[gumby]

> Effective research is not disciplinary, interdisciplinary, or multidisciplinary; it is transdisciplinary... Disciplines are taken by science to represent different parts of the reality we experience. In effect, science assumes that reality is structured and organized in the same way universities are.

Not just the sciences. Rigid, path-dependent taxonomies are a plague in all disciplines and in daily life.

[beaconstudios]

it's especially a plague in medicine, though I'm reliably informed that a new movement within the medical establishment called integrative medicine may help to start treating human health as a system, not a collection of disparate parts.

[vlovich123]

I don’t know if it’s a plague. I see value in both approaches and going to one extreme or the other seems unhealthy. You want generalists to be working with specialists. Just generalists or just specialists won’t perform as well as a healthy mix and going to one extreme let’s the other outcompete you in certain areas.

[beaconstudios]

the plague is that right now we _are_ going to one extreme - the extreme of separation and specialisation. Systems thinkers want the two integrated, they don't want to throw out analysis and replace it with synthesis, they want the combination (synthesis!) of the two.

[gumby]

The reason I say “plague” is that effort and discussion (not just public discussion) focus on the map, not the territory itself.

Just look at us politics today: the discussions around “infrastructure” and “defense” are hobbled by the descriptions of those words rather than addressing the structural issues themselves.