Hi Diane, Mike and Tatjana,
is not faux interdisciplinarity mainly a consequence to faux
discipline(s)? And by marking both singular and plural I mean it. In
the majority of disciplines discipline, it seems to my experience, is
the dominant regulator. Power and money and reputation are the
motives behind. Why should a member of a "catholic" "church" be
interested in other churches; a "cardinal" should even be afraid of
that kind of going foreign by his sheep and only say lip confessions
to such adventure when diplomacy demands it but never take it
serious. And diplomacy among the scientific disciplines is very
important because only as a bunch they are still able to convince
politicians and youth to be indispensable for a good life. And so
on, so on. But the fact is that they are all insulae, sort of life
belts desperately swimming separately in the sea, their members
sticking to each other on board, but unconnected with the other
insulae. Most of the disciplines have lost legitimate reasons of
existence insofar as they do damage to the human condition in
respects that is not their particular business. They repeat what had
happened in early modernity when religious wars were stopped and one
had to accept that there is no longer only one religion. The
difference, obviously, is that imagination of heavens can easily be
multiple; yet there is really one planet surface and one human
condition. Do as if anygroup or even anybody could act according to
their own delight will sooner of later be impossible.
So I find it better to leave disciplines behind and contribute to
developing fields. Unfortunately, some fields will miss essential
disciplines and have to propose and build themselves the necessary
foundations. This is true for education where the existing sciences
have split into their respective own pieces what belongs together,
the social and the individual, the biotic and the cultural etc. Also
semiotic ecology is understood as a field. For its starting point is
to propose a conceptuality for understanding evolutions of all kinds.
Only when you have a general conception of evolution you can deal
with the specifics of any particular evolutive domain, such as the
biotic, the individual, or the cultural. And only when you understand
the commonalities and the differences between such domains you can
evade this terrible simplification that is now almost common
agreement, namely that human social and cultural life follows the
rules reigning bioevolution.
Excuse me please, I have promised an elaboration of my ramblings on
transaction/transgression but it was never sent. By a silly operative
mistake of mine based on a non-optimal human-computer interface (send
again a message does not duplicate it in Eudora when it is not a
message already sent) I had lost the text and have preferred
investing my time in writing new stuff rather than reconstructing it.
Presently I think of a set of contributions re semiotic ecology.
Would this be a welcome idea now or better at another time?
Alfred
-- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Alfred Lang, Psychology, Univ. Bern, Switzerland --- alfred.lang@psy.unibe.ch Website: http://www.psy.unibe.ch/ukp/langpapers/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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