On Wed, 27 Apr 2005, Alan Sondheim wrote:
> Grants, teaching positions, etc. are the result of following the rules.
> Although I'm reasonably successful at this point, I'm not eligible say for
> film grants - since I'm not doing film; video grants - since I'm not doing
> video; creative writing positions - since I don't "Write" - and so forth.
> I'm not the only one in this situation. The world itself appears increas-
> ingly canonless as we all know; yet even _that_ position has to be argued
> from those with the PHDs who have initially followed the canon.
Argh. This is my life. I'm not exactly computer science, not exactly
sociology, not exactly education, not exactly psychology... no one wants
to pay for an outsider to get a phD!! What's "human-centered computing"
anyway?
Anyhow, I thought I'd point out a potential value in the bounded nature
of INTRAdisciplinary thinking. It seems to me that developing literacy
in any particular realm of thinking--that means being able to read and
write biology, or education, or whatever--that means learning a certain
vocabulary, a set of models of the world. These disparate domains develop
BECAUSE people construct common understandings and make meaning of the
world, they don't exist to confound this process. I've never been sure if
it makes sense to start out interdisciplinary or if the brilliance of
interdisciplinary work emerges from the struggle among clever individuals
who don't share a worldview to establish a common langauge and identify
the nature of their differences.
It's all very abstract. My point is, interdisciplinary thinking is a
process of juxtaposition that is deeply situated in the nuances of the
disciplines involved and the problems being addressed. If there were a
set of rules to follow, my gut feeling is that the process wouldn't yield
much.
andrea
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