Elsevier

Ecological Economics

Volume 53, Issue 1, 1 April 2005, Pages 5-16
Ecological Economics

Commentary
Foundations of transdisciplinarity

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2005.01.014Get rights and content

Abstract

If we go through a list of some of the main problematiques1 that are defining the new Century, such as water, forced migrations, poverty, environmental crises, violence, terrorism, neo-imperialism, destruction of social fabric, we must conclude that none of them can be adequately tackled from the sphere of specific individual disciplines. They clearly represent transdisciplinary challenges. This should not represent a problem as long as the formation received by those who go through institutions of higher education, were coherent with the challenge. This is, unfortunately, not the case, since uni-disciplinary education is still widely predominant in all Universities. There are exceptions, but few, of interdisciplinary attempts, especially in areas such as planning and philosophy, which are integrative disciplines to begin with. The situation is not solved, as frequently attempted, creating supposed teams conformed of specialists in different areas, around a given problem. With such a mechanism one can only hope to achieve an accumulation of visions emerging from each of the participating disciplines. An integrating synthesis is not achieved through the accumulation of different brains. It must occur inside each of the brains and, thus, we need to orient higher education in a way that makes the achievement of such a purpose possible.

Two possibilities are proposed in this paper, in terms of a weak and a strong transdisciplinarity. The former can be applied following traditional methods and logic, and is essentially practical. The latter represents an epistemological challenge that introduces a kind of quantum logic, as a substitute for linear logic, and breaks with the assumption of a single reality. It is based on three pillars: Levels of Reality; the Axiom of the Included Middle; and Complexity. Three Laws of Transdisciplinarity are proposed.

Strong transdisciplinarity is still in the making, thus representing an unfinished scientific programme that offers fascinating possibilities for advanced reflection and research.

Section snippets

Opening remarks

The structure of the great majority of Universities in terms of Faculties and departments, reinforce the uni-disciplinary formation, especially at the undergraduate levels. Therefore, a first step towards a necessary transformation should occur at the level of postgraduate programmes oriented, whenever possible, around thematic areas instead of specific disciplines. As an example, a postgraduate programme in “Water”, could call together engineers, lawyers, chemists, biologists, agronomists and

Clarification of concepts

To better understand what is being advanced here, we shall analyze the continuum that goes from discipline to transdiscipline.

Epistemology of transdisciplinarity

What has been presented so far, is based on a practical and simplified approach, addressed toward the applicability, for research purposes, of a method that tends to be transdisciplinary. I shall identify it, as will later be explained, as Weak Transdisciplinarity. Although, perhaps practical, it is insufficient. The transdisciplinarity to be discussed in the rest of this text will be identified as Strong Transdisciplinarity, meaning by it, that it goes much deeper into the realms of reality.

Beyond reason

In this sense it is interesting to note that Goethe, whose scientific contributions have been unjustly overshadowed because of his colossal achievements in literature and the arts, felt upset with what he believed to be the limitations of Newtonian physics. For Goethe, “science is as much an inner path of spiritual development as it is a discipline aimed at accumulating knowledge of the physical world. It involves not only a rigorous training of our faculties of observation and thinking, but

Levels of reality

For a pragmatic understanding of the different modes of thought, it is necessary to examine the first pillar of transdisciplinarity; that is, “Levels of Reality”.

Adopting the suggestion of Nicolescu, let us designate as reality “that which resists our experiences, representations, descriptions, images or mathematical formalizations. Quantum physics caused us to discover that abstraction is not simply an intermediary between us and Nature, a tool for describing reality, but rather, one of the

The logic of the included middle

Contraria sunt complementa was Niels Bohr's motto. That is to say “… day and night, particle and wave, sun and moon, male and female, reason and emotion, logic and intuition, matter and spirit, pragmatism and mysticism, discipline and transdiscipline not as dichotomies, but as complements that converge and merge without loosing their identities. The West defined its culture by wandering on just one side of the road: humans bewildered by the sun and the day, imposed reason and logic; organized

Complexity

Beyond the verification of the existence of different levels of reality, the last century has witnessed the appearance of complexity, of chaos, and of non-linear processes in many areas of science. Systemic visions have brought about the demise of the assumptions that Nature can be described, analyzed and controlled in simple terms that correlate with a traditional linear logic. All these new concepts have revolutionized many ambits of the basic sciences. However no significant break-through is

Summary and conclusion

Weak transdisciplinarity, as suggested in the first part of this paper, is a practical way of tackling problems in a more systemic way. It helps, but it is far from sufficient. Strong transdisciplinarity, on the other hand, is both a tool and a project. An unfinished project which demands many efforts of systematization still to be undertaken.

The disciplinary investigations concern only one level of reality. Transdiscipline, instead, extends its action through several levels of reality, in the

Coda

Said Lao Tsu, 2,500 years ago:

“Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes that make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.

From what Lao Tsu had to say, we may infer what I would like to call, even if only allegorically, the Third Law of Transdisciplinarity: “Only because of what is not there, it

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1

The term problematique is here used in the sense proposed by the Club of Rome; that is, problems of global and long term impact.

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