Disciplinary, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, transformative, transdisciplinary: Does this inflationary field of words express an increase in ratio that promises better scientific practice? You only have to look at climate change, migration, social inequality or global pandemics to see that science naturally works here in multidisciplinary networks that have diverse relationships with non-scientific actors. But what is the new buzzword transdisciplinarity supposed to convey? The realization that the disciplinary makeup of science itself is the problem? Does the term encourage people to go beyond disciplinarity into “joint research with society” instead of about it?
A conference at the TU Berlin has now tried to sharpen the term, which has been discussed in the philosophy of science for fifty years, and to demonstrate its practicality in an extensive manual "Transdisciplinary Didactics".
It was noticeable that, like TU Vice President Hans-Ulrich Heiss, they wanted to “rethink teaching in a transdisciplinary way”, but the conference itself was marked by undisguised skepticism towards transdisciplinarity as a scientific practice.
Ambitious self-criticism?
In theory, the term responds to the fear that science is still not open enough to civil society. Such self-criticism is ambitious, but seems rather intimidated. Thorsten Philipp and Tobias Schmohl write about the “feverish uncertainty” of a “science in crisis mode” in the handbook they published. But how much increased temperature and scruples in the face of its own creative power can science still tolerate without paralyzing itself?
The corona crisis in particular showed how short social patience is with the methodical scruples of scientific practice if the development of vaccines is to go very quickly.
On the other hand, the identification of innovative teaching formats is initially only a concession to the expectations of new generations of students, but not yet evidence of structural changes.
Or are chairs being advertised at the TU Berlin recently without being assigned to a specific discipline?
Controversial debate
Rudolf Stichweh made no secret of the fact that he sees multidisciplinarity as the “engine of innovation” in today's science at the operational level.
Ines Langemeyer said in a similar vein that it cannot be ruled out that the current challenges posed by the aforementioned “major social problems” (stitch pain) only marked transitions that could find solutions through the emergence of new disciplines and not through the involvement of more and more external ones Actors from society.