Interdisciplinarity, History, Theory, and Practice

By Julie Thompson Klein

Book Overview

In this volume, Julie Klein provides the first comprehensive study of the modern concept of interdisciplinarity, supplementing her discussion with the most complete bibliography yet compiled on the subject. Spanning the social sciences, natural sciences, humanities, and professions, her study is a synthesis of existing scholarship on interdisciplinary research, education and health care. Klein argues that any interdisciplinary activity embodies a complex network of historical, social, psychological, political, economic, philosophical, and intellectual factors. Whether the context is a short-ranged instrumentality or a long-range reconceptualization of the way we know and learn, the concept of interdisciplinarity is an important means of solving problems and answering questions that cannot be satisfactorily addressed using singular methods or approaches.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0814320872
• ISBN13: 9780814320877
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: Wayne State University Press
• Length: 331 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.0" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

A good reference source

This book was published in 1990. Some of the issues regarding interdisciplinary work raised by the author continue to exist today. It is definitely a good reference book for understanding the history of interdisciplinarity development. Coming from an Occupational Science background which is a discipline devoted to the study of human occupation and rooted in interdisciplinary studies, reading the book helped me to better appreciate efforts invested by my predecessors to establish groundwork for collaborative research that have thus been oblivious. Otherwise being highly descriptive, this book had an interesting analogy that I particularly liked. The example of Wheeler's fable of elephant housing aptly illustrated the difficulty inherent in interdisciplinary problem focused research. Collaborative endeavors to solving a problem by various fields could end in failure regardless of expertise if such recommendations are made independent of knowing the real needs. Of course, interdisciplinary work has evolved over the years and collaborations between disciplines through time may have become more effective. The chapter on borrowing which warned about problems in using concepts and theories out of context with possible distortion and misunderstanding also highlighted salient issue such as responsibility of user for the borrowed material. At the end of the book, I found the practical techniques for enhancing interdisciplinarity integration informative. The author compared interdisciplinary studies to area studies. It was not clear what the author meant in reference to `area' studies. However, the point she made regarding disciplinary work providing fundamental tools for problem-solving in interdisciplinary focused research somewhat parallels the link between occupational science and occupational therapy. Occupational Science constitutes a body of interdisciplinary knowledge and informs occupational therapy practice with a strong emphasis on translational research. In general, this book served as a helpful starting point for comprehending interdisciplinarity.