Rattan,
I wanted to ask you about your idea of "interdisciplinary" studies. There are unique difficulties in understanding between science and art - two things we try to incorporate on the Tree. It is one thing to juxtapose them side by side. I'm wondering how the interdisciplinary part happens and whose job it becomes to reach across that division to begin talking...to create that essential cross pollination.
It is that dialogue, however difficult, which will fascinate me.
Jeff Beardwood
Dear Jeff,
Here is a somewhat simplistic answer to a rather difficult problem. I think the problem is difficult because we do not even know how to formulate the problem. There are many layers and levels of thinking involved in just formulating the problem of interdisciplinary studies. So what constitutes interdisciplinary studies in the first place?
Layer/Level 1) On the one extreme there has always been cross pollination (using your terminology) between various field of mathematics and between mathematics and physics. But this is not regarded as interdisciplinary studies because mathematics is mathematics and even mathematics and physics are regarded as the same field with hardly any difference. They are all so tightly knit that calling them different disciplines just for the sake of "indulging in interdisciplinary studies" may confuse rather than clarify the basic issues.
Layer/Level 2) On the other extreme it may look like a good idea to throw Einstien's and Darwin's theories in the same pot and try to cook an interdisciplinary broth because they are two of the most important ideas of our times. But this may lead nowhere because it seems very difficult to establish any connection between Einstein's ideas and Darwin's ideas.
What I am driving at is that you have to have a very careful selection of problems which can lead to true cross pollination and can truely belong to the field of interdisciplinary studies. And this is not very easy. Either you end up calling the same field "interdisciplinary studies" or you end up trying to relate ideas and fields which cannot be related in a fruitful manner.
I personally would be surprised if even the best universities in the world has a list of just 15-20 real interdisciplinary problems that can be solved in a real scientific and interdisciplinary manner without any hype.
I can think of a couple of useful definitions of "interdisciplinary studies":
1) The study of life sciences by using hard sciences (mathematics and physics)
2) The interaction between "hard thinking" and "soft thinking".
Whenever I use the term "hard" and "soft" I am always thinking of hard fields (mathematics and physics) and soft fields(philosophy, psychology, biology, history). There are other fields but let us focus on these only because they are the heart of hard and soft sciences.
3) Hardest definition: The study of biology using mathematics and physics. In particular, THE UNIFICATION OF BIOLOGY WITH PHYSICS.
The third definition would be a shining achievement of the field of interdisciplinary studies, but this achievement is a long way off. The reason is that biology is still a descriptive science without many exact definitions to guide us. For example, even the hottest field of genetics is nothing more today than 19 century history repeating itself. In 19 centuary biologists classified flora and fauna. Today they are classifying genes and their functionality. What was missing at that time was Darwin's priciple which explained that classification. A similar principle is missing from todays genetics. My hope is that this principle would be more amenable to a mathematical study and so would usher in the era of true interdisciplinary studies. But this era can start from many other directions of which I have no idea.
A sort of warning: Using statistics in any field has no relevance to interdisciplinary thinking. Statistics is a hard way of examining data and classifying things, but it too, like the soft classification of flora and fauna, gives no insight into the interconnecting tentacles between various fields. Interdisciplinary studies is a real octopus.
Talking of classification, the first step towards interdisciplinary thinking is to classify the problems of interdisciplinary science into two broad categories:
1) Soft interdisciplinary problems. They are problems involving mostly soft fields, and so are relatively easy to tackle.
2) Hard interdisciplinary problems. They are the problems which require the full force of mathematics and physics, as in unifying physics and biology. They are real hard. I would be surprised if anybody can mention 10 such fruitful problems today in 2005 which would lead anywhere in short term.
Today the best approach to interdisciplinary studies is the soft approach. That is, try to connect biology, or even the hard fields, with soft fields like philosophy, psychology, etc. Here are two areas I can think of. They would lead to useful results even if those results are soft results. As I said, soft results are relatively easy to achieve. The hard results are hardest to come by because they involve hard sciences (math, physics) and therefore very exact and hard analysis.
1) The philosophical, social, psychological etc implications of computers and the Computer Age is a good, soft interdisciplinary problem.
2) The connection between eastern and western approaches to physiology and medicine - man in general. Teresa would be working on this. I believe this is one of the best interdisciplinary field available today. The reason is that the problems are not too close (like subfields of mathematics) and yet they are not too far and unrelated ( like Einstein and Darwin's theories). They also have the right degree of hardness and softness. They are not mathematics and physics, but they are not entirely soft and nebulous either. It is this mixture and right balance which can prove to be a fertile ground for interdisciplinary thinking and cross pollination of ideas.
Finally, the ultimate barrier to interdisciplinary thinking is human ignorance and pompousness. The following incidents are not mentioned out of spite but have deep value as typical examples of true danger we are facing in our quest. The danger is man himself.
1) In 1967, a professor of mathematics in India boasted to me that he knows everything about group theory but knows nothing about ring theory. If I say that group theory is mathematics with addition only, and ring theory is mathematics with both addition and multiplication, even a layman would say that they are very related and shouldn't be "mastered" in isolation.
2) In around 1990, a researcher in biotechnology in Norway boasted to me that he is unifying biology with physics. Within the next minute he betrayed that he did not know that light consists of photons. Let me tell you, even people like me who know both physics and biology real well are having difficulty in determining what " unify physics with biology" really should mean. So a biologist without the hard knowledge of physics can forget about this problem.
3) Around the same time in Norway, a professor of physics told me Newton's laws are nonsense. I got such a shock that I did not even try to hear his arguments. Today I wish I had.
These are great warning signals on the hard road ahead of us. So, everybody out there in cyberspace, be careful. You are about to enter a very turbulent zone. I personally am a little "scared" even to say "Good Luck".
The higher we soar, the smaller we seem to those who cannot fly - Nietzsche
Rattan Mann
