What would a transdisciplinary university look like

Keywords: Transdisciplinary University, Intersubjectivity, Integrated Systems, , Science and Humanities, Bildung, Wisdom Michael F.. Thus, a transdisciplinary university would be one th

Collaborating for Good:

What Would a Transdisciplinary University Look Like?

Michael F Mascolo Merrimack College

To appear in Lawrence, R J (in press) Handbook of Transdisciplinarity: Global Perspectives

Elgar

Keywords: Transdisciplinary University, Intersubjectivity, Integrated Systems, , Science and

Humanities, Bildung, Wisdom

Michael F Mascolo is Professor of Psychology at Merrimack College (USA) He the author of

over 100 articles and book chapters on issues related to human development Recently, he the

co-editor (with Thomas Bidell) of the Handbook of Integrative Developmental Science (2020, Routledge) and author of From Conflict to Collaboration: A Step-by-Step Guide to Solving

Problems in Everyday Relationships (2021, Absolute Author) He is also Director of Creating Common Ground, a nonprofit devoted to bridging divides on contentious political issues

Abstract

A key function of the university is to develop the knowledge required to address intellectual

and social problems The founding purpose of modern academy was to promote bildung – the

cultivation of individual and society through education However, achieving this requires

integrating our understanding of the various systems of which selves and societies are

constituted The modern university is a fragmented institution in which research, teaching and service operate within more-or-less isolated disciplinary silos Understanding the systems that make up selves and societies is beyond the reach of a fragmented academy Transdisciplinarity invites us to coordinate and synthesize the expertise from multiple disciplinary traditions to understand and resolve complex problems However, this approach is insufficient unless

transdisciplinarity extends beyond mere shared problem-solving It calls for the cultivation of

the transdisciplinary spirit – a commitment to the idea that problems, values and purposes are prior to methods, procedures and disciplines Our problems are human ones that require a

rethinking of values, beliefs and practices that we live by Thus, a transdisciplinary university would be one that not only brings disciplines together to pursue common purposes, but also

seeks to move beyond knowledge to wisdom

INTRODUCTION

What would a transdisciplinary university look like? The question of the trandisciplinary

university was an important one discussed during the seminar organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 1970 In that meeting, Jean Piaget and Erich Jantsch addressed the question of the role of universities in fostering transdisciplinary scholarship Both scholars invoked multi-level systems frameworks for understanding the coordination of knowledge across disciplines Piaget, the genetic epistemologist, called for the transdisciplinary unification of knowledge organized around scientific principles Ironically, it was Jantsch the physicist who call for a more pluralistic framework Arguing for the mutual

dependence of the sciences and humanities, he noted the role of purpose in structuring our

understandings of the world In contrast to the tightly-ordered model of unification offered by Piaget (1972), Jantsch (1972) wrote, “There is not a single system of science, there are as many systems as there are purposes” (p 99) If this is so, the transdisciplinary university is one that is organized around a continuously-evolving and open-ended human conversation – one that identifies purposes prior to procedures The transdisciplinary university would be one that

sought self-renewal For Jantsch (1972, p.102):

“the leadership role demanded of the university in this vast process of institutional and social change, re-enforced by mounting pressures and crises, derives from its unique potential for enhancing society's capacity for continuous self-renewal.”

Jantsch’s (1972) conception is reminiscent of the Humbodtian conception of the modern

academy, inaugurated with the founding of the University of Berlin in 1803 For von Humboldt

(1789), the purpose of the academy was to foster bildung – the cultivation of individual and

society through education (Sorkin, 1983; Taylor, 2017) The German university was conceived as

a holistic institution, one that sought the unification of knowledge through research, teaching and applications in society Its core mission was to produce knowledge for the betterment of individuals and society

The goal of self-cultivation – for both individuals and society – is best pursued when disciplines collaborate in the purposive quest to address intellectual, social and practical problems In contrast to this ideal, the modern university is a fragmented one (Bonevac, 2019) Research is conducted within more-or-less isolated disciplines, each pursuing their own agendas organized around their own paradigms, practices and procedures Teaching and learning are organized around disciplinary specializations General education embraces the distribution model where students select courses from lists of largely unrelated classes chosen from different academic areas (Wehlburg, 2010)

An institution organized around academic silos is unlikely to fulfill the goal of fostering bildung

Fragmented curricula are unlikely to support the self-cultivation of students or societies

(Dennis, 2019) Our problems call for a more transdisciplinary integration of expertise across disciplines – and not simply scientific disciplines We must realize that our problems are not

merely technical ones to be solved by science; they are also human problems that require us to

assimilate knowledge of “what is” to the broader social conversation of “what should be” (Maxwell, 2021) A transdisciplinary university (Carroll, Ali, Cuff, et al., 2014; McWhinnie, 2021)

would be one that seeks not just knowledge but also wisdom knowledge that functions in the

service of the good Is such an institution possible? If so, what might it look like? Is any

meaningful form of knowledge unification possible? How can universities foster the production

of the knowledge and wisdom we need to live by? These questions are addressed in this

chapter

THE PATH TO TRANSDICIPLINARITY

Within any given discipline, the more that is learned, the more specialized knowledge becomes Even a cursory analysis reveals an academy teeming with specializations The Wikipedia entry

on “Outline of Academic Disciplines” (2021) classifies academic disciplines into five categories Humanities, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Formal Sciences, and Applied Sciences Within these, the entry lists 40 distinct disciplines and over 1900 subdisciplines Disciplines arise from the need to dissect the complexity of the world on order to study it However, as we scrutinize the world, we risk destroying our understanding of its globality In this way, the necessity of specialization brings with it the risk of distorting our understanding of both the parts we are studying and of the wholes of which they are a part

This awareness motivates calls for greater integration of inquiry and knowledge Integration necessarily requires collaboration among disciplines It is helpful to differentiate among

disciplinary, multi-disciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary frameworks of

collaborative inquiry As shown in Figure 1, drawing on a long tradition (Jantsch, 1972;

Lawrence, 2010, Piaget, 1972; Toš, 2021) these forms of inquiry can be defined along a

continuum ranging from disciplinary independence through transdisciplinary integration

Figure 1: Modes of Discipline-Related Inquiry

In this chapter, these forms of inquiry are defined as follows:

• Disciplinary research refers to inquiry directed within a particular area of study defined

by shared rules, but implicit and explicit for what constitutes relevant subject matter, methodology, forms of evidence, acceptable explanations, and practices for

disseminating scholarship and so forth Inquiry conducted within traditional fields of study (e.g., physics, chemistry, sociology, mathematics, theology) are examples of

disciplinary research

• Multidisciplinary research refers to forms of inquiry in which a phenomenon is studied

simultaneously from multiple distinct disciplines Hence, inquiry from each discipline is performed separately, without coordination or integration of theoretical,

methodological or interpretive considerations

• Interdisciplinary research consists of inquiry about a particular phenomenon in which

theoretical, methodological and interpretative practices are coordinated or combined in some way Therefore, while disciplinary practices are being used together, each

discipline nonetheless retains its distinctness and integrity

• Transdisciplinary research consists of inquiry in which contributions from diverse

scientific and extra-scientific disciplines are inter-coordinated into a complementary or common theoretical, methodological and interpretive framework This is shown in the lower right panel of Figure 1 The intercoordination (1 ) of disciplinary concepts and practices produces emergent forms of knowledge and inquiry that integrates and

transcends the contributions of each discipline A novel synthesis arises as the

emergent product of the inter-coordination of disciplinary meanings and practices

Transdisciplinarity takes many forms It occurs in the form of joint research programs, the emergence of novel areas of studies, and in the search for unified knowledge However,

transdisciplinarity is not so much a scholarly product as it is a spirit of inquiry

The Transdisciplinarity Spirit

Nicolescu (2010) referred to transdisciplinarity as “that which is at once between the

disciplines, across the different disciplines, and beyond all disciplines Its goal is the

understanding of the present world, of which one of the imperatives is the unity of knowledge” (p 22) Therefore, transdisciplinarity is not simply knowledge that transcends disciplines It is a way of thinking about the very nature of inquiry It reflects a particular spirit of inquiry – a methodology without allegiance to any particular method This section contains an analysis of the transdisciplinarity spirit and how it provides alternatives to traditional forms of inquiry

The Origins of Academic Fragmentation

At the time of the ancient Greeks, there were no formal disciplines Knowledge gained through systematic observation – what we today call “science” was not differentiated from

philosophy Disciplines evolved gradually With the rise of Christianity in the early middle-ages, knowledge became the proper province of the church Throughout the Middle Ages, Western European thinking was dominated by religion, and particularly the teachings of the Catholic church Monastic and cathedral schools prepared children of the elite for the clergy and

professions Curricula were organized around theology, grammar, astronomy, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry and music (Palmer, 2016)

During this period, church dogma took primacy over knowledge gained from systematic

observation If observations did not square with church teaching, so much for the observations Challenging church dogma, the scientific revolution made way for the Western Enlightenment Freeing inquiry from the stranglehold of authority, Enlightenment thinking identified reason and observation – capacities of the individual thinker as the primary source of reliable

knowledge The promise of scientific certainty set the stage for its severing from philosophical speculation

By the 16th and 17th centuries, science and philosophy began to consolidate around the

emerging distinction between objectivity and subjectivity (Slingerland, 2012) To the extent that objects and bodies can be viewed publicly, they lend themselves to objective observation In

contrast, because contents of the “mind” cannot be directly observed, they came to be seen as

subjective Informed by the value of objectivity, science was considered as a mode of unbiased

inquiry (Daston & Galison, 2007) By the 19th century, the science/humanities division was firmly ensconced in university life The success of the natural sciences ignited a desire to apply scientific principles to the analysis of social life With the emergence of the social sciences in the 19th and 20th centuries (Eller, 2014), a topic traditionally taken to be the domain of the humanities – personhood became an object of science During the 20th and 21st centuries, sciences, social sciences and humanities underwent massive disciplinary specialization

Disciplinary differentiation is a product of success The more we learn within a given discipline, the more knowledge becomes specialized However, as disciplines become increasingly

specialized, they tend to become disjunct from one another As a result, with exceptions, academic inquiry – at least in the Western tradition has come to privilege differentiation over integration of knowledge Science and humanities become differentiated in terms of their capacity for objective or subjective inquiry

Dividing the Indivisible

From an objectivist point of view, “reality” tends to be understood as something that can be known independent of the organizing capacities of the observer Disciplines that are seen as able to hold subjectivity at bay are considered reliable and precise; those that fail to do so are regarded as speculative and unreliable When this occurs, humanistic and philosophical inquiry takes on secondary status Philosophical claims come to be viewed as speculations that must await the advance of science to achieve their verification (de Haro, 2020)

However, the subjective-objective dichotomy is a troublesome one (Mascolo, 2017a) It is founded on a false assumption – namely, that it is possible to make observations of the world

that are free from the experiential capacities of the subject However, the process of observing the world – however mediated by scientific tools is itself a form of experiencing It is not

possible to separate the process of experiencing from the object experienced (Husserl, 1970)

Hence, then we can never engage the world independent of our experiences of it To be sure, the world exists independent of our experiencing of it However, we cannot possess knowledge

of the world that exists independent of us (Nicolescu, 2010) With respect to the process by

which we come to know, there is not first the world and then also our experience of it Instead,

there are only our experiences-of-the-world

These assertions do not make knowledge subjective Rejecting the idea that we cannot know the world objectively does not commit one to a subjective view of knowledge Similarly,

rejecting the idea that knowledge is based on subjective experience does not commit one to an objectivist view The problem is the objective-subjective dichotomy itself To the extent that the objective/subjective distinction fails, then science cannot be “objective” while non-science

is a “subjective” (Slingerland, 2012) Consequently, science is not an autonomous process As a result, there can be no strong separation between science and philosophy (de Haro, 2020, Gondek, 2014) There is thus a need for other ways to understand how knowledge is produced and verified, and the role of disciplines in the pursuit of knowledge (Mascolo, 2017b)

The Primacy of Intersubjectivity

Husserl (1970) suggested that when we embark upon the process of understanding the world, scientists and laypersons alike tend to adopt “the naturalistic attitude” This is the taken-for-granted belief that our perceptions bring us into contact with the world as it really is However, philosophical reflection reveals the limitations of the naturalistic stance Husserl (1970) argues

that we do not only live in a natural world, we also live in an intersubjectively shared lifeworld (lebenswelt) (Zahavi, 2003) The lifeworld consists of already shared and contested patterns of

assumptions, understandings, values, and meanings It provides the shared symbolic backdrop

of everyday life Language – with its capacity to mediate the construction of shared and created meanings plays a central role in the constitution of the lifeworld Language mediates the process by which social communities, including scholarly communities, organize their

experiences of the world and make them intelligible to self and other (Cipolletta, Mascolo & Procter, 2020)

In scholarly endeavor, we draw upon our intersubjectvely-shared categories to interpret the experienced world Science is a systemic process of interrogating the world through the

systematic production and use of evidence Science does not progress through any capacity to describe the world free from prior experience and shared understandings Instead, it proceeds

by drawing upon, refining, and revising those shared pre-understandings in the face of novel

forms of experience Science progresses because the experienced world is always recalcitrant

to our existing understandings It is because of this recalcitrance that Nicolescu (2010) can define “reality” as “that which resists our experiences, representations, descriptions, images, or even mathematical formulations” (p 25)

What people call subjectivity and objectivity are categories made possible by our prior capacity for intersubjectivity What people call an objective observation is not a matter of recording

nature is it is; it is a matter of building up, over time, shared categories that reflect regularities

in the experienced world – however mediated those regularities are by cultural or scientific

tools What people call objectivity is a way of creating, within an already-shared lebenwelt, categories for everyone rather than categories for just you or me (Husserl, 1970) What we call subjectivity are descriptions of personal experiences-of-the-world that have not (yet) been

coordinated into shared ways of knowing (Mascolo & Kallio, 2019)

One of the key purposes of philosophical reflection is conceptual clarification (Hacker, 2015) It seeks to clarify the concepts and practices – often implicit and taken for granted that guide

scientific activity Cut off from philosophy, science becomes unaware of the a priori

assumptions and practices that structure empirical activity Without such awareness, science cannot submit its concepts and practices to critical reflection (Knoblauch, 2021) The same problem occurs in reverse Philosophical reflection uninformed by scientific knowledge is

ungrounded and unconstrained In this way, awareness of the non-independence of subject and object is a necessary feature of all disciplinary activity

The Spirit of Transdisciplinarity

Levinas (1969) suggested that behind the face of the Other lies an infinity If this is so, then the Other can never merely be assimilated to the self’s ways of thinking The Other always has something more to offer us than we might think This principle applies not only to our daily interactions hers, but also to our interactions with those outside of our local disciplines – and indeed, to the scholarly interrogation of our physical, psychological and socio-cultural worlds

The transdisciplinary spirit is a way of approaching inquiry that requires radical openness It builds upon the idea that, at base, all forms of inquiry share a common intersubjective base It

is characterized by the desire to subordinate means, methods and expertise to the problems that they are recruited to solve – regardless of the disciplinary origins of any given form of expertise Even within disciplinary activity, the transdisciplinary spirit fosters a continuously awareness that the objects of our inquiries are always part of a larger whole that must be acknowledged and understood As a result, it calls on us to embrace the values of intellectual humility, radical reflexivity and self-criticism

Transdisciplinarity and the Unification of Knowledge

We live in a culture that rewards reductionist expertise…The conversations about our future center around islands of expertise separated by oceans of misinformation and resulting confusion Consilience is a term that means the jumping together of

knowledge A conciliant view from the stratosphere can make better sense of how the

pieces fit together, and they do fit together (Hagans, 2021, emphasis added)

The problems of our day are not discipline-specific To address them, we need to synthesize expertise from diverse disciplines into a higher-order theories and

metatheoriesTransdisciplinary integration does not occur spontaneously; it must be actively

created Integrative perspectives are currently available in the form of various versions of

complex systems theory

Systems principles provide the most comprehensive set of concepts and tools available to understand the complex relations among the biophysical, psychological and socio-cultural dimension of our world (Cannizzaro, 2014; Capra & Luisi, 2016; Kaufman, 1993; Troncale, 2006)

Systems models suggest that complex structures are emergent (Mascolo & Kallio, 2019)

products of relations (Gabriel & Kaspersen, 2014; Larsen-Freeman, 2019) between and among hierarchically nested and heterarchically integrated subsystems (Mascolo, 2013) that self-

organize (Barberousse, 2010) over time A system refers to any sets of processes or elements that function together as a whole Emergence refers to the idea that complex structures exhibit

novel and qualitatively distinct properties that are not present in their base elements (Boorgerd

et al., 2005) Self-organization (Kaufman, 1995) refers to the idea that patterns among

elements of a system develop without fixed or static plans – that is, as product of the ways in which elements and processes influence each other over time In this way, structures emerge

from relations among component processes rather than as consequences of the causal forces

of elements that are considered independent of one another (Mascolo, 2013)

When addressing the question of unity of knowledge, the systems concept of emergence takes

on special importance (Bunge, 2014) Nicolescu (2010) suggested that the world is composed

of different “levels of reality” Each level is characterized by a discontinuity in relation to other levels of reality Different “level of reality” – e.g., quantum, physical, biological level – is

constituted as a system that is “invariant under certain laws” (p 25) Nicolescu explicitly

differentiates the idea of “levels of reality” from systems conceptions that parse the world in

terms of discontinuous levels of organization:

Levels of Reality are radically different from levels of organization as these have been defined in systemic approaches Levels of organization do not presuppose a

discontinuity in the fundamental concepts; several levels of organization can appear at the same level of Reality The levels of organization correspond to different structures of the same fundamental laws

Nicolescu (2010) explained that unlike systems approaches, his conception of “levels of reality”

is not a hierarchical one No level is fundamental; all levels function simultaneously as

discontinuous aspects of reality While it is true that the various levels function simultaneously,

there is a need to understand the origins of those levels Systems conceptions maintain that novel, higher-order systems of being emerge through the constructive differentiation and integration lower-order systems What Nicolescu calls “levels of reality” are discontinuous,

qualitatively distinct “levels of organization” However, the novel properties that characterize any given level are emergent products of the constructive integration of lower=level systems into higher-order structures

From a systems perspective, the process emergence is ubiquitous Although there are many forms of emergent structures, all rely upon the same constructive process: a set of previously

differentiated elements, states or processes become constructively inter-coordinated to

produce novel, higher-order structures Each new level of structure has novel properties that

do not exist in the base elements Therefore, the properties of the new whole are greater than

the sum of its parts (Boogerd et al., 2005) However, this does not mean that the new whole contains something more than the novel organization of previously differentiated parts The new whole is the non-reductive equivalent of the novel structure (Mascolo & Kallio, 2019) The

relations among the elements that constitute the new structure synergistically produce novel properties not found in the base elements

Emergence is not a mysterious process To illustrate, consider the simple example of the

formation of liquid water Water (H2O) is a molecule whose structure arises from the emergent combination of two base elements, hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) At room temperature,

hydrogen and oxygen are gasses.: But, when they combine, they produce a substance that has the emergent property of liquidity The shift from gas to liquid marks a qualitative and

discontinuous transformation How is it possible for liquid to emerge from the combination of two gasses? The transition from gas to liquidity is well understood When water molecules come together, they form weak bonds Hence, when molecules are moved, their links are easily severed, allowing individual molecules to move freely over each other This simple

example, it shows how novel properties of higher-order structures arise without having to invoke mystical causes or entities This self-organization and constructive emergence of novel structures is a transdisciplinary principle that is appliable to understanding the emergence and functioning of physical, biological, psychological and socio-cultural systems

Emergent Consilience in the Sciences : A Systems Framework

Systems conceptions provide a framework for understanding how more complex structures emerge from the differentiation and integration of lower-level structures and processes Figure

3 sketches a systems model of the emergence of various forms of existence typically explained

by science The model consists of eight distinct levels of phenomena, each of which reflects a different form in the qualitative emergence of different structures of being These eight levels

are organized into four basic qualitative forms: matter, life, experience, and culture (Cahoone,

2013; Henriques et al., 2019; Slingerland & Collard, 2012; Wilson, 1999)

Matter All matter is ultimately composed of the organization of subatomic particles and forces

(Larkosi, 2019) Thus, Level I is the standard model of particle physics At the subatomic level, the world is organized with reference to different classes of particles (e.g., quarks, leptons, and bosons) All matter is the emergent product of combinations these elementary particles At Level II (the atomic level), atoms emerge from combinations of subatomic particles For

example, hydrogen (H) is composed of one electron that orbits around a single proton; oxygen

(O) is composed of eight electrons that orbit around a nucleus of 8

Figure 2: Emergent Conciliant Systems

protons and eight neutrons In this way, we can say that hydrogen emerges from the coming together of a single electron and a single proton; oxygen emerges from the patterned

coordination of eight electrons, protons and neutrons At Level III, atoms combine to form

molecules For example, the water molecule arises when two hydrogen atoms bond with a

single oxygen atom The move to Level IV is an extension of the formation of structures at the level of molecules However, Level IV is characterized by a move to the formation of organic

matter All organic matter contains carbon (C) as a core element As shown in Figure 3,

carbohydrate (C6H12O6) is an organic substance that is formed through the complex

combination of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon Life is ultimately composed at this level

Life The movement to Level V marks a qualitative transformation in forms of being – namely

the transition from matter to life The construction of living organisms builds upon the creating

of novel organic structures through the differentiation and integration of organic and inorganic compounds Living cells are products of the co-evolution of different interconnected organic structures that operate together to form a single integrated system The transition to life marks

the emergence of self-regulating beings organic systems that regulate their internal energy in

response to changes in the environment (Bich et al., 2016; Capra & Luisi, 2016) , Life emerges

as organic and inorganic matter combine in ways that form units that regulate their own

processes within bio-physical contexts

The capacity for self-regulation is a property of the most basic forms of life (Bich et., al., 2016;

De la Fuente, et al, 2010) At Level V, unicelled organisms are able to regulate their own

movement in primitive ways For example, the paramecium swims through in fresh water through the beating of its cilia, whose function like the oars of a boat When cilia beat

backwards, the cell is propelled forward When it meets an object or predator, the cilia beat forward, which propels the paramecium in the opposite direction (Bonini, Gustin & Nelson, 1986) Over the course of evolution, higher-order organisms evolved as complex systems with novel adaptive properties In so doing, these organisms exhibit higher levels of structural

differentiation, integration and hierarchic integration than lower-level organisms As a result, with increasingly adaptive complexity, they become more stable and more flexible in relation to their environs

Experience The next evolutionary tier involves the emergence of self-regulating organisms

whose functioning within larger ecosystems is mediated by nervous systems The evolution of the nervous system provides the foundation for the emergence of consciousness

Consciousness, has proven difficult to define Here, we define it broadly in terms of the capacity for awareness and experience It is helpful to differentiate three broad levels of consciousness:

(a) functional experience, (b) intentional consciousness (Crane, 1998) and (c) sign-mediated consciousness (Gillespie, 2018) Each form of consciousness emerges at different levels of

self-organismic functioning

Level VI is characterized by the emergence of vertebrates, biological systems with a backbone, central nervous system, and bilateral muscular apparatus Motor movement operates in the service of the organism’s sensed relation to the environment; even the most primitive