Interdisciplinarity: Like a Full Earthen Bowl???

My Summary of "Interdisciplinarity: Like a Full Earthen Bowl" by Dick Westheimer

In this article, Dr. Westheimer gives support to his initiative to apply interdisciplinary methods to “ all of his work and play” by presenting a theoretical foundation, contrasting interdisciplinarians and the disciplines and then proposing implications.

            Setting his foundation for the place of interdisciplinary methods, Dr. Westheimer presents the angry admonitions of physicist Davie Bohm who blames contemporary culture for relying on a view of “ the totality as constructed of independent fragments”, in contrast to his views of an “undivided wholeness”. Westheimer summarizes by saying that interdisciplinarity views a phenomena as not discipline fragments independently existing, but rather, as Bohm posits “derivation of the parts by extracting from the whole”.

In regards to interdisciplinary actions and the disciplines, there is a dichotomy of sorts.   Although Dr. Westheimer, writes of a “coherent interdisciplinary method revealing a dynamic connectedness”, he admits that great truths can be and often are derived mechanically (isolated from the whole). Indeed, much good has come from close inspection within the constraints of disciplinary organization. But he concludes that disciplinary work, when taken to the extreme, often “lays waste to more than it builds up”. Within that position, he offers that the only way to truly have a greater understanding of the whole is to master the part, which is highly improbable when one accepts topics that span multiple disciplines.   Therefore, he concludes, that the problem is not in disciplinary work, but rather, when one crowds out the other and he clarifies the role of interdisciplinary work in nine areas.

Finally, Dr. Wertheimer illustrates the implication of his thinking by relaying  a personal experience in which an outsider’s view affected the status quo. He concludes by  imparting permission to  the reader to find value in undisciplined inclinations, to question authority and empower those left out - indeed, to question that those disciplines actually exist.