Interdisciplinarity In The 19th-20th Century

The concept of interdiscipinarity relies strongly on the past for its integrative information. Even the way that we live out our daily lives is a reflection of the past and how it has shaped who we are today. If we are able to dig through the past for answers that we are looking for to problems we are facing today, we are forced to use and interdisciplinary approach in order to successfully achieve this method of research. The concept of “disciplines” was coined by the Romans who were trying to come up with a purpose for divisions of labor. Then during the scientific revolution, it was pushed even harder by having students specialize in specific areas of study. But it wasn’t until the 19th – 20th century when universities began to explicitly
separate education into specialized majors and schools of thought. This was a time when students were not expected to understand anything outside of their own majors and the world relied heavenly on scientific research as the foundation for their decisions to large scale problems. With this explosion of a need for specialization people realized that it was narrowing the overall mindset of individuals that was actually preventing discoveries from being made.
It was in a way preventing progress. Fortunately, after WWI people began to see a need for individuals to be experienced in multiple fields beyond their own disciplines. Thus, interdisciplinarity was seen as essential. With an increase in immigrant population we had to build up our knowledge of cultures and viewpoints beyond our own. This is when a push for general education began to explode. Then, post WWII there was another push to keep up with interdsciplinarity and a rejection to traditional education. People started to realize that they wanted to feel empowered enough to solve more than just simple life problems. This generation of students were driven to discover new things about the world that had never been known before. It wasn’t until the 1980s that fields of interdiciplinarity were actually recognized as credible educational fields of study. Discplinarity was increasingly critiqued for its narrow mindedness, specialization, ignorance of fields outside of its own, prevention of creativity, failure to solve large problems holistically, and that it tends to focus on the past and not look to the
future. There are multiple definitions for what a disciplinary approach actually is. There several presented in the reading, but they all had in common that the purpose was to interpret reality based off of rules that are already set in place, and provide organization to the concepts in each area of study (Repko, Allen F, p.115). They also stated that disciplines rely heavily on specific sets of “theory, research methods, body of theories and techniques” (Repko, Allen F, p.116). However, dicsiplinarity is not as essential to the process of solving problems as is interdiciplinarity. I believe that they do have to work together, but the outcome of information must be integrated in order to find solutions. I would have to say that I am definitely more of an advocate for pushing interdisciplinarity because I have seen value in it in my personal life. Every class I have taken and job I have worked has required me to be trained in more than one area of expertise. And with my background in studying from multiple perspectives I can easily relate to my co-workers who are all vastly different from myself, and take what I am learning in one class and see how it can integrate perfectly into another. This is the place where learning and life meet and I have begun to see the benefit to staying in a major that doesn’t focus so much on one specific viewpoint, but one that considers every discipline’s viewpoint equally.

Works Cited
Repko, Allen F. "Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies." Allen F. Repko : 9781452256603. SAGE Publications Inc, 13 June 2013. Web. 15 Jan. 2017. (Pages 1-49)