What Is Interdisciplinarity?

Interdisciplinarity weaves together the insights and methodologies of various different disciplines.

Even though the divisions among academic disciplines are real, it would be wrong to think of these disciplines as silos, each with its own walled-off body of knowledge and separate approach to investigating and understanding the world. Disciplines overlap and interact at many points. In some cases, the connections are obvious, such as when sociology and psychology overlap in their focus on human behavior, or when biology and anthropology overlap in their focus on evolutionary changes in human anatomy and physiology over time. And indeed, the specific subfields or subdisciplines of social psychology and biological anthropology (also known as physical anthropology) are well-established in the academic world.

What’s less obvious is that disciplines with substantially different interests, approaches, and core questions can work together on the same problem to shed light on different aspects of it. The term for this practice is interdisciplinarity, defined as the merging of two or more academic disciplines in a single activity such as a research project.

Although the basic idea behind interdisciplinarity has been around since ancient times, its popularity and prominence experienced a meteoric rise in the late twentieth century, resulting in the naming of a new field, interdisciplinary studies. A basic definition was given by Julie Klein and William Newell, two scholars who are generally regarded as the field’s founding figures. In their words, interdisciplinary studies is “a process of answering a question, solving a problem, or addressing a topic that is too broad or complex to be dealt with adequately by a single discipline or profession. . . . [It] draws on disciplinary perspectives and integrates their insights through construction of a more comprehensive perspective” (393-394).

The concept of interdisciplinary studies—which has been abbreviated IDS—is accompanied by the concept of interdisciplinary research (IDR). The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine defines Interdisciplinary research (IDR) as “a mode of research by teams or individuals that integrates information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts, and/or theories from two or more disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge to advance fundamental understanding or to solve problems who solutions are beyond the scope of a single discipline or area of research practice” (2).

Examples of Interdisciplinarity

Beyond mere definitions, the important thing to remember is that most thinking and problem-solving is interdisciplinary. It isn’t a rare approach, an outlier in a world where separate disciplines rule the day. Interdisciplinarity is the rule rather than the exception, both in academia and in the regular world of our everyday experience.

As its logo makes clear, the Human Genome Project is highly interdisciplinary in nature.

For a highly academic and scientific example, consider the Human Genome Project. This was a massive international effort to map the entire human DNA sequence. The project was completed in 2003, two years ahead of schedule, and its culture-wide effects have already become widely apparent, including the ability for doctors to quickly diagnose rare genetic disorders and prescribe better medications for various conditions. It is also advancing our understanding of evolution. The impacts and benefits are enormous. And the project was entirely interdisciplinary from start to finish, involving a combination of biology, physics, chemistry, genetics, mathematics, computer science, engineering, and several other disciplines. No single discipline could have completed it.

Then there are entire disciplines that are intrinsically interdisciplinary, such as cognitive neuroscience and behavioral neuroscience. These emerging fields, which have captured the public imagination and been widely reported on in the popular press, combine neuroscience with psychology, physiology, and functional anatomy to understand the biological processes behind human cognition and behavior.

For a more everyday example, consider the act of planning and cooking a meal for some friends. The problem or issue that you face is the question of what to prepare. You’ll probably base your decision on your relationship with your friends and your knowledge of what they like. This involves psychology and sociology. The type of food you’ll cook for these particular people on this particular occasion may also be related to a special occasion such as a holiday, wedding, or birthday, which means the meal spills over into issues associated with cultural anthropology. You or some of your friends may have dietary restrictions, which may be religiously based (thus touching on the academic discipline of religious studies) or medically based (thus touching on biology, dietetics, and the study of medicine). When you actually go to cook the food, successful execution is entirely a matter of chemistry, as different substances interact differently with each other in various combinations and under different conditions, such as when you apply heat. In short, when viewed through the lens of academic disciplines, your simple and straightforward act of cooking a meal for friends is an entirely interdisciplinary affair. You couldn’t “solve your problem” without applying an interdisciplinary lens (which means multiple disciplinary lenses) to the situation.