The Structure of Interdisciplinary Knowledge: A Polanyian View

Abstract

The five-part theoretical scheme that Erich Jantsch devised to describe interrelations among disciplines provides interdisciplinarians with a sound framework for interdisciplinary knowledge. However, when Jantsch introduces the concept of human purpose into the category of "interdisciplinarity," he departs from the foundational ground of structuralist epistemology and builds his scheme for both "interdisciplinarity" and "transdisciplinarity" without a foundational theory of epistemology. Support for Jantsch's scheme can be found in Michael Polanyi's theory of knowledge, since the two-level structure of Jantsch's "interdisciplinarity" is analogous to the structure of Polanyi's theory of tacit knowing. Comparison of these two theories of knowledge also demonstrates how interdisciplinary knowledge is the knowledge of new meaning created by the integration of concepts and ideas from different disciplines.