Interdisciplinary research has been a popular idea with many people in the last 20 years. Academic administrators have admonished their faculty to become more interdisciplinary. Students often request the chance to pursue an interdisciplinary degree. While the issue of managing interdisciplinary projects has received a fair amount of attention by those interested in science management, interdisciplinary research has received little attention from historians, philosophers or sociologists of science or from scientists themselves. Yet, there l;lre a number of cases within the (...) life sciences where researchers have been actively engaged in endeavors that take them across disciplinary boundaries. These are ripe for investigation by those interested in the process of science. To provide an in-depth study of some historical or contemporary cases of cross disciplinary research activity in the life sciences, a conference was held at Georgia State University in May, 1984. This conference was supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (U. S. A. ) through their research conference program. Over a three-day period historians, philosophers, and researchers who were actively engaged in various of the life sciences discussed specific examples of interdisciplinary research and tried to analyze what was needed for successful crossing of disciplinary boundaries. After the conference, each of the participants revised their original presentations, partly in light of the discussion at the conference. The papers in this volume are the fruits of that endeavor. (shrink)

Acknowledgments THROUGHOUT this book I cite the many people who have provided information on individual programs and activities. ...

This paper analyzes the generation and function of hitherto ignored or misrepresented interfield theories , theories which bridge two fields of science. Interfield theories are likely to be generated when two fields share an interest in explaining different aspects of the same phenomenon and when background knowledge already exists relating the two fields. The interfield theory functions to provide a solution to a characteristic type of theoretical problem: how are the relations between fields to be explained? In solving this problem (...) the interfield theory may provide answers to questions which arise in one field but cannot be answered within it alone, may focus attention on domain items not previously considered important, and may predict new domain items for one or both fields. Implications of this analysis for the problems of reduction and the unity and progress of science are mentioned. (shrink)

Terminology within the biological sciences gets its import not just from semantic meaning, but also from the way it functions within the rhetorics of the various disciplinary practices. The ‘sociobiology’ of human behavior inherits three distinct rhetorics from the genetic disciplines. Sociobiologists use population genetic, biometrical genetic, and molecular genetic rhetorics, without acknowledging the conceptual and experimental constraints that are assumed by geneticists. The eclectic blending of these three rhetorics obscures important differences of context and meaning. Sociobiologists use foundational terms (...) in genetics, such as ‘gene’, ‘fitness’, ‘evolution’, ‘heritability’, ‘trait’ and ‘polygenic inheritance’, in starkly different ways from geneticists, while basing their analysis of human behavior on the implied authority of genetics. As a free‐floating ‘gene talk’ moves across different disciplinary contexts, and before different audiences, it takes the form of an over‐simplified and misleading arch‐determinism. The result is widespread application of vague, incomplete, and distorted biological theory. If most sociobiologists, do not deliberately promote biological determinism, still less a political agenda, there is ample evidence that they misconstrue the implications of the genetic language that they borrow. (shrink)

v. 1. The collective use and evolution of concepts.