Fractals or Fish: Does a Space for Interdisciplinarity Exist?

Abstract

Stanley Fish has argued that being interdisciplinary is impossible. He claims to base this on an epistemology of deconstruction. This paper examines Fish's case against living interdisciplinary. It shows that his arguments rest not on an epistemology of deconstruction but on a topologically simple, Euclidean view of space. Developments in the now science of chaos and fractal geometry are reviewed which supersede Fish's Euclidean view of space. These developments are shown to provide a discourse and a space for being interdisciplinary. An example of a fractal epistemology of deconstruction is reviewed that can accommodate being interdisciplinary.