User:Manuela.Irarraz/sandbox/Approaches to Knowledge/ Seminar Group 7/ Disciplinary categories

The term discipline in academia refers to a specific area of study in an educational institution. Disciplines are a way of organizing new knowledge and the ways through which this knowledge is taught. The definition of a discipline is necessarily broad because it must encompass the research, methods, knowledge, and experts that together comprise each discipline. There is no concrete, objective or specific definition of a disciplinary category because disciplines and what define them evolve and are in constant flux as educational standards and available information change over time.</nowiki></ref>

Disciplinary categories

Formation of Disciplinary Categories

Disciplinary categories are formed through processes of organization in which areas of academic inquiry are classified as similar or dissimilar using various criteria and subsequently grouped into academic fields.

It is important to note that the formation of disciplinary categories in academia is subjective and not infallible. Most subject material is multifaceted and complex, often containing information that does not clearly fall into the realm of one academic discipline, but rather that overlaps the realms of multiple academic disciplines. In order to sort information into disciplinary categories, it is necessary to draw arbitrary distinctions between subject material and make decisions about which aspects of the subject material are most important. Furthermore, there are influences and biases on the way that knowledge is interpreted that may affect the categorization process. Lastly, our understanding of academic fields is in constant flux; the discovery of new information may cause the need to shift categorizations over time.

Importance

Although disciplinary categories are imperfect distinctions between areas of academic inquiry, they are nonetheless important for organizing areas of study within academia. Given the expanding body of information available in the world and the increasing depth with which we are beginning to understand subject areas, categorizing new information by academic discipline allows for order. Similarly, categorizations can enable individuals to access information about a given subject area with more convenience.

History and Origins

Origins of Disciplinary Categorization

The origin of disciplines is difficult to establish because the human tendency to categorize knowledge evolved over time. It is thought that knowledge categorization may even be an inherent aspect of social evolution. As humans interact with the world, they learn to differentiate between the experiences, information, and knowledge they accumulate in order to form a more organized and comprehensive understanding of the world.

Ancient Origins

The earliest recordings of attempts to formally categorize and teach within disciplinary categories in the western world emerged in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, which established museums and academies that served to teach about specific subject areas. The first academy was first started by Plato (428/427 BC – 348/347 BC). The Platonic Academy did not teach according to specific disciplinary categories, although Plato's writings indicate that material was taught within disciplines including mathematics, politics, philosophy and geometry. After learning in Plato's Academy, Aristotle established his own school, the Lyceum, in 335 BC. This academy offered education in a greater breadth of disciplines; its curriculum featured subjects as music, botanical classification, biology, anthropology, ethics, law, logic, metaphysics, physics, politics, psychology, poetry and rhetoric were discussed. These ancient academies provide a glimpse into the earliest stages of studies within academic disciplines. Heavy Greek influences in Rome were a catalyst for increased development in academic disciplines at around 200 BC. This century saw increased structure within educational curriculum and a heavy focus on education within grammar, philosophy, physics, and law.

Outside of these Mediterranean empires, educational structures in Eastern regions also developed. During the Islamic Golden Age, academic inquiry flourished. Academies taught in a wide variety of disciplines including mathematics, science, medicine, philosophy, literature, social sciences, history, geography, politics, law, sociology, psychology, and theology. Most of these disciplines even featured studies within sub-disciplines.

Medieval Era

In the first century, the first formal universities emerged in Western Europe in Salerno, Bologna, Paris, and Oxford. These medieval universities were functionally professional schools, as they served only to prepare students for occupational capacities such as medicine, law, and theology. Other disciplines were primarily taught at the primary level.

By the fifth century, the Greeks had formally adopted a primary education system that featured instruction in the area of seven liberal arts - the trivium (grammar, rhetoric and logic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy) However, disciplinary education varied significantly between institutions. Disciplinary education often served the purpose of teaching specific skills and theories required for a profession, so the need for certain types of expertise and specialization caused institutions to prioritize different disciplines within their curricula.

As the Middle Ages continued, organized educational systems evolved. There were 20 Universities in 1300, each of which featured lower level liberal arts studies and higher level graduate studies, such as medicine, law, and theology. Many disciplines had their own facilities and specialized instructors.

Renaissance Era

During the early Renaissance, humanism had a great influence on disciplinary education. There was a shift away from occupationally-oriented education and an increased appreciation for learning as a virtue; the professional utility of disciplinary subjects no longer determined their value or worth in the university setting. Disciplines such as grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy took precedent.

Later in the 1600s as more disciplines developed, scholars began to segregate by discipline to form societies and other forums conducive to sharing expertise. This practice was very prominent in the natural sciences, as scientists who initially worked independently came together to produce collaborative research efforts.

Nineteenth and Twentieth Century America

Initial American universities were set up under the same structure as European universities. However, as American education evolved and eventually solidified as a dominant educational system in the mid nineteenth century, many of the modern academic disciplines emerged. The latter half of the nineteenth century and the subsequent twentieth century served as a period of explosive growth and evolution for various academic disciplines, producing new understandings of many existing disciplines and the emergence of many other sub-disciplines.

Many disciplines within the social sciences emerged in academic institutions as a way to study the challenges of the industrialization and urbanization of American life. Disciplines such as anthropology, economics, political science, sociology, psychology, and history were developed. These new disciplines were approached through a distinctly empirical lenses, a contrast from the approaches of earlier time periods that taught disciplines within the context of religious frameworks and did not focus on empirical methods and proof.

Meanwhile, advances in our understanding of the natural world and economic demands for scientific advancement gave way to the emergence of many independent disciplines within the natural sciences such as biology, chemistry, and physics. Scientific disciplines were regarded as the most important during the first half of the twentieth century because progress in these areas advanced agricultural, medicinal, and technological innovation that could improve the quality of life.

Disciplinary Approaches

Because academic disciplines were formed by narrow and artificial boundaries, working within disciplines may prevent academics from understanding connections between disciplines and realizing phenomena that occur across disciplines. To resolve the issues of a monodisciplinary focus, different approaches are employed to connect academics and scholarly work across disciplinary categories.

Interdisciplinarity

Interdisciplinarity emerged as a concept to promote the synthesis of the disciplines. Interdisciplinary practices seek to combine the methods and knowledge from existing disciplines to create a new understanding of phenomena that would not be possible using only one discipline.

The need for interdisciplinary work naturally evolved as monodisciplinary research uncovered aspects of complex problems that involve multiple disciplines. A comprehensive understanding of these complex problems often requires a greater breadth of information and new methods of inquiry, which naturally pushed researchers to adopt the methods of other disciplines. Therefore, it could be said that the initial drive for interdisciplinarity emerged organically.

Interdisciplinity has also been pushed forward by research institutions and scholars as the ideal direction towards which academic work ought to advance. For example, many large research bodies and funding organization in the United States and the United Kingdom endorse interdisiplinarity as a practice that can develop ideas across multiple areas of study and complement the existing work of singular disciplines. It is implicit that this approach to research ought to be implemented and promoted whenever possible.

However, there are issues with interdisciplinarity that pose challenges for its implementation in institutional settings. The main barrier has to do with the ambiguity surrounding what interdisciplinarity entails. Since the boundaries that define singular disciplines are already vague and influx, it is difficult to identify when an approach can be classified as interdisciplinarity. However, even beyond these conceptual difficulties, more practical challenges emerge with the implementation of interdisciplinarity. First, it is unclear how the methods and knowledge of singular disciplines ought to be fused. The knowledge, methods, and institutional norms of each discipline evolved independently, so their synthesis often necessitates abandoning traditional aspects of each singular discipline. It is difficult to isolate which aspects of each discipline are key to understanding a problem and how to combine these aspects into a coherent approach. Another challenge involves collaboration between scholars from individual disciplines; many scholars who are only familiar with their own discipline may be wary to abandon their familiar methods and adopt new practices, hindering collaboration efforts.

Interdisciplinarity is often used interchangeably with terms such as crossdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity. However, these terms are more nuanced; it is best to conceive of these terms as specific types of interdisciplinary approaches.

Crossdisciplinarity

Cross-disciplinary approach is a type of research method when a subject in one discipline is seen from other discipline's perspective. An example of cross-disciplinary research would be analyzing music from a mathematical perspective. The roots of such research can be found as early as in the works of Pythagoras (569-475 BC)

Multidisciplinarity

Although sometimes used interchangeably with the term interdisciplinarity, a multidisciplinary approach is more about taking different parts of knowledge from various scientific fields and keeping their individuality rather than combining them into a synthesis.

Importance and Impact

Public Access to Information

Categorization affects access because the ways in which subjects are identified and grouped determines how information about those subjects can be found. For example, peer reviewed journals are often categorized by discipline, and many online databases that contain academic articles organize them by discipline as well. Therefore, when looking for information on a topic or problem that is related to more than one discipline, it can be difficult to find all the relevant research.

Disciplinary Tribalism

Disciplinary tribalism emerges when academics feel an extremely strong sense of identity and association with their respective disciplines. In this way, disciplinary categories can function as tribes in which academics tightly adhere to the studies, practices, frameworks, and expertise within their own tribe. Tribalism is often criticized, as it is said to create aversion between disciplines and prevent cross-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary work.

One of the most notable instances of this chasm is between scientific disciplines and humanities disciplines. For example, From 1879 to 1883, a debate about the relative merits of science and literature emerged between poet Matthew Arnold and biologist Thomas Huxley. While Arnold emphasized the importance of literature in culture and in educating the public about history and tradition, Huxley argued that reason and the scientific method were the only valuable paths to truth. </ref> Later, in 1959, Charles Snow delivered The Two Cultures, a sensational lecture that drew attention to the hostile divide between the humanities and the sciences. According to Snow, scientists and literary intellectuals constitute separate cultures that lack communication and antagonize each other.<ref>Snow CP. Two Cultures. Science. 1959 Aug 21;130(3373):419.