Knowledge Without Borders: Epistemology And Inter-Disciplinary Contexts | Sunita Samal

Abstract: We are intrinsically curious creatures that we have a natural desire to understand world. To say that we are satisfying our goals depends on what to say that we have a practical interest in believing which track the world is. So, our interest in truth is an interest in the way things are. Interdisciplinary is one of the major changes that the relationship between science and the life world has experienced, putting it in the same level of relevance as the Enlightenment that has separated social sciences from natural sciences. While Knowledge requires true belief, it is constituted thereby something that also required more justification.

Introduction: In Cartesian fashion, we use our analytical skills to divide the world into smaller and smaller units, hoping that in understanding the parts we will eventually understand the whole. No sentence is true but reality makes it so. We need a correspondence theory of truth in order to do justice to our interest in truth because it helps us to achieve our goals as expressed in epistemology. Before describing interdisciplinary knowledge, we have to discuss our passion for knowledge based on question of truth and justice.

Intuitive Understanding of Truth and Justice: Alvin Goldman is best known for his substantial contribution to epistemology, with knowledge in a social world that sustained treatment of social epistemology that applies to quite a diverse range of issues. For him, the question is how we together acquire and share knowledge and how the various aspects of the epistemic burden are distributed among us [1].

Nor does Goldman think that such practices are to be evaluated in terms of their intrinsic features. The right approach is, for him is a consequentialism. For him, the right /good social practices are those which lead to knowledge on the part of its user where knowledge is understood in the ‘weak sense’ of true belief. Even supposing some form of consequentialism is the right one, because that is the over arching epistemic goal. Only a notion of truth that is broadly in the correspondence tradition, according to Goldman does justice to our intuitive understanding of truth that makes sense of our having both intrinsic and extrinsic in acquiring knowledge that is ‘true belief’ [2].

For Rysiew, Goldman pragmatic and epistemic theories of truth are deeply unsatisfactory. It seems simply to ‘get off on the wrong track’ confusing from the outset truth with sui genesis things. Thus, thought justified belief and truth seem to come apart, it might be suggested that this is not so of truth and what would be believed in ideal epistemic situation [3]. So, one might worry that Goldman’s knowledge of social world (KSW) marks a departure, not just from traditional, individualistic epistemology but from a concern with genuine knowledge [4]. Some of those who have been most critical of KSW have complained that Goldman does not really do justice to the real spirit of social epistemology at all.

Goldman agrees that traditional epistemology is excessively individualist. But he thinks this shortcoming can be remedied simply by adding a social wing to the old edifice [5]. Stew Cohen has argued that knowledge itself has a social component. According to him how good one’s reasons must be in order for one to possess knowledge depends upon social standards. Longino argues that scientific belief is justified to the extent that it results from the application of ‘objective’ methods, where ‘objective’ methods are explicitly characterized in terms of certain features of relevant social practices—whether there are genuinely public, allow critical interaction exhibit equality of intellectual authority among diverse perspectives and so on [6]. Goldman has argued that reliability condition is what separates ‘true belief’ from genuine knowledge and that constitutes the proper justification condition of knowing [7].

Of course, both of these claims of knowledge are right approaches to justification are controversial in nature. Their reliability is unaffected by their ‘location’. Does the presence of this justification condition make knowledge itself interestingly social? Goldman wants to avoid getting drawn into the tangled epistemological topics of what constitutes knowledge in the strong sense. More importantly, Goldman says, his view is that ‘people’s dominant epistemic goal is to obtain true belief, pure and simple. Of course, the usual route to true belief might be the obtaining of evidence, say, but the value of such evidence is wholly instrumental [8]

Longino’s suggests that scientific communities and their activities should include a shared standard that critics can invoke. We do not have to choose between procedural and consequentialist means of evaluating practices; and there are going to be cases where though we hope the meeting of those two. Putting it another way, there are likely cases in which we will have no choice but to adopt a justification- centered approach with the provision, of course, that given the source of the present concern.

Wilson pointed out that split into independent cadres, they stress precision in words within their specialty but seldom speak the same technical language from one specialty to the next. Have the universities and the division in social sciences gone too far? There are authors who state that process of compartmentalization is unnatural since the world is not fragmented, further arguing the knowledge should not go to such length in the divisions artificially created by scientists and researchers [9].

Wilson says that the ongoing fragmentation of knowledge and resulting chaos in philosophy are not reflections of the real world but artifacts of scholarship [10]. Even Hoffmann-Riem et.al (2008) state that the pursuit of research within university department has given rise to the on -going specialization of disciplines and thematic fields with fuzzy, somewhat arbitrary and shifting boundaries [11].

Before such considerations it does indeed make sense that fields where decision-making is so important like politics and business among others, would choose to rely on inter-disciplinary in order to find better solutions to their challenges. But one question remains: Why and when did social sciences became so fragmented? There is not a simple and quick answer to this question, as it often happens in such cases where the history of social institutions is discussed and deconstructed. In Cartesian fashion, we use our analytical skills to divide the world into smaller units, hoping that in understanding the parts we will eventually understand the whole. This does appear to be rationale of the academic world, as disciplines and specialization tend to multiply themselves [12].

Globalization of Knowledge: It is around the disciplines that faculty subcultures are in increasing forms. As the work and the points of view grow more specialized, men in different disciplines have fewer things in common, in their background and their daily problems. They have less impulse to interact with one another.

In Lattuca (2001) view the exponential growth of knowledge in the twentieth century revealed how disciplinary culture and perspectives could discourage inquiries and explanations that spanned disciplinary boundaries. So, discipline it seems, are a powerful but constraining way of knowing truth and justice. As a conceptual frames, they delimit the range of research questions that are asked, the kinds of methods that are used to investigate phenomena and the type of answers that consider legitimate. The idea that disciplines or rather disciplinary itself became a trap, hindering the process of discovery and knowledge production in cross-disciplinary fields or even in areas where monolithic thinking is overemphasized instead of creative and innovative approach to knowledge and truth.

Yet, many authors have disapproved this state of things, even going to the extent of labelling the later years of twentieth century de-constructive era, a time of pluralism in both theories and methods as opposed to the grant scale theories and quantitative methods dominated science and social sciences faculties [13].This has resulted in what many call social theory instead of sociological theory, anthropological theory, political theory in a deliberate attempt to sever ties with the monistic period of research work as a product of pluralistic stance regarding knowledge of truth and justice.

Many disciplines or fields that recently emerged and are still on the early stage of constituting themselves, are adopting interdisciplinary principles. Such is the case of cultural studies, ecology, urban studies, bio-politics, public policies, etc. In the words of Hoffmann-rime et al., ‘The doors of laboratories and libraries must be opened and researchers have to step into problem field and engage in mutual learning with people in the life world. In doing so, academic standards of knowledge production and quality control criteria are sacrificed. Inter-disciplinary must begin with the dissolution of the barriers between scientific fields, the collapse of walls between academia, and above all else the de-construction of mono-disciplinary fundamentalism.

Specialization in the way to start a discipline, but it must not become a religion. When it is rigid, it impedes advancing knowledge. The more rigidly specialized, the less relevant to advancing knowledge. Currently, this rigidity seems to be the key problem in social and behavioral studies and the humanities as well as the combined use of some disciplines that can promote reciprocal transformation in each of these disciplines [14]. However, inter-disciplinary is not a process that can be easily implemented and may even challenge the existing institutionalized disciplinary and professional identity.

Inter-disciplinary which aims to establish communication between disciplines stems from a meta-theory, i.e. a theory that aims to build bridges between theories is for example inter-section of psycho-analysis and anthropology in Foucault’s ‘archeology of knowledge’ the federation of various scientific disciplines and their articulation with philosophy, mathematics, art and literature. Although the heuristic potential of interdisciplinary is generally acknowledged it is not easily promoted and developed in academia, research, or teaching. It is not enough to have a discourse to promote inter-disciplinary studies rather, it is necessary to create the conditions for this type of teaching to be implemented in a successful way [15].

Each scientific discipline involves a different specific stance with a specific intellectual culture which to some extent shapes the perception and practice of social and natural scientists [16]. Interdisciplinary studies are more than just working together. It involves paying attention to how we think, how we relate, how we behave, what language we use, how we communicate, and how we co-create knowledge.

Sometimes in the scientific discipline representations and hierarchy, culture, and power in their different paradigms contribute to hinder the process of inter-disciplinarity and posits as one of the results of her study that bio-physical scientists expressed a lack of appreciation or respect for the methods used by social scientists. Specifically for the promotion of interdisciplinary collaboration in scientific knowledge between natural science and social sciences, there is need for collaborative experimentation, taking risks, open discussion, and relevant exploration of differences.

Binary Classifications: Power and Identity: Scientists across disciplines must often work together to address pressing global issues facing our societies. For Interdisciplinary projects to flourish, scientists must recognize the potential contribution of other disciplines in answering key research questions. Here, social sciences may be appreciated less than hard sciences overall. Building on extensive evidence of ingroup bias and ethnocentrism in intergroup relations, however, one could also expect scientists to play down the contributions of other disciplines to important research questions. The focus of the present research was to investigate how hard and social scientists perceive one another through binary methods [17].

Here, seeing one’s own discipline as the only valid perspective can genuinely hinder the development of innovative interdisciplinary research. Addressing the ‘how’ of inter-disciplinary research, we test whether these contacts can foster positive perception of other disciplines. Researchers are highly socialized within these circles as most university departments are compartmentalized into specific disciplines. One can think about academic disciplines as cultures in the sense that physical departmental divisions foster the transmission of core values within the system over time [18].

This can lead to conclusions that other disciplines do not perceive the problems in the same way and give rise to intellectual centrism, a form of ingroup bias whereby one displays a strong preference for own discipline over other disciplines and fails to appreciate the potential contribution of other disciplines.

The mere categorization of people into ‘us’ and ‘them’ is sufficient to elicit intergroup biases, a systematic tendency to favor the ingroup over the outgroup. Nevertheless, the social status of a group matters for displays of inter-group bias. In all complex societies, intergroup relations are organized as group-based hierarchies with some groups enjoining higher power and status than others [19]. Common sense distinction between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ sciences suggests that some disciplines are perceived as more prototypical of the scientific ethos than others.

Generally, there is an agreement that researcher coming from hard sciences such as physics or biology may readily be perceived as ‘real’ sciences, conquering the discovery of scientific laws. For social sciences such as sociology or economy, on the other hand, the study of human behavior is highly contextualized making controlled environments more difficult.

Scholars need to recognize the contribution of other disciplines and perceive a sense of community to break down the strong ‘us’ and ‘them’ divisions in academic disciplines. We concede that this binary classification is not ideal and perhaps future research should consider the extent to which scholars feel that they strictly belong to those scientific categories. For this reason, one needs to be careful when generalizing these findings to all hard science and social science disciplines. If interdisciplinary research is a solution to addressing global issues, then scientists must recognize the ability of other disciplines to contribute intellectually to important research questions.

Conclusion: Inter-disciplinary as approach has arisen to face issues of our world in the latter stage of modernity and the beginning of post-modernity that transcends disciplinary boundaries. The idea that knowledge plays a major role in progress is not even remotely new. We have to look at the Industrial Revolution, the rise of capitalism, and the role of science paid to acknowledge to the contribution to truth and knowledge. As a buzzword, it attracted the attention of entrepreneurs, politicians, and policymakers. It follows the premise that attempts to have science help to shape the future by relying deeply on the principles of sustainability, and the development of humanity as a whole.

(Author: Dr. Sunita Samal is a trained lawyer and with PhD from JNU, New Delhi. She is the author of multiple books and latest being ’ Feminism Is Not Here but Elsewhere: Think Tank of Identity Politics’. (2024))