Rethinking Integration in Interdisciplinary Studies

The Klein and Newell definition of interdisciplinarity centers on integration when a problem is beyond the competency of a single discipline. Disciplines can be wildly flourishing jungles fragmented by insular sub-fields and competing research programs. When issues go beyond the sub-fields, disciplines can be faced with similar problems of integration as happens in interdisciplinarity. Seeking integration is essential to interdisciplinary efforts. Interdisciplinary attempts to integrate disciplinary ideas and methods can result in full, partial, incomplete, and multiple integrations. Determining if single integrations are reliable and confronting multiple integrations over the same issue raise epistemological questions for interdisciplinarity that have not yet been fully addressed. Interdisciplinary studies needs to understand the disciplinary and interdisciplinary conditions that both promote and retard integration.