I like this suggestion, I feel like the big solution we need to find in order to implement something like this really successfully is to increase tolerance for discomfort and disagreement.
I see dialogue shut down far too quickly in intellectual space.
I heard once that the old philosophers in Greece needed to state one another’s position well enough that the the person they debated with actually agreed ‘yes you understand my position, I have nothing to add’.
Only after that did debate take place.
Not sure if this is true or not but the spirit of the anecdote feels like it’s really missing from most media and discussion out there in the mainstream.
What ways could interdisciplinary cross-pollination be more cultivated?
Oh, if you read some of Plato’s dialogues it seems very untrue...Plato was really into strawmanning his opponents’ arguments unfortunately :)
Anyway. To try and answer your (very thoughtful) question:
Get people from different disciplines together in the same physical space on a regular basis. Maybe you put the software engineers next to the literary critics and get them to have lunch together regularly, or something. People are easier to relate to up close.
Get people to work together on big interdisciplinary problems such as satellite imagery for conservation, reducing light pollution, heck even recreating space missions in video games. The key is to get a problem that needs at least 2 different kinds of expertise to address it. Then people with expertise in different areas will come together and discuss stuff with each other.
Related: more flexibility in funding! When I was an interdisciplinary researcher in science and technology studies, it was an absolute headache trying to get funding to help me finish my PhD. Because I worked on the history of science, I was too “sciencey” for a lot of humanities funding but my work barely registered to science funders. In my experience, interdisciplinary research tends to fall through the cracks and as a consequence it’s more difficult to find funding. I would like to see more explicit commitments to funding interdisciplinary research.
I like this suggestion, I feel like the big solution we need to find in order to implement something like this really successfully is to increase tolerance for discomfort and disagreement.
I see dialogue shut down far too quickly in intellectual space.
I heard once that the old philosophers in Greece needed to state one another’s position well enough that the the person they debated with actually agreed ‘yes you understand my position, I have nothing to add’.
Only after that did debate take place.
Not sure if this is true or not but the spirit of the anecdote feels like it’s really missing from most media and discussion out there in the mainstream.
What ways could interdisciplinary cross-pollination be more cultivated?
Oh, if you read some of Plato’s dialogues it seems very untrue...Plato was really into strawmanning his opponents’ arguments unfortunately :)
Anyway. To try and answer your (very thoughtful) question:
Get people from different disciplines together in the same physical space on a regular basis. Maybe you put the software engineers next to the literary critics and get them to have lunch together regularly, or something. People are easier to relate to up close.
Get people to work together on big interdisciplinary problems such as satellite imagery for conservation, reducing light pollution, heck even recreating space missions in video games. The key is to get a problem that needs at least 2 different kinds of expertise to address it. Then people with expertise in different areas will come together and discuss stuff with each other.
Related: more flexibility in funding! When I was an interdisciplinary researcher in science and technology studies, it was an absolute headache trying to get funding to help me finish my PhD. Because I worked on the history of science, I was too “sciencey” for a lot of humanities funding but my work barely registered to science funders. In my experience, interdisciplinary research tends to fall through the cracks and as a consequence it’s more difficult to find funding. I would like to see more explicit commitments to funding interdisciplinary research.