This document discusses challenges facing scientific disciplines and institutions in the 21st century. It notes that while traditional disciplines have advanced knowledge, they have also led to overspecialization and ignorance of relations between fields. The complexity of modern problems requires integrated, multi-disciplinary approaches. However, established institutions often resist new ideas and paradigms that do not fit traditional models. To promote innovation while maintaining established strengths, universities need flexible structures like centers and programs that support collaboration across disciplines without needing to establish new departments. This balances the needs of normal science with allowing new ideas to develop.

1. IAU Sao Paulo Conference, July 25-29, 2004
12th General Conference: The Wealth of Diversity
Parallel Workshops – Session III
Disciplinarity, Interdisciplinarity and Diversity in Science*
Daniel Joseph Hogan**, State University of Campinas
Abstract.
The disciplinary achievements of science have brought not only the advantages of the division of
labor, but also the inconveniences of overspecialization, of the confinement and destruction of
knowledge. They have produced not only knowledge and elucidation, but also ignorance and
blindness.
- Edgar Morin, La Tête Bien Faite – Repenser la réforme, réformer la pensée.
The Problem
What are the limits of today’s scientific disciplines? Whether we focus on the unraveling of the
certitude which traditional disciplines experience, or the enormous challenge of practical problems for
which the development of today’s disciplines has left us unprepared, we are led to doubt the capacity
of science as we know it to provide the path to the future. Is the answer inter-disciplinarity? Multi-
disciplinarity? Trans-disciplinarity? How will we conciliate the gains reaped by our traditional
disciplines with the risks associated with promoting their competitors?
The science of the twenty-first century will not be produced in the molds of earlier centuries. The
complexity of the contemporary world and the revolution which the World Wide Web has provoked in
scientific communication, breaking down barriers of time and space, change the limits of the velocity,
the scope and the social relations of scientific production. What are the consequences of these
changes for institutions of teaching and research?
Forty years ago Thomas Kuhn identified two distinct ways of doing science. Normal (or incremental)
science is the day-by-day extension of the limits of the dominant paradigm, the patient theoretical or
laboratory work which moves our capacity to understand and explain the world a step further.
Revolutionary science is the breakthrough to a more encompassing paradigm, which simultaneously
accounts for the problems dealt with by the previous paradigm, as well as its anomalies, contradictions
and discontinuities. The challenge for scientific institutions is to promote normal science – the greater
part of scientific work and the source of the progress which science brings – without closing the
windows of opportunity for revolutions in science. The great strength of normal science lies in its
explanatory and predictive capacity, a strength translated into solid institutional frameworks. The size
and complexity of this system reinforce and legitimate the structure of science. Though revolutionary
change springs from the accumulation of incremental advances, the struggle for attention and
resources often leaves little room for the growth of new ideas which may be the source of paradigm
shift.
We must guarantee the place for what is new, whether in new scientific fields which spring from the
interfaces of consolidated disciplines – to account for relations which, studied separately, permit only
partial approaches - or in the study of complex practical problems whose solution requires an
integrated vision of various disciplines.
* Text prepared for presentation at the 12th General Conference of the International Association of Universities,
São Paulo, Brazil, 25-29 July 2004.
** The author is Professor of Sociology and Demography at the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences and
Dean of Graduate Studies, State University of Campinas. hogan@reitoria.unicamp.Brasil.

2. This multi or inter-disciplinarity may or may not lead to a new discipline, with its relative autonomy.
Solutions for problems such as environmental degradation or sustainable agriculture cannot wait for
the institutionalization of a new science. Centuries of fragmentation of knowledge – the better to
reveal nature’s secrets – has left us unprepared for this challenge.
These considerations create a certain discomfort in the ranks of normal science.
The Challenge
How do we judge, how do we evaluate and how do we classify scientific work carried on outside the
established canons? How do we recognize the legitimate germs of new scientific paths, of
perspectives, which may effectively contribute to the advance of knowledge and are necessary for
human welfare? The specter of charlatanism, which sometimes finds a place in these interstices of
knowledge, discomforts, legitimately, those whose work is governed by clear and objective norms of
evaluation. It is necessary to learn how to live with this tension between safe practices and those more
risky ones, under the pain of blocking scientific progress, discarding new ideas before they have been
tested.
Another characteristic of contemporary science is its radical de-territorialization. Throughout history,
science has never respected boundaries. The complex apparatus of journals and scientific meetings
which guarantees scientific communication is a sine qua non of scientific progress. Results from
individual laboratories or research groups are systematically confronted with other results. But the
dawn of instantaneous electronic communication has changed this picture. Not only are the results
which constitute new knowledge without a territorial base, the very carrying out of research is
territorially distributed. Work which used to be divided among colleagues in a laboratory, today, may
be divided among distant partners.
The modus operandi of contemporary science, then, shows signs of change, of which genomic studies
are an outstanding example. The existence of the truly virtual laboratory has become possible,
composed of units no longer spatially contiguous. How will we organize for the flexibility necessary
for the scientific production of the future? How will we avoid having progress bound by structures
which were the bases of the successes of the twentieth century and continue to be essential for many
scientific fields, but do not lend themselves to more flexible institutional arrangements?
These questions call our attention to one of the most important characteristics of contemporary
science, which is its diversity – of objectives, of scope and of method. It is necessary, simultaneously,
to defend the continuity of what has already been proven successful and to provide the conditions for
the new to flower. The twenty-first century will see both the “lone wolf” – in his laboratory or office
– and networks on all scales, even between scales, which will dissolve the frontiers between spaces,
between disciplines and between institutions.
Funding agencies have for some time favored interdisciplinary and interinstitutional projects. The
impact of these projects, however, has been fully reflected neither in the structure of universities nor in
their curricula. The times require a reflection on the directions of science, its conditions of production
and the implications of these for teaching and research institutions. The diversity found today in
scientific progress will not permit standard answers, but requires an open attitude which respects the
rhythms of the evolution of both normal and revolutionary science, uncompromisingly connected to
the norms of the scientific method and to the advance of human knowledge.
Choices to be Made
A large and complex university requires institutional mechanisms which permit such progress.
History has shown that interdisciplinary collaboration may be incorporated as a new sub-field in the
parent discipline; it may evolve to be a new science and become, in turn, a department like all the rest;
it may not even work, for various reasons, scientific and otherwise. A collaboration may go on for a

3. long time, producing benefits for society indefinitely, without becoming a distinct field of knowledge.
A modern university requires flexible formats for experimenting such new questions. Considering the
risk of aborting scientific development through a vision which privileges the ordered and planned
progress of science, we propose a sociological and historical vision of scientific development.
These formats include centers, working groups, institutes and programs, of different dimensions,
lifespan and purposes. They have, indeed, been created over the last decades in many universities, but
still vie for the legitimacy accorded university departments. Significant problems remain for the
realization of their full potential.
On the one hand, there remains a climate of discomfort in the university, even opposition and
suspicion, in relation to interdisciplinary centers of teaching, research and extension. In part, this is
inherent to activities which escape the traditional system, and centers and programs will have to live
with this situation. It is frequently asked what such centers do that departments cannot do. The
question itself translates a conviction that only the department has the legitimacy to do things. The
department should do the things which deserve to be done. It is the vision of normal science. If,
however, the university does not create conditions to treat issues which are not priorities for the
distinct disciplines, it will stop in time.
It is also necessary to consider the demands which contemporary society makes on the university. The
competencies, the potential and the resources concentrated in today’s universities cannot be reserved
only to do science. Society has differentiated and immediate needs to the solution of which these
human and material resources can contribute. Society does not always have other institutions in which
the same concentration of competencies may be found, and, so, demands that this university, created
and sustained by it, collaborate. This is particularly true of developing countries. It is urgent, then, to
establish ways to institutionalize the possible interfaces between university and society.
University departments are decidedly not the answer. Departments are the face of normal science.
They carry the responsibility to produce the professionals of the new generations according to the
canons which prevail at any given moment. They organize research according to these canons. They,
or something like them, will always be the major force in the university. If they are well conducted,
they will also be flexible, innovative, always dilating the frontiers of science. Their objective is not
immediate, but rather mid or long term. By definition, they are not institutional instances adapted to
the daily interaction with society. If departments are to fulfill their primordial mission, their
possibilities for exchange with society will always meet limits.
Centers, programs and the like, then, are one of the responses found to house new fields, sometimes
like hothouses, sometimes temporary, sometimes dissonant, sometimes complementary – but which do
not find in the departments the necessary priorities for their development. At the same time, they are a
mechanism to maximize the porosity of the university so that society may more likely find the answers
it needs.
In summary, the history of science does not support a concept of scientific progress which assumes
that all new ideas arise from the mainstream of consolidated sciences. On the contrary, the opposite
has often been true. Today’s universities are condemned to live a tension between the legitimate
demands of consolidated disciplines and the (more risky) demands of fields whose contribution has
not yet been proven. Without risk, science and universities will come to a standstill.