Sally, Jerry, Peircers,
There is some discussion of disciplinary "silos" in the following paper:
Initial conference version, available at Arisbe:
Awbrey, S.M., and Awbrey, J.L. (September 1999), "Organizations of Learning or
Learning Organizations:
The Challenge of Creating Integrative Universities for the Next Century",
Second International Conference
of the Journal Organization , Re-Organizing Knowledge, Trans-Forming
Institutions: Knowing, Knowledge, and the
University in the 21st Century, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA.
• http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/awbrey/integrat.htm
Revised journal version:
Awbrey, S.M., and Awbrey, J.L. (May 2001), "Conceptual Barriers to Creating
Integrative Universities",
Organization: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Organization, Theory, and
Society 8(2), Sage Publications,
London, UK, pp. 269–284.
• http://org.sagepub.com/content/8/2/269.abstract
Jon
Sally Ness wrote:
Dear Jerry, List,
Thanks much for your comments and for contributing the "Friends of
Wisdom" post (which I do not replicate here because my last attempt to
post this email to the list was reject due to an "attachment of type
'IMAGE/PNG' that I believe that post may have contained). I hope you
will elaborate further on its relevance to the discussion as we progress.
I'm glad to see you introduce the term,"silo." This is a concept that
is getting a lot of play in the social sciences currently (and more
broadly as well) in describing how communication breaks down between
communities and comparable groups of various kinds. JR might well have
invoked it had he been writing on this topic today. JR's distinction
between academic disciplines (definitely silo-like) and scientific
communities (possibly tending toward silo-free? or silo-like in a good
way?) is a very interesting one and not without its own difficulties,
both empirical and theoretical. I intend to bring this up in a later
post, and I hope we can work through it in more detail then.
Regarding your question concerning my phrase, "home discipline," I don't
know where I first heard it, but I can't imagine that I was the one who
coined it. I have been affiliated with several interdisciplinary
programs over the last twenty-odd years. Whenever introductions are
made, we typically name our "home departments" as one means of
identification. "Home discipline" is an extension of that strategy, at
least in my usage.
While I do not share your sense of despair (at least not today--we'll
see what tomorrow brings) regarding the future of cross-disciplinary
communication and the cultivation of cross-disciplinary communities, I
certainly do appreciate the intense and daunting challenges posed by
these endeavors, which in my experience are typically underestimated by
those who engage in them (not to mention those in positions of authority
who often dictate them from above). I hope those of us who have
committed to the slow read of this particular paper will prove
exceptions to this tendency--it does help to be deliberately pragmatic
when undertaking this kind of communication.
In many years of working across disciplines with colleagues holding the
best possible intentions, I've often been struck by how often members
of a given discipline seem oblivious to the specificity of their own
disciplinary purposes and to the ways of communicating that follow from
them. JR brings this tendency to light in this paper in his discussion
of scientific norms. It is definitely on the agenda for a future post.
What he does not do in this paper, but which Gary R., fortunately, has
done for us, is to draw a necessary relationship between this kind of
communicational predicament, its transcendence or successful resolution
(or outgrowth, perhaps), and the virtue of humility. This would seem to
be a key relation worth examining more closely, when we reach this
section of the paper. To my mind, it might even be understood as
distinctively Peircean on more than one level--however, I will try to
hold that thought until we get further into the slow read.
Your questions lead me to wonder if Peirce wrote anything much directly
focused on the concept of "discipline," either as it relates to academic
disciplines, or as it might relate more generally speaking to science
and to scientific methods. It might be very helpful in relation to JR's
paper to have some citations from Peirce on this concept, if anyone on
the list happens to know of any or is working on closely related concepts.
Thanks again,
Sally
--
facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache
inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To
remove yourself from this list, send a message to [email protected] with the
line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the message. To post a message to the
list, send it to [email protected]
