The Culture of Babel: Interdisciplinarity as Adaptation in Multicultureland

The 16th annual AIS conference at Duquesne University (1994) had as its theme "Beyond Babel." This paper, a version of which was presented at the conference, examines that theme in terms of a pair of opposed ideas: (I) That integrative interdisciplinary work must move the academy beyond the Babel it has become under the influence of disciplinary specialization. (2) That integrative interdisciplinary work must not interfere with the intensive disciplinary specialization the academy allows in the study of human diversity, which has been the human condition since and beyond Babel. Points developed in the discussion of these ideas lead to a qualified notion of interdisciplinarity as a means of coping with and using the differentiated bodies of knowledge that specialization necessarily produces.