What would a transdisciplinary university look like

1 Collaborating for Good 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 2 Collaborating for Good 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 Collaborating for Good 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 Collaborating for Good 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 Collaborating for Good 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 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 Collaborating for Good 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 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) Collaborating for Good 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 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-forgranted 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 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 Collaborating for Good 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 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 Collaborating for Good 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 selforganize (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 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 Collaborating for Good 10 differentiated elements, states or processes become constructively inter-coordinated to produce novel, higher-order structures Each new level of structure has novel properties that 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 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 11 Collaborating for Good Figure 2: Emergent Conciliant Systems Collaborating for Good 12 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 selfconsciousness (Gillespie, 2018) Each form of consciousness emerges at different levels of 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 Collaborating for Good 13 vertebrates are capable of some form of functional experience – the experience of sensorymotor functioning in the world Experience serves the adaptive function of allowing the organism to coordinate and represent aspects of its own functioning in relation to its environment The capacity for experience builds upon and transforms the already existing capacity for self-regulation (Bich et al., 2016) Hence, experience functions not as a control mechanism per se, but instead as a vehicle for the multi-sensorial representation of events that have adaptive significance for organisms (Mascolo & Kallio, 2019) At Level VII, organisms become capable of intentional consciousness – awareness that is directed toward objects, whether real or imagined Intentional awareness about something (Crane, 1998) With its emergence, organisms are not merely aware of the sensory-motor background of movement, they are aware of some object in the world With intentional consciousness, organisms can respond to the meaning and significance of their circumstances Higher-order animals (e.g., humans) transform internal representations (e.g., images) of their worlds to resolve adaptive challenges (Tomasello, 2006) Culture The emergence of culture (Level VII) marks yet another transformation organismic existence Culture builds upon the capacity for intersubjectivity the capacity to share, coordinate and mutually incorporate experience and meanings between people (Cipoletta, Procter & Mascolo, 2021) It is founded upon the capacity to construct shared social meanings within linguistic groups In this regard, language is central to the emergence of culture (Wertsch, 2007) The capacity of language is instrumental in the construction of selfconsciousness Given a requisite level of brain development, organisms gain the capacity to construct symbolic representations of the world (Mascolo & Fischer, 2015) With the capacity for symbolism, organisms gain the capacity to form representations of self This involves acts of self-reflection – that is, the capacity for consciousness to loop back and take itself as its own object of awareness Higher-order selves emerge as humans use language to represent themselves, construct social identities, and regulate action in relation to others Language is thus the quintessential tool for the development of self and culture BRIDGING THE SCIENCE - HUMANITIES DIVIDE Scientific knowledge in the absence of wisdom has no soul; theoretical speculation unconstrained by evidence is ungrounded While science studies “what is”, it cannot tell us “what ought to be” A transdisciplinary university must bring together conceptions of “what is” with “what should be” This goal is tantamount to the pursuit of wisdom (Hunter & Nedelsky, 2018; Maxwell, 2021) Nozick (1989) defined wisdom as “what we need to understand in order to live well and cope with the central problems and avoid the dangers in the predicament(s) human beings find themselves in” (p 269) Cultivating wisdom requires some integrated sense of what is true (however defined), good, beautiful, and practical The pursuit of wisdom requires some form of integration of principles selected from scientific, moral, aesthetic, philosophical and practical thought Collaborating for Good 14 Figure provides a representation of the transdisciplinary spiral of inquiry The spiral provides an idealized model of transdisciplinary activity as it moves through knowledge to wisdom The spiral is organized as a series of embedded circles of activity Vertically, each level corresponds to the disciplinary analysis of increasingly emergent phenomena (identified in Figure 3) The spiral moves from the base discipline of physics to higher-order disciplines that focus on human relational human experience The lower left panel of Figure identifies the importance of tools of inquiry – e.g., mathematics, written and oral communication, scientific skills, etc – which optimally are distributed throughout a holistic curriculum Horizontally, movement within levels identifies a series of interlocking questions traditionally the domain of different disciplinary areas – that interrogate to different aspects of specific phenomenon Indicated in the lower right portion of Figure 4, these are questions related to (a) the true (i.e., traditionally addressed by science), (b) pre-empirical conceptual foundations (e.g., philosophy), (c) beauty (e.g., arts, aesthetics), (d) conceptions of goodness (e.g., moral understanding) and (e) practical life (i.e., applications) For example, understanding the nature of life (the true) is the domain of biology, utb is not merely a matter of understanding a scientific body of knowledge Biology necessarily operates within philosophical presuppositions that form its conceptual foundations Biology raises deep moral questions that extend beyond the domain of physical knowledge (e.g., when does an embryo gain personhood?) Further, while biology may be distinct from aesthetic concerns, biological structures not only lend themselves to aesthetic appreciation (beauty), but aesthetic concerns (e.g., symmetry, simplicity) participate in how biological phenomena are represented in scholarly activity (Daston & Galison, 20078) Moreover, biological science has clear implications for practical application (e.g., medicine, nursing, health care, etc.) One can enter the spiral at any level or point Ontologically, some might claim that the most foundational discipline is physics Epistemologically, however, we enter the process of knowing at the level of human relational experience (Cipolletti, Mascolo & Procter, 2021) Our first understandings arise through our participation in everyday life They consist of intersubjectively shared meanings and understandings represented in culture (e.g., the lifeworld) Einstein once said that “the entirety of science is a refinement of everyday thinking.” If this is so, then all inquiry beings with everyday cultural understandings and evolves through the successive differentiation and revision of those understandings (Husserl, 1970; Mascolo, 2017b) Consequently, education must begin with the everyday cultural understandings of 15 Collaborating for Good Figure 3: The Transdisciplinary Spiral the student Learning occurs when those everyday understandings become disconfirmed, transformed and refined in encounters with the agents and agencies of education Towards a Transdisciplinary University Traditionally, the academy has been charged with three broad missions: research, teaching, and service to the world What would these missions look like if the academy took transdisciplinarity seriously? Teaching and Learning When we think of a genuinely transdisciplinary academy, we should not think merely about inter- or transdisciplinary majors or even imparting a unified body of knowledge Instead, we should think about our capacity to cultivate the spirit of transdisciplinarity in students In this 16 Collaborating for Good way, a transdisciplinary university would seek to actualized the Humboldtian ideal – the desire to foster holistic self-cultivation (bildung) in students, scholars and society (Sorkin, 1983, Taylor, 2017) This objective requires curricula that are at once structured and flexible Ideally, a transdisciplinary curriculum would be one in which students and teachers work collaboratively on projects that draw on multiple disciplines Such a vision would require a desired but radical transformation in the structure of university life Figure shows how transdisciplinary curricula can be developed by modifying the existing structure of the academy; It shows the guided development of the transdisciplinary spirt moves from the bottom to the top The circles in the middle portion represent units of instruction (e.g., classes, experiences, projects) that focus on core problems and methods in different disciplines Guided by faculty mentors, the student moves through a loose sequence of four levels: Figure 4: A Transdisciplinary Curriculum • Transdisciplinary foundations What does the student need to know and to relate to of the world? Navigating the world requires the development of transdisciplinary lens for understanding the nature of the bio-physical, individual-societal, cultural-religious, political-economic, aesthetic and moral systems make up the world? What the systems that make up my world? What is my relation to those systems? As shown in Figure 4, such questions should extend through the entirety of the student’s undergraduate career • Guided explorations The second phase of a transdisciplinary education consists of guided explorations of ideas that call out to the student Such an endeavor is best Collaborating for Good 17 pursued under the guidance of mentors whose role would be to help students identify interests through the students her relations to multiple disciplines • Identifying pathways to understanding core problems The third phase involves consolidating the results of the student’s explorations to identify problems, questions, issues or areas of study or further inquiry This process can result in a decision to adopt a traditional major, to identify an interdisciplinary course of study, or to identify some unique problem or area of study of interest Under the guidance of the mentor, the student identifies learning experiences from multiple areas that provide the knowledge and skills necessary to understand the problem or situation in question • Transdisciplinary analysis of a problem Either individually or in collaboration with other students, guided by faculty mentors, the final step involves coordinating knowledge and skills from diverse disciplines to analyze, address or resolve a broad-based problem of interest The project should bring together scientific, humanistic and axiological concerns in a global analysis of the problem in question Transdisciplinary forms inquiry with students operate in innovative ways Some immerse participants in vivo in contexts that require collaboration among diverse stakeholders They involve learning that coordinates educators with businesses (Wait & Governder, 2016); the formation of communities related to particular problems (e.g., forming ecovillages to research sustainability (Roysen & Cruz, 2020) Other approaches engage learners in problem-solving involving messy and wicked problems (Hoffman et al., 2020; Rivera & Groleau, 2021) In such collaborations, students coordinate knowledge between disciplines and also acquire noncognitive skills that are essential to solve difficult problems – cooperation, empathy, appreciation of diversity, conflict management, and emotional regulation (Campion, 2018; Kudo, 2021) The Scholarly Mission There are at least three ways that the academy can move toward increasing transdisciplinarity in fulfilling its research mission Cultivating wisdom through transdisciplinary synthesis What type of knowledge should the academy seek? Disciplines are only one of the foundations of academic knowledge While we need disciplinary knowledge, we also need synthesis The quest to synthesize higher-order knowledge is part of the process of pursuing wisdom Among the most important questions humans can ask are variants of “what is the good?” We pursue knowledge because we believe that such a pursuit is good and will produce good The pursuit of such knowledge calls for continuous reflexivity A transdisciplinary university would be one in which all scholars are encouraged and rewarded to reflect upon and pursue the good “How can we identify the good toward which we aim or scholarly actions?” “How does our work contribute to the good?” The academy should seek to value and reward transdisciplinary synthesis as much as disciplinary Collaborating for Good 18 analysis and specialization It is desirable that some scholars explicitly direct their efforts toward the task of intellectual synthesis the integration of knowledge for the greater good Transdisciplinary research A transdisciplinary university supports collaborations among disciplines relevant to solving particular intellectual, social or practical problems (Lawlor, Kreuter, Sebert-Kuhlmann & McBride, 2015; Lawrence, 2021; Silka et al., 2013) A genuine collaboration among researchers would not involve merely dividing research into discrete tasks according to disciplinary expertise Instead, it involves the mutual coordination of expertise directed toward synthesizing theories, models, and explanations that would be impossible in the absence of collaboration As but one example, research conducted by the Johns Hopkins Center to Eliminate Cardiovascular Health is typical of research generally regarded as transdisciplinary Cooper et al.’s (2013) research seeks to reduce hypertension among AfricanAmericans Knowledge from multiple disciplines (e.g., medicine, psychology, nutrition, economics, public health), was combined in a systems approach to understanding and ameliorating hypertension This model is shown in Figure What distinguishes this project as transdisciplinary is the degree of intercoordination of knowledge, expertise and practice that provided the undergirding of the project Figure 5: Transdisciplinary Research on Hypertension Among Urban African-Americans This model reflects an understanding of hypertension as a systemic problem that arises from the mutual interplay among biological, psychological and societal processes over time In place of piecemeal analyses, transdisciplinary research requires the intercoordination of expertise of scholars and practitioners from multiple disciplines to address wicked problems as they occur in their local environs Intervention requires the systemic integration of community resources, services provided by diverse practitioners, and people in the patient’s local communities and families Collaborating for Good 19 Transdisciplinary fields of study A third way of organizing transdisciplinary inquiry involves the generation of transdisciplinary areas of study – fields that arise from the integration of multiple disciplines There are many of areas of study organized around the contributions of diverse disciplines These include artificial intelligence, climate science and sustainability (Galvão et al, 2021), mind, brain and education (Heikkinen, 2010), neuroscience, and many others They also include professional programs such as law, medicine (Timmons, Edgley, Meal & Narayanasamy, 2016) and public health (Lawler, Kreuter, Sebert-Kuhlmann & McBride, 2015) What makes for a genuinely transdisciplinary field of study? Because they coordinate but not necessarily mutual integrate knowledge and methodologies from diverse disciplines, most hybrid areas of study might best be considered as interdisciplinary rather than transdisciplinary Perhaps the best example of a genuinely transdisciplinary field of study is biochemistry Although it is born of two disciplines, biochemistry is a more-or-less single field of study grounded by a common language and methodology Transdisciplinary Outreach The third mission of the academy is outreach There are two broad ways in which transdisciplinary outreach would differ from academy that of traditional universities The first is the transdisciplinary coordination of expertise to addresses specific societal needs The research conducted by Cooper et al (2013) is illustrative of this type of transdisciplinary work Second, in the transdisciplinary search for wisdom, it becomes necessary to engage the public itself as an active partner Wisdom is not an exclusive province of academics While the transdisciplinary academy may seek knowledge for good, it cannot define the good on its own Producing knowledge for good can only occur as part of the larger public conversation about the types of societies we want to live in and the types of values we want to live by THROUGH KNOWLEDGE TO WISDOM We return to the words of Jantsch (1972, p.100), which reverberate in ways that can be easily recognized today “We are confused by the degrading side-effects of technology on the systems of human life, in the cities as well as within the natural environment And we are riddled with doubts about the effectiveness of decision-making processes dominated by short-range and linear thinking and about the piecemeal and passive way in which scientists and engineers respond to them Through its three functions - education, research, and service the university is deeply affected by all of these pressures for change To live with them, to absorb them and even make use of them requires a new purpose and a new structure for the university.” Given that wisdom is the capacity to use knowledge for good, it requires bringing together knowledge of “what is” with knowledge about “what should be” This requires the collaboration of scholars from diverse disciplines – and particularly scholars from across the Collaborating for Good 20 science-humanities divide Such conversations would necessarily bring about encounters with The Academic Other – scholars and ordinary citizens whose thinking is founded upon different assumptions, purposes, methods, values In so doing, they would force academics to engage in forms of reflexivity that would bring them beyond disciplinary silos and cultivate the transdisciplinary spirt It is an unfortunate tendency that humans enlist a set of means to serve a particular purpose, then they become better at guarding the means rather than the vision they serve Committed to the fossilized procedures of everyday life, we seek to solve our problems climate change, income inequality, pandemics, intergroup conflict, biodiversity loss, the rise of authoritarianism within structures that no longer serve our highest purposes We will not produce an academy able to address our collective crises merely by tinkering with the details The key to transformation is to reflect and rethink upon first principles and revise the academy accordingly An academy committed to cultivating wisdom is best suited to meet the demands of our complex world 21 Collaborating for Good References Barberousse, A (2010) The Role of Self-Organization in Developmental Systems Theory and the Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution Biological Theory: Integrating Development, Evolution, and Cognition, 5(3), 202–205 Bernstein, J H (2015) Transdisciplinarity: A review of its origins, development, and current issues Journal of Research Practice, 11(1), Article R1 Retrieved from http://jrp.icaap.org/index.php/jrp/article/view/510/412 Bich, L., Mossio, M., & Ruiz-Mirazo, K., et al (2016) Biological Regulation: Controlling the System from Within Biology and Philosophy, 31(2), 237–265 Bonevac, D (2019) Fragmenting the Curriculum Academic Questions, 32(3), 317–327 Bonini, M., Gustin, M C., & Nelson, D L (1986) Regulation of ciliary motility by membrane potential in Paramecium: A role for cyclic AMP Cytoskeleton, 6, 256-272 Boogerd, F C., Bruggeman, J., Richardson, R C., Stephan, A., & Westerhoff, H V ( 2005 ) Emergence and its place in nature: A case study of biochemical networks Synthese, 145, 131 - 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