Saturday, June 02, 2007

What is "Transdisciplinarity"?


I’m currently at the Metanexus Conference at the University of Pennsylvania on “Transdisciplinarity and the Unity of Knowledge” (http://www.metanexus.net/conference2007). To be honest, it’s even exciting. Tonight, Eric Weislogel, Executive Director of Metanexus, began a role call of those present from the 43 countries present that are home to a “local society” (or a grant-funded science-religion dialogue group.) Large delegations stood from the United States (obviously), but also from Germany and (as I remember it) Romania. The most interesting to me was to hear that there are representatives from Tajikistan. By the way, I’m not entirely sure what “Transdisciplinarity” is, but I think it means that we’re looking for a third thing--a tertium quid, as it were--as scientists and theologians dialogue. More to come…

2 comments:

John said...

"transdisciplinarity" is the fundamental quality of "trandisciplinarityism."

My Reflections said...

Thank you for that extremely helpful clarification. I'm told that the paper I'm presenting Monday (on beauty as a nexus for science, theology, philosophy, and art) might be an example of transdisciplinarity. More on that in a future post...