In Castlegar, Canada, there is a golf shop that also offers vacuum-cleaner repairs, and in the Czech Republic town of Kostelec nad Orlicí, a business will sell you both wine and underwear. Such odd couplings are humorous because of their curiously limited scope. There is nothing funny, after all, about a megastore that repairs equipment and sells golf clubs, wine, underwear and everything else under the Sun.
Most scientists are aware of the term [interdisciplinarity], and many will have used it. But how many are truly engaged in it? Done correctly, it is not mere multidisciplinary work — a collection of people tackling a problem using their specific skills — but a synthesis of different approaches into something unique. It is the wine and underwear shop, not the hypermarket.An interdisciplinary approach should drive people to ask questions and solve problems that have never come up before. But it can also address old problems, especially those that have proved unwilling to yield to conventional approaches.True interdisciplinary science cannot be rushed, not least because the best course of investigation is rarely clear at the outset. Research questions must be assessed and decided with input from all involved. An interdisciplinary project cannot exist as one main subject that sucks in the majority of the resources and leaves the partners as orbiting satellites.Communication is crucial. The varying use of language across disciplines might seem a superficial problem, but it is one that must be solved, or misunderstandings will undermine the foundations of the project. There must also be no hierarchy, or perceived hierarchy. All involved must be confident that colleagues from other disciplines use equal academic rigour and scientific standing, even if the methods used in rival fields seem alien. It takes time to see the value in other approaches. It takes an open mind to appreciate an appliance-mending golf shop.
[Trechos retirados de Mind meld, editorial da edição especial da