Interdisciplinarity

Abstract

This paper is a modest attempt to throw light on one of the uses the interdisciplinarity approach is currently put to, compared to the more general, and I might add more traditional multidisciplinary conception of knowledge production. It appears that interdisciplinarity is presented as the panacea that is to cure the ills that are generated by the disciplinary division of knowledge; however it seems that the world has never been monodisciplinary. Interdisciplinarity, though no agreement has been reached about its exact definition, gives the impression of being a method of research that relies on the application of insights and methods from various disciplines so as to solve a specific problem. Alongside it lies the much larger idea of mutidisciplinarity. It involves –among other matters– on the one hand the contingent adoption of research methods from other disciplines, when a dead end is reached with one's own; on the other hand, and more fundamentally, the use of the different types of prose writing in various disciplines, allowing thus a more profound merging between them as will be illustrated by appropriation of narration in the writing of history.