Epistemic Cross Talk:Why We Need—and Should Desire—Interdisciplinarity

This article considers the roles of interdisciplinarity as both scholarly activity and social process and their implications for both academia and society. In addressing the interdisciplinarity between the sciences and humanities, rather than emphasizing antagonism, the article asserts that as science grows and expands, so will the humanities, because they both ask and answer separate sets of questions that have distinct intellectual significance and fulfill distinct social needs, which are not necessarily transposed onto neat hierarchical categories, disciplinary or otherwise. These distinctions between the sciences and the humanities are maintained through disciplinary programs emphasizing the epistemic foundations of science and the rhetorical basis of the humanities. In other words, it comes down to episteme. The article also considers the disciplinary confines of science studies and the interdisciplinary program of bioethics and suggests similar epistemic cross talk between the two. It concludes by stating that pursuing interdisciplinarity meets both scholarly and social needs more than would be achieved through solely disciplinary specialization.