Conceptual Foundations for Multidisciplinary Thinking

By: Stephen Kline

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Hardcover | 1 January 1995

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Our current intellectual system provides us with a far more complete and accurate understanding of nature and ourselves than was available in any previous society. This gain in understanding has arisen from two sources: the use of the "scientific method," and the breaking up of our intellectual enterprise into increasingly narrower disciplines and research programs. However, we have failed to keep these narrow specialties connected to the intellectual enterprise as a whole.
The author demonstrates that this lack of connection to the overall enterprise causes a number of difficulties. We have no viewpoint from which we can understand the relationships among the various disciplines. We lack a forum for adjudicating situations where different disciplines give conflicting answers to the same problem. We seriously underestimate the differences in methodology and in the nature of principles in the various branches of science.
This provocative and wide-ranging book delineates these and other related difficulties, examines their sources in detail, and suggests solutions. The book erects three overviews of the complete intellectual terrain, creates a quantitative measure for the complexity of any system, and examines the important effects of the limitations of the human mind on scholarship.

Industry Reviews

"This very valuable book presents a stunning case for the necessity of multidisciplinary studies. It demonstrates, through impressive quantitative and logical argument, that reductionist paradigms are insufficient to tackle the compelling questions raised by highly complex systems - much less to solve most of the problems facing today's college students." - Bryan Pfaffenberger, University of Virginia "This very important book provides a careful look at the inadequacies of our present approach to understanding and learning. There has been an explosion of work focusing on complexity, but Kline does what most of this work does not do: he both identifies the deficiencies of reductionism and provides a structure for moving toward complexity." - Don E. Kash, George Mason University "Refreshingly bold in his approach, the author is not merely concerned with the "advantages" or "attractiveness" of multidisciplinary approaches to contemporary problems. Rather, he argues in a robust manner for the necessity of multidisciplinary discourse... The book is written in an accessible style that is far from dry and, without sliding into flippancy, pithy humour is evident throughout." - Patrick J. J. Phillips

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction Reference, Information & Interdisciplinary Subjects Encyclopaedias & Reference Works Reference Works Philosophy Philosophy of The Mind Epistemology & The Theory of Knowledge Education Educational Psychology Psychology Cognition & Cognitive Psychology

Preface
Introduction	p. 1
Systems, Domains, and Truth Assertions	p. 15
Sysreps and the Human Mind	p. 30
An Index for Complexity	p. 49
Thinking About Complex Systems	p. 69
Feedback as a Source of Complexity	p. 80
Hierarchy as a Structural Feature: The Hierarchy of Constitution	p. 101
Interfaces of Mutual Constraint and Levels of Control: Polanyi's Principle	p. 110
The Theory of Dimensions	p. 122
Integrated Control Information	p. 129
Disciplines at One Level: Disciplines and the Human Design Process	p. 137
Consistency as a Primary Criterion: The Limits of Reductionism and Synoptism	p. 143
Operational Procedures in Forming Sysreps for Complex Systems	p. 156
Examples of Multidisciplinary Analysis	p. 171
The Evolution of Disciplines, 1500-1900	p. 194
Relations Among the Disciplines in the Twentieth Century: Similarities and Differences	p. 213
Fallacies of Projection: Illustrations	p. 235
Fallacies of Projection: Possible Sources	p. 244
What Have We Learned? A Summary of Results and Conclusions	p. 263
What Have We Learned? Implications and Inferences	p. 276
Appendix A. Implications for Education	p. 295
Appendix B. Two Standing Bets	p. 301
Appendix C. Hypotheses, Guidelines, Dicta, and Queries	p. 311
Appendix D. Glossary	p. 315
References	p. 319
Index	p. 331
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

Conceptual Foundations for Multidisciplinary Thinking

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