Dear Klaus,

Thanks for your response.

Well, as I see it I'm not using the word my own way. I'm using it as
most people seem to do. The issue is not how English speakers
interpret the word "inter" -- most English speakers are not
etymologists. The issue is that _you_ based your interpretation of
the word interdisciplinary partly on your understanding of the word
"inter." I wanted to clarify that the word has other meanings than
those you described.

If you understand a dictionary as I do, then I am not making what you
label an "absolutist claim" to a definition, but describing the
meaning of a word based on the way people actually use it. One may as
well argue that you are making absolutists claims when you insist
that my view of the usage is wrong and yours correct.

It's OK with me if you want to define terms in your own way. There
are words to describe people who make choices that others do not dare
to consider. Casting this in terms of orthodoxy and heresy is one way
to put it -- though that limits the range of choice. The term
originally referred to those who dissent from orthodoxy, but it has
other meanings.

Attention to the role of language in constructing social life should
entail some willingness to allow that words actually do have meanings
to the people who use them. That's probably the best way to explain
my view on this.

It's true I spelled Norbert Wiener's name wrong. But I do think I
read his thoughts accurately -- and I quoted his view in his own
words.

But I did say that I see your view of the "between" place as a fair
description from another perspective. What I also said was that not
everyone in cybernetics would use the same metaphor. I did NOT say
that the notion of a "barren no-man's-land where nothing happens" is
my view of the interdisciplinary experience though: I said that the
description of interdisciplinarity as "between" suggested that to me
IN CONTRAST TO the metaphor of a "wetlands" or "boundary zone" that
arises from using the "with" and "among" meanings of the word inter.
I'd be happier if you would attribute to me what I said: I was not
describing my experience of interdisciplinarity, but my view of what
different metaphors suggest.

For a heretic, you can argue orthodox issues with the best of us!
Keep this up and you may get to be an episkopos -- a bishop, whose
job is is to proclaim the doxa. As noted in 1 Timothy 3:2, a bishop
should be "vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality,
apt to teach." And that sounds like you. And another several dozen of
us on this list ...

Yours,

Ken



Klaus Krippendorff wrote:

--snip--

i grant you your definition of interdisciplinary as long as you say it is
yours. i am less concerned with defining the word than with what i
practice. to me it is pointless to argue that the english "inter" does not
only mean "between" and that you prefer the meaning "among" and "together
with." i doubt that many english speakers would interpret "inter" that way,
but this is an empirical question. you can read its latin origin your way
but you run the risk of being misunderstood (which you often are). if you
insist on your meaning, why don't you call it "among-disciplinary" or
"together with-disciplinary" or use the more familiar word
"multi-disciplinary. that i mentioned earlier as fitting your meaning better
than inter....

--snip--

but what i
object to and we have struggled earlier about the same issue, that is your
absolutist claim that a particular word means such and such, as if this were
cast in stone and because someone wrote it into a dictionary it has to be a
true definition from which nobody should deviate or else be wrong. i wished
you would own your reading and not hide behind an objectivist facade.
language is never that definite - unless some institution insists on it.

--snip--

as i said in my earlier response, you characterize my use of
inter-disciplinary = between what disciplines normally address as "a barren
no-man's-land where nothing happens." don't you think it would be fair to
say that this is your metaphor fitting your experiences and accepting for me
to say that it just does not fit mine which i exemplified in the case of my
involvement with cybernetics. if you read, the macy proceedings, you may
notice that the participants gave a damn from where their members came from,
but much whether they pursued certain often vague but challenging and
unorthodox ideas about circularity, learning machines, self-reference,
self-organization, even god, golem and design. they could do that precisely
because these ideas had no disciplinary homes, at least not how they treated
them. to escape the meanings that you want to attribute to the word
interdisciplinary, i like to leave you with them and propose a term that
fits my meaning better: "heretic."

--snip--