Interdisciplinarity in Sustainability Science: Challenge or Opportunity?

What Is ‘Interdisciplinarity?’

Interdisciplinarity has, over the years, attracted scientists from the social and natural sciences to other areas of research practice. In early times, great minds during the scientific revolutions in 17^th Century Europe like Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle made discoveries that dealt with every kind of interdisciplinary challenge (Merton, 1938). The principle of interdisciplinarity means an integration of theories, concepts, techniques and data from diverse bodies of knowledge (Porter et al., 2006; Rafols & Meyer, 2010). Since the 1970s, there has been an exponential growth of publications, a variety of networks and wide discussions of the concept (Klein, 1990). As Klein noted, the interdisciplinarians have yet to establish a common identity because they were still in a state of social and intellectual marginality. Interdisciplinarity is seen to challenge the academic status quo as it ‘represents an innovation in knowledge production- making knowledge more relevant, balancing incommensurable claims and perspectives, and raising questions concerning the nature and viability of expertise (Frodeman, 2010, xxix). By the 1990s, a majority of people from various fields and disciplines were immersed with interdisciplinary research. By “interdisciplinary research” means “... a mode of research by teams or individuals that integrates information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts, and/or theories from two or more disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge… to solve problems whose solutions are beyond the scope of a single discipline” (NAS, 2004 p. 2).