is being told “you are not who you think you are.”  At least that’s what we academics–especially philosophers, I would say–tend to think.

But philosophers should NOT think that at all.  As important as I think formal education is, as important as I think teaching is, as important–despite what I am about to say–as I think academic philosophy is, I am utterly grateful to God or the fates or to circumstance to have NOT spent the whole of my working life in academia!

By NOT spending the whole of my working life in academia, I saw more of the world than I otherwise would have.

By NOT spending the whole of my working life in academia, I’ve met a richer variety of people, whose lives and experiences have greatly enriched mine.

By NOT spending the whole of my working life in academia, I’ve earned far more money than I would have, allowing me to care not only for my immediate family, but also for my extended family and even friends in need, as well as to extend charity to those whom I will never meet.

By NOT spending the whole of my working life in academia, I’ve been far less susceptible to the myopia that tends to come from holing up in the ivory tower for a lifetime.

But NOT spending the whole of my working life in academia has not prevented me in ANY way from involvement in academic philosophy, when I am in the mood for some of its better qualities and offerings.

By NOT spending the whole of my working life in academia I was able generate enough income to assemble a philosophy book collection that would be sufficient for many graduate students to complete a doctoral disseration. If Thomas Carlyle was right to say that the true university is a collection of books, I live in a university–just one without all the meetings, politicking, petty rancor, and other nonsense that is part of academic life.

By NOT spending the whole of my working life in academia, I’ve had the opportunity to read more of what I’ve wanted to read (not always having to read in order to regurgitate, er, I mean, “research”).  Even teaching a few preps will limit one’s reading–especially if you care about your students and about teaching.

By NOT spending the whole of my working life in academia, I was able to go to academic conferences wherever and whenever I felt like it (which I regularly did), and I never had to feel I was “on the make” like so many of my pure-academic colleagues, new and old, tenured or not.

By NOT spending the whole of my working life in academia, I was able to learn much about the worlds of business and government, which, contrary to what so many in academia seem to think, are intellectually stimulating and potentially fulfilling.  I had just as many great teachers–probably more, come to think of it–outside of academia than I had within.  The engineers with whom I worked for a number of years, for instance, were at least as smart (and many were smarter) than my philosophical acquaintances, but with far fewer neuroses as a class.

By NOT spending the whole of my working life in academia, when I do teach (which I just started to do again after 11 years) I am much better able to help students learn about philosophy and even become more philosophical themselves, as I am better able than many of my pure-academic peers to do something other than the only thing they have ever known to do:  take tests, write footnoted papers, get grades, and more or less reproduce themselves–none of which most students–even those in the Ivies–care for very much, and which has little to do with philosophy and much to do with “schooling.”

By NOT spending the whole of my working life in academia, I realize just how little professional philosophy sometimes has to do with philosophy–as even almost all of the discussion in this thread indicate (all about amenities of life, personal relationships, professional trappings, bruised egos, dashed hopes, etc., etc.).

Look, lets be honest with ourselves.  What we all want–qua philosophers–is to be able to read about, think about, write about, and (occasionally) to talk about exactly what we want to talk about as much of the time as possible and to be paid (a lot of) money to do it.  Some people–but not all–are able to achieve this goal within academia.  Some people–but not all–will fail BECAUSE they have an academic job with 4 sections and three preps semester in and semester out, and they don’t care about teaching and they’re no good at it anyway, and there are endless faculty meetings, committees, etc.  And–and this is what you most need to know–some people can SUCCEED in this aim just because they are OUTSIDE of academia.  You do not need to teach in an educational institution to be a philosopher.  You do not need to publish in an arcane philosophical journal to be a philosopher.  You do not need to constantly pursue tenure to be a philosopher.  For most of the history of our “profession” it wasn’t one!  And you don’t have to be in a big city or in the mountains (although, I admit, you have to be somewhere!).  You don’t have to be rich (I’m certainly not).  You just have to know how to handle distractions.  Having your loved ones unhappy is a terrible distraction (as having them happy is a wonderful boon to the peace you need to think.)  Pick a place to live that makes you and them happy–rural or urban or in between.  Having always to think about the bills is a terrible distraction.  Feeling angry and bitter is a terrible distraction. And sometimes, academia can be the biggest distraction of all (and much more dangerous and devastating as it is not recognized to be such).

The Transdisciplinary Imperative

[as seen at Global Spiral…]

The problems we face today – economic collapse, environmental degradation, energy needs -are so broad and complex that they seem intractable.  Plenty of brain-power is being applied to our situation, and there is no shortage of individuals trained at our blue-chip academic institutions on Wall Street , in the halls of government, and in corporate enterprises.  And yet, here we are.  But one might just wonder whether knowledge itself shares some of the blame for these troubles – I mean knowledge divorced from the larger view, divorced from the whole.  Could it be that knowledge without wisdom causes as many problems as it solves?

The economic, moral, political, environmental, technical, intellectual, scientific, and even spiritual challenges we face demand approaches that are suitably rich in resources for tackling them.  We need to learn how to take the full measure of our knowledge, to find out what it is we really know now that we know so many disciplinarily distinct things.  We need to find a way of recapturing a vision of the forest and not just the trees.  The negative consequences for failing to do so are obvious.  Our disciplinary practices inevitably give rise to the fragmentation of knowledge.  This fragmentation of knowledge leads to the fragmentation of the university, which has a significant impact on its mission to educate the next generation.  The fragmented university leads – consciously or unconsciously – to training students (and faculty, too) to compartmentalize their thinking, their reality, and hence their lives.

Our situation demands we respond to the transdisciplinary imperative,an approach to research and teaching that would serve to mitigate the consequences of this fragmentation.

What is a transdisciplinary approach?

The term transdisciplinaritycan be found occasionally in the intellectual landscape.  There have been conferences held, manifestos published, organizations formed, and some good work has been undertaken.  However, the term still lacks specificity and is often applied without sufficient theoretical reflection.  As yet, transdisciplinarity has been unable to bear the weight of the profoundly important idea in names.

Physicist Basarab Nicolescu1 explains that the trans- in transdisciplinary signifies working simultaneously through disciplinary practices, between the disciplines (as in multi- and interdisciplinary endeavors), and beyond the disciplines and the institutions they form and in which they reside, in the hope of approaching something like the unity of knowledge.

Transdisciplinarity depends upon rigorous disciplinary work.  The various academic disciplines – the sciences,broadly construed to include the social and the human sciences along with the natural sciences – form around the practice of making our questions precise, focusing our investigations, and employing analytic techniques in order to come to knowledge.  Transdisciplinarity rejects attempts to address broader questions in ways that ignore the undeniable advances produced by the various disciplines.

Transdisciplinarity also relies on innovative interdisciplinary work.  Many areas of inquiry – and many real-world problems we need to address – can only be pursued in a collaborative manner that utilizes multiple areas of specialized expertise.  Transdisciplinarity rejects attempts at reductionism- the idea that one area of knowledge or expertise can adequately account for the richness of nature and human experience.  It recognizes that successful interdisciplinary efforts often result in the formation of new disciplines, new spheres of specific expertise, with their own canons and methodologies.

Transdisciplinarity demands something more.  Disciplinary and interdisciplinary work, with their overarching emphasis on analysis (breaking ‘reality’ into its constituent ‘parts,’ around which develop methodologies, standards of practice, certifications of expertise, and quite often ‘orthodoxies’) make significant contributions to our knowledge.  But they also exact a price:  the fragmentation of knowledge.  This fragmentation is widely lamented.  Unless universities restore the idea of synthesis as a complement to (not a replacement for) analysis, unless they regain the taste for something like the unity or the symphony of knowledge, unless they embark once again on a quest for wholeness, unless they learn to seek wisdom in addition to knowledge – they will not live up to their name and their mission.

Some may argue that transdisciplinarity is impossible.  It will result either in a homogenous, vague, superficial theory of everythingor it will develop into yet another discipline, another parochial body of knowledge without achieving the goal of a synoptic view.  The transdisciplinary desire for something like a harmony or symphony of knowledge is simply a pipe dream.

One way to think of transdisciplinarity is to see it as a quest for the whole story. Whole stories are impossible, however, if for no other reason than the temporality of stories.  Our story is ongoing, so we can’t write the ending yet.  And while our stories are being written – including the stories from all of the disciplines in the natural, social, and human sciences – there will be the rough and tumble we’ve come to expect in the highly competitive marketplace of ideas.

Nevertheless, we give up seeking the whole story at our peril, even if it is impossible.  We need to think of the whole storyas a regulative idea, one at which we aim despite knowing that we cannot attain it.

During our recent election season, Stanley Fish issued a harsh rebuke to independent voters in his always-provocative New York Times blog, Think Again.2 Fish thinks independent voters are a bad idea because they deny the importance of political parties, their platforms,  and the vigorous arguments they produce.  Independent voters, argue Fish, want us all to just get along.  An analogy can be made between Fish’s view of politics and the way many academics, administrators and faculty alike, tend to look at research and learning.  Academia functions in a sort of a party system.  It is not a two party system – in fact, there are hundreds of parties, namely the disciplines and sub-disciplines that make up the university.  Those of us advocating for transdisciplinarity might  appear to deny the value and importance of the academic disciplines (the parties) in favor of homogenization.

Let me paraphrase an excerpt from Fish’s piece, substituting transdisciplinary ideas for the independent political ones he’s criticizing, to give an idea of the criticism:

Those who yearn for academia without the stranglehold of disciplines always invoke abstract truths and moral visions (wisdom, the whole, wholeness, integral knowledge, the unity or symphonyof knowledge, synthesis, metaphysical vision, etc.) with which no one is likely to disagree because they have no content. But sooner rather than later someone gives these abstractions content, and when that happens, definitional disputes break out immediately, and after definitional disputes come real disputes, the taking of sides, the applying of labels (both the self-identifying kind and the accusing kind) and, pretty soon, the demonization of the other. In short, discipline, which is what transdisciplinary proponents hate.

An honest transdisciplinarian ought to feel the force of these charges.  Certainly, it sets a challenge:  what do wisdom, wholeness, synthesis, and the unity of knowledge really mean?  Would pursuit of these aims blur disciplinary distinctions, homogenize our knowledge into a least-common-denominatorgruel, leaving us without sharp distinctions and clear ideas?

True, I have encountered ten-page theories of everythingthat are supposed to synthesize all knowledge and answer all of humanity’s questions once and for all.  These efforts are nothing but nonsense.  But genuine transdisciplinarians move much more slowly and carefully.  They love to engage in definitional disputes.  They do take sides- just not always along established disciplinary lines.  Transdisciplinarians are the least likely to demonizetheir colleagues with whom they have disagreements and are unlikely to be summarily dismissive of groundbreaking or nonstandardendeavors.  They are most likely to be open to collaboration and fruitful dialogue.  They are least likely to get caught up in academic turf warsand most likely to reap the benefits and pleasures of intellectual community, even as they vigorously debate their way towards understanding.  They are also, alas, least likely to be awarded tenure and promotion.  We simply lack the measures for evaluating their work.

Nevertheless just as independent voters consistently decide the outcome of presidential elections, which are admittedly of some importance, transdisciplinarians  will likely determine the outcomeof our common quest for wisdom – which is of paramount importance.  Transdisciplinarians tend to be independent-minded scholars and researchers, no doubt, but it is more accurate to say they are interdependent minded, rigorously trained participants in their own fields but cognizant of the fact that the pursuit of the whole requires the work of all of us – from every discipline, every sphere of expertise, and every sort of academic, religious, civic, and cultural institution.  Transdisciplinarians know they have to undertake the hard intellectual work to discover (or re-discover) for themselves and future generations how things hang together,how to rightly pursue the unity of knowledge, and how to seek wisdom.  They don’t see this as a new job or another job; they see it as a regular part of their dayjob – a part for which they are not commonly rewarded.

We need to realize that if transdisciplinarity means training generalists,that does not imply an education in superficiality.  As Alasdair MacIntyre reminds us, superficiality should be as unacceptable to the educated generalist as it is to the specialist.  And a sense of complexity is perhaps even more important for generalists than for specialists3 who frequently gain their specialized knowledge by means of cordoning off small sectors of reality, i.e., by simplifying matters.

Some see no distinction between transdisciplinarity and interdisciplinary work.  But the latter inexorably leads to the creation of new disciplines and new fields of knowledge.  Transdisciplinarity, on the other hand, is not seeking to create another new academic discipline.  Instead, it promotes approaches to profound questions that do not fit neatly into any particular disciplinary boundary or perhaps even easily within the borders of the institutions that have traditionally legislated those boundaries.  One key feature of transdisciplinarity is that it contains an explicit moral component.  This moral aspect raises issues that must be addressed regarding defining and pursuing – as well as containing – transdisciplinarity.  Systematic reflection about how to do this is part of the endeavor, and it is to be hoped that much more of our collective time will be devoted to it.  It is likely that we will develop new or expanded fields of transdisciplinary studies. We will likely articulate new methodologies , practices, and standards appropriate to transdisciplinarity that are analogous to – but not identical with – those in established disciplines. But to paraphrase Aristotle, the ultimate goal is not to know about transdisciplinarity, i.e., to turn it into one more discipline among others, to have only an intellectual understanding of it.  The important thing is to learn to adopt, wherever appropriate, transdisciplinary approaches to research and teaching that can help to meet the challenges that lie before us – educational and otherwise.

In a recent article, Alasdair MacIntyre complained that the trouble with Catholic universities is that they all want to be like Duke, and that the trouble with that is not that Duke is not a Catholic university.  It is that Duke is no longer a university at all.  The same could be said for most of our institutions of higher education.  Some celebrate the multiversityas a true expression of the diversity of our ways of being and knowing, but it would be a rare institutional mission statement that trumpeted this view.  Instead, they almost always talk about education for the whole person – the antithesis of the fragmentation generated by the multiversity. We need, in the words of Vartan Gregorian4, to reform higher education to reconstruct the unity and value of knowledge. Or, to put this more pointedly, we must restore the quest for wisdom to the core of the meaning of the university.  And wisdom is transdisciplinary. It is not contained or containable within any single academic specialization or any combination of them, nor is it acquired solely in the pursuit of academic work as we’ve come to know it.  But we have divorced the university from the quest for wisdom by our specific set of academic practices.

The 7% Solution

The call for transdisciplinarity is not as a replacement for or alternative to rigorous disciplinary and interdisciplinary work.  Rather, it is for a necessary but generally missing complement to standard academic practices.  It is an argument for the necessity to devote some portion of our time, effort, and resources to transdisciplinary work.  Let’s say, seven percent.  It could be slightly less but probably not much more.  Here is the challenge:  Could you take three and a half minutes out of each 50 minute class period (or, say, the final week of the semester) to consider how your subject hangs together with other fields of endeavor?  Could you consider devoting a 20 page epilogue to your next 300 page book to discuss how your work might be informative or even transformative for those working in other fields?  Could you set aside some small portion of the time you spend providing service to your institution to engage in interdisciplinary discussion on transdisciplinary questions (and include persons working outside your institution when you do)?  Or, should these modest proposals seem impossible for some reason I am unable to imagine, might you find just seven one-hundredths more of yourself to explore the potential of transdisciplinary approaches, for the sake of your students, your colleagues, your institution, and your community – not to mention for your own sake?

And what if we were to begin to evaluate our work based on its contribution to transdisciplinarity, to intellectual community, and the university’s mission?  What if research were two-pronged – looking down and in, it proceeded like almost all research today, in an atomistic, analytic manner; but also looking up and out, trying always to connect its work with the research of others, with the university mission, with the education of the whole person, and with the well-being of society at large?  What if research had to justify itself (appropriately understood and in the proper measure) on both prongs?  What if teaching were evaluated in the same way?  And service? What if we were to take this two-pronged approach, to promote both analysis and synthesis, to find integral approaches to off-set the deleterious effects of hyperspecialization?

Transdisciplinarity recognizes  that deep in the heart of each person is a desire for something like the whole story of the whole cosmos in order that they might be whole persons living in whole communities with a profound regard for the whole of nature and reality.  In other words, we all seek wisdom (however unpracticed we may be at it).  It is the pursuit of this vision that constitutes the transdisciplinary imperative.  Transdisciplinarity is not some optional sidelight to research, education, and policy making.  It is not some frivolous ivory-tower pastime.  It is imperative that we learn how to think and research and teach in this way if we are to have the opportunity for a better future, one more just, more safe, more convivial, more wise.

 

 

 

Endnotes

1 Basarab Nicolescu, Transdisciplinarity as Methodological Framework for Going Beyond the Science-Religion Debate, The Global Spiral, Volume 8, Issue 3, http://www.metanexus.net/magazine/tabid/68/id/10013/Default.aspx. Cf. Basarab Nicolescu, La transdisciplinarité, manifeste, Monaco, Le Rocher, “Transdisciplinarité” Series, 1996. English translation: Manifesto of Transdisciplinarity. New York: SUNY Press, 2002, translation from the French by Karen-Claire Voss.

2 Stanley Fish, Against Independent Voters, New York Times, January 20, 2008, http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/against-independent-voters/.

3 Alasdair C. MacIntyre, The End of Education: The Fragmentation of the American University, The Global Spiral, Volume 8, Issue 1, http://www.metanexus.net/Magazine/tabid/68/id/9834/Default.aspx.

4 Vartan Gregorian, Colleges Must Reconstruct the Unity of Knowledge, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 4, 2004. Available online at: http://www.carnegie.org/sub/pubs/colleges.html.