If the concept of interdisciplinarity involves combining of two or more academic disciplines into one activity and if it is about creating something new by crossing boundaries, and thinking across them. What is actually multidisciplinarity?
Terms like multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, etc., are in vogue and have reasons and respectability. However, generally terms, interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity are used interchangeably and that is not right.
Multidisciplinary research means that scholars/researchers from different disciplines are brought together to explain the perspective of their respective disciplines on a specific issue/problems and may start a project on the in their own discipline without collaborating with scholars and scientists from other disciplines. For example, issue of quality of life in a human habitat may be discussed from the perspectives of environmental science including environmental chemistry, psychology, geography, life science, bioscience, economics, sociology, and so on. Each of these disciplines may start a project on the quality of life in a human habitat within its disciplinary periphery.
On the contrary, in interdisciplinary research scholars and scientists brought together stay put to use expertise and give suggestions until a model, approach or instrument could not be realized. For example, engineers, computer scientists, mathematicians and physicists stay put to develop some electronic device. But, individually, they cannot perform this task.
I suppose the concept of an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary programme may be clear.
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