Jon, List,
Thanks for these references. I look forward to reading them in
preparing for the next posts.
Sally
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
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