Are there pressures within our educational systems that work against the development of academics and thinkers who delve broadly across disciplines in their research and writings? Does specialisation ensure that we all all reading and thinking narrowly within our disciplinary areas or does the open access of information across the internet mean that we are all becoming more interdisciplinary? I would be interested to hear your thoughts.
This question brought to mind an interview with Paul Gilroy which I read whilst reading the editorial pack for 'Network' magazine a few years ago. I remembered the words quite clearly so I googled them and it turns out Max Farrar published the unedited version on his blog (darkmatter101.org). Here's the quote:
PG: So if you can imagine that people had to write something in three or four years you know otherwise they would be struck off you know, it produces a generation of ignorant academics who only know their own project, who may be deep in their relationships of their own project but who are only about an inch wide – they don’t know anything else at all, and that’s the condition of getting the work done in that way, so I think you know it’s all very well you know training people you know with a capital T, but if you’re producing people who are not only ignorant of the wider world, ignorant of how you know how disciplines are developed and how historical and social conditions arise and operate outside of their own particular slice of those things then you’re compounding the problem.
Sorry, just checked back, it isn't Max's blog but an online journal.
while my experience of the academic training might be different from others, I still hold the view that lack of multi-disciplinary outlook within the academia has more to do with our general educational training. The emergence of particulate jargon within the sub-fields give them an air of systemic bodies of knowledge which, I believe, they are not. We are usually taken away by this air of the sub-fields within which we work. For example, I was quiet lucky to have a supervisor during my M.Phil who gave me complete independence to conduct the field work and build my thesis. He would have never objected to my consulting other disciplinary traditions in order to improve on my argument. But I never thought of going beyond my sub-field. Not that I was not expected to do so but perhaps because I was confident of the validity and scope of explanatory power of the sub-field in which I was working.
I would agree with the quote from Sara Louise, and more so. People are now so narrow they do not even understand the scope of their own subspeciality and as a result not only re-invent wheels, but mostly square ones! But I also think you have answered your own question Paul with the two options - and it is both. I am interested in the overlap of visual art perception and neuroscience. I have degrees in Fine Art, Medical Science and Immnopathology but only because I was one of the last generation in the UK to be allowed to wander through subjects as an undergraduate - forty years ago. The interesting problem for the current century is the direct relation between physical dynamics and phenomenal experience. At the moment the division of disciplines is almost totally crippling the project. On the other hand there are internet based groups who are learning from each other in 'Renaissance-style' debate. The academic machine is a moribund white elephant but a new phoenix of free creative thought may just rise from the ashes. But maybe it was ever thus - the demographics of learning have changed but maybe not the critical dynamics.
You make interesting points, with which I agree Jonathan. By the way, do we know each other? You seem very familiar.
I do not think we have met, Paul. I have spent most of my career in immunology.
open access of information across the internet does not lead to interdisciplniarity , unfortunately the idea of '' focus '' on certain special disciplines in our educational settings has created a host of misconceptions malpractices and myopic shallow mentalities , it has provided our academicians with the loophole of ignorance about other disciplines even fundumendal disciplines like psychology and philosophy. Hence lack of knowledge about even relevant fields of study is , bitterly ironically, a sign of academic development and such ''scholars'' can promote their career with impunity and accolade .
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