Dear Klaus,

This is a reply on discourse more than a reply on the subject. Your 
note seems a bit grumpy -- and you've explicitly reversed what I 
wrote by quoting something out of context and misattributing to me a 
meaning where I wrote the exact contrary.

You're mistaken on why I use the dictionary -- I've written on this 
topic several times in exactly this kind of debate. The Oxford 
English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster's preserve old definitions but 
continually check current usage to reflect and exemplify current 
usage.

Meerriam-Webster's uses a citation file of some 16 million words and 
exemplars and a computerized corpus of over 70 million words and 
exemplars. The Oxford English Dictionary draws on a massive base of 
quotations and usage exemplars -- I can't seem to find the number, 
but the current edition of the dictionary USES 2,436,600 exemplars to 
illustrate words and their meanings. Over 20% of these words come 
from the 20th century.

Editors at both dictionaries continually review usage to ensure 
currency. The first OED citation for "interdisciplinary" is to 1937. 
The latest is 1972. The first OED citation for "interdisciplinarity" 
is 1970, the latest 1988. These words have not substantially changed 
meanings over the past to years. In fact, even though cultural 
attitudes toward interdisciplinary research has shifted several 
times, the usage examplars remain quite consistent over time.

You're writing as though lexicographers work on etymology and 
medieval roots rather than current meanings.

Etymology does play a role, but you've looked at one meaning of the 
prefix among several, and not the relevant one.

The Latin preposition and adverb "inter" means "between, among, amid, 
in between, in the midst." As an adjectivial prefix used in English, 
"inter" means, "Between or among other things or persons; between the 
parts of, in the intervals of, or in the midst of, something; 
together with; between times or places, at intervals, here and 
there." You focusing on the meaning BETWEEN when the relevant meaning 
in this case is AMONG and TOGETHER WITH.

Interdisciplinarity doesn't mean that many disciplines participate, 
though -- of course, this MAY be the case, and in some cases it is. 
It means that one may draw on concepts or practices from two or more 
disciplines and arts (i.e., professional practices). Whether you 
agree with me or not, I've used the metaphor of a wetlands, a lively 
place, and I have not experienced interdisciplinarity as a no man's 
land -- I didn't even say that you experienced territory between 
disciplines as barren, but rather that your description of the word 
made it sound so. But then, combining what you write here with what 
you wrote to Francois suggests that you, too, are working in what you 
call an interdisciplinary way -- working in the no-man's-land that 
you praise in your note to me.

Look, it seems to me that we agree on much of the ideological 
substance in your note, and we certainly agree that disciplines have 
turf wars and that disciplinarians try to enforce local codes of 
culturally accepted behavior within their fields.

Where we disagree is on whether the concept of interdisciplinarity 
can function by drawing on ideas, concepts and practices from many 
sources depending on the needs of the interdisciplinary work, or 
whether it necessarily entails suffering the disciplinary controls of 
the people and cultures of each discipline on which a project may 
draw. Now the historical experience of many interdisciplinary 
projects is that this does sometimes happen -- and when it does, 
things bog down and little growth takes place.

It also happens quite the opposite. And HERE, I'll give you exactly 
the example of cybernetics. For all the freedom it allows, and it 
allows much, you'd have to agree that cybernetics does not have one 
institutional home but many. People work in cybernetics in and from 
bases in several locations, usually the university departments that 
pay their salaries and sponsor their work ... the discipline is 
communication in your case, biology or engineering for many, 
mathematics for Norbert Weiner, anthropology for Gregory Bateson, 
complexity science for many today.

You might know Mary Catherine Bateson's (1972) lovely book, Our Own 
Metaphor, describing a conference that Gregory Bateson organized in 
1968 bringing experts together from different fields to discuss the 
world through a cybernetic perspective. She describes 
interdisciplinarity at several points in a warm positive way -- and 
it seems to me that her understanding of cybernetics -- based on 
Gregory Bateson's understanding -- involved an interdisciplinary 
approach. Now you don't have to believe Mary Catherine Bateson or 
even Gregory Bateson, but as the Bateson Professor, I think it's fair 
to acknowledge that some people see cybernetics as an 
interdisciplinary approach or field.

Norbert Weiner (1973: 2-3) opens Cybernetics by discussing the 
"boundary regions of science which offer the richest opportunities to 
the qualified investigator." This is close to my metaphor of the 
wetlands, and Weiner goes on to describe the opportunities and the 
problems that confront anyone involved in this kind of research.

Substantively, I agree with you on the important contributions of 
cybernetics that would not have been possible elsewhere or (perhaps) 
in specific fields. I certainly recognize the value of your ideas and 
work in design and elsewhere from a cybernetic perspective.

But I'm going to disagree with you still on two things. The first is 
what the word interdisciplinary means. The second is that 
[cybernetics] in NOT interdisciplinary -- it may not be for you, but 
it seems to me that Bateson and Weiner might have had a different 
view, speaking warmly of work with colleagues from two or more 
disciplines, and -- in the case of Weiner's (1973: 3) Cybernetics, 
even giving specific examples of the positive value of disciplinary 
knowledge to work by teams of colleagues from several disciplines.

This is not a note on interdisciplinary discourse and knowledge 
ecologies, but it is relevant nevertheless to examine what words 
mean. It seems to me that in refusing to recognize the contribution 
of people who study the meaning of words in the context of 
contemporary, active usage, you risk building the rigid kinds of 
academic barriers you warn against.

As for the "pipe dream" of my wetland, I didn't think I needed to 
persuade anyone to give up their turf wars to join me. If people want 
to enjoy their turf wars and disputes, who am I to say no? I'd rather 
let them fight with each other than bother me. If I can avoid them, I 
prefer to do so. Admittedly, it is not always possible, but many 
people do work in a robust, interdisciplinary way, and they are the 
ones I like working with.

Nevertheless, I want to suggest that I did not invent the wetlands -- 
I joined an ongoing enterprise in the boundary regions of science." I 
read Weiner long ago, and I thought that I was joining him and his 
colleagues, not as a cybernetician, but as someone willing to 
understand the world and our human place in the world with tools from 
more than one tool kit.

Yours,

Ken

--

Reference

Bateson, Mary Catherine. 1972. Our Own Metaphor. a Personal Account 
of a Conference on the Effects of Conscious Purpose on Human 
Adaptation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Weiner, Norbert. 1973. Cybernetics. Or Communication and Control in 
the Animal and the Machine.  Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

--

Klaus Krippendorff wrote:

ken,

i know you like dictionary definitions, but most of them are old and not
necessarily reflecting the use of terms.  what your dictionary describes as
"pertaining to two or more disciplines or branches of learning" or "
benefiting from two or more disciplines" sound to me like multi-disciplinary
= many disciplines participate.  you characterize my use of
inter-disciplinary = between what disciplines normally address as "a barren
no-man's-land where nothing happens." well, that is your metaphor and no
doubt describes your experiences, not mine.

much of my life i have worked in this no man's land and found it enormously
open, unconstrained, and providing a creative space that most other
disciplines do not offer. as you probably know, i am also a cybernetician
and cybernetics was from its beginning without an institutional home, which
has enabled it to make the most astonishing proposals from putting purpose
into a feedback loop, favoring  non-authoritarian forms of organization
(self-organization), developing a human (observer) centered epistemology,
radical constructivism, for example and more.  this was precisely because it
was relatively free. perhaps non-disciplinary would be a better term, and i
stand to my previous warning that inter-disciplinary means working between
disciplines.

another example, according to the dictionary you consulted, you identify
disciplines as "academic, scientific, or artistic disciplines." no problem
with that, but it does not shed light on the fact that disciplines have
something to do with how a discourse community disciplines its members,
imposes norms, celebrates exemplary practices, certifies its members and
withdraws their licenses when they do not conform.  in academia, disciplines
compete for students, resources, funding.  it is not a logical distinction,
not a wetland.  no problem with your preferring this metaphor but you have
to convince others to abandon their fields and their turf wars, which are
quite real, and join the pipe dream of your wetland

there is nothing wrong with borrowing concepts from discourses other than
one's own, provided you do not thereby abandon your professional mission.
for example, if you borrow the concept of design that is common in
marketing, namely that design is a way of adding value to a product and part
of a marketing strategy, then you allow design discourse to be colonized,
taken over, and subsumed by marketing conceptions of it.  to me, this would
be a sell-out.  to me, design is more than sales and designers have to
import concepts that subvert design.

klaus


Klaus Krippendorff wrote [to Francois-Xavier Nsenga]

--snip--

inter-disciplinary -- working on a problem that lies between disciplines, in
no man's land, so to speak

--snip--