Hello,


 "a convocation of black-suited Jesuits"

as Ken wrote.

Well here's something from a guy from a country in which the Jesuits highly 
structured  the educational system.

It got me thinking, this disciplines fuss, about the use we give to the 
term, maybe as a result of Jesuit organization.

In Portugal, in Junior education from 10 to 17/18 of age the courses taught 
are called Disciplines, disciplinas. Things like Geography, History, 
Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry (these two are taught together very 
wisely).

In the university we called the courses "cadeiras" meaning "chairs". I used 
to say in the more and more distant days of my youth: I must get 8 
 "cadeiras" to get through the first year.

This means that, independently of the master, the disciplines are steady 
(coherent) enough to be taught by a large number of teachers. Or steady 
enough to be taught to the wholeness of a society.

As for chairs, cadeiras, they stress the individual responsibility of the 
university professor in making/giving science.

In this sense university chairs are transdisciplinary since they overcome 
steadiness of disciplines and in this sense also undisciplined. Most of it, 
come to think about it (the chairs) in order to become transdisciplinary 
they start to be undisciplined by being multidisciplined.

Well, I hope it helps,

Cheers,

Eduardo

PS: My doctoral vest really looks like a Jesuit priest's. My younger 
daughter said to me once: You look like Professor Snape, dad.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chris Rust" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, October 01, 2007 9:03 AM
Subject: Re: Re What's the fuss about disciplines


> Danny Butt quoted
>> ...This could just be amusing, if only all five did not take their 
>> interpretation of 'subject,' on the sub-reflective level of obviousness, 
>> to be the only right one...
>
> This seems to me to be one of the truly interesting and important issues 
> and one which I have observed in practice*. The notion of 
> "interdisciplinarity" depends on the existence of individuals who can 
> stand aside from their own background and notice the possibilities in 
> other people's concepts. I have been extremely lucky to work with a few 
> people like that, they have all been both very experienced and very open 
> to moving on to something new. Perhaps Mieke's characterisation of "eager 
> young scholars" is part of the point and mirrors Jacques' characterisation 
> of discipline-bound students. It takes time to notice the different valid 
> ways that people operate. Despite Jacques' remarks, I don't imagine that 
> the USA is any different from other countries where designers migrate into 
> all kinds of roles and it is certainly true that the USA leads the way in 
> bringing new kinds of people into the professional arena of designing. On 
> that basis I prefer to consider designing, when it is focused on 
> experience rather than technology, as a single fluid discipline or field, 
> rather than worry about sub-divisions within it.
>
> best wishes from Sheffield
> Chris
>
> *for a simple example, I have always been interested by the way that many 
> engineers find it difficult to conceive of a "model" as being anything 
> other than a mathematical construct. In a group project I was introduced 
> as being responsible for "physical modelling". A day later one of the 
> group confessed that he had been puzzling over this description and could 
> only assume that I was there to produce mathematical models of physical 
> characteristics.