(Association for Interdisciplinary Studies, 1986) Miller, Raymond C.; Klein, Julie Thompson
This is a cautionary tale, told by one whose venture into interdisciplinary
work began with a social psychology experiment. Realizing there were moral
dimensions to the experiment, he began following his interests across conventional
boundaries. Ultimately, this led to studies of how people think about responsibility
and, more recently, the ethical dilemmas faced by nurses and doctors who care for
seriously ill newborns, an area that reaches far beyond the boundaries of moral
philosophy into economics, sociology, and health policy. These experiences suggest
that interdisciplinary theorists would do well to study what actually happens when
people do interdisciplinary research. By creating and studying narratives about cases
of interdisciplinary research, those who study interdisciplinarity will be able to
temper abstract theory with experience.