Presented at East Asian Biosciences: Transnational Competition and Collaboration, Science and Technology in the Pacific Country Initiative Conference, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies & Indiana University East Asian Studies Center, Champaign, IL. October 7th and 8th, 2010.

1. Practicing interdisciplinary: building
biophysics in the US and China
Christine Y. L. Luk
Arizona State University
East Asian Biomedical Research Conference
Wednesday, September 18, 2013

2. Overview
Unpacking keywords I: interdisciplinarity
Unpacking keywords II: biophysics
The research framework: biophysics as a case for
analyzing and comparing interdisciplinarity
Biophysics in China: Institute of Biophysics in the
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Biophysics in the US: the Biodesign Institute, ASU
Institutional imperatives, disciplinary dissonance, and
epistemic culture
Wednesday, September 18, 2013

3. Huh?
What do you mean? Interdisciplinarity?
Wednesday, September 18, 2013

4. ‘The challenge to disciplinarity in the 90s is a reflexive
call from the academics living in their protected
disciplinary domains, hoping to get closer and related
to the real world in which we live in. One way to effect
change is through critical reflection of the social system
from which these scholars were
born....Interdisciplinarity is an administrative
form of anxiety and a personal form of
hope.’ (Menand 2010: 63)
Interdisciplinarity is synonymous to innovation,
progressiveness and is adopted as a catchphrase for any
fundable proposal. (Weingart 2000)
Interdisciplinarity is nothing more than
an administrative buzzword
Wednesday, September 18, 2013

5. Does interdisciplinarity really mean
nothing?
Wednesday, September 18, 2013

6. It does. But to precisely define and critically evaluate
interdisciplinarity is complicated and contested due to
the whole gamut of issues and interests surrounding
interdisciplinarity.
Julie Thompson Klein (1984, 1990, 1997, 2000, 2001,
2007, 2009...):
‘the notion of interdisciplinarity does not refer to an
objective, unambiguous property of research...It is
almost impossible to formulate a single definition of
scholarly activities that, for example, expand the
scope of questions and information sources to other
fields, develop theoretical models that span
conceptual spaces of several fields, or transform
existing beliefs by showing evidence from other
fields.’ (2009:4)
Wednesday, September 18, 2013

7. ‘Interdisciplinarity remains the generic all-
encompassing concept and includes all activities which
juxtapose, apply, combine, synthesize, integrate or
transcend parts of two or more disciplines.’
‘Interdisciplinarity is best understood not as one thing
but as a variety of different ways of bridging and
confronting the prevailing disciplinary approaches.’
Wednesday, September 18, 2013

8. How to empirically measure/evaluate
interdisciplinary research?
Wednesday, September 18, 2013

9. •measure the cognitive content of research
-the novelty of the combination of the research fields
-the intended relationship between the disciplinary
components
-the challenge the research poses to existing cultural and
cognitive boundaries
-the range and depth of intellectual skills and resources
that are called for
•what proportion of the research is ‘interdisciplinary’
-the scope of interaction (what is integrated)
-the type of interaction (how it is done)
-the type of goals (why it takes place)
Criteria for assessing interdisciplinary
research
Wednesday, September 18, 2013

10. Comparing the institutional imperative of
interdisciplinary infrastructure by looking
at the lab history of biophysics
Wednesday, September 18, 2013

11. Why biophysics? Why not
biochemistry?
Wednesday, September 18, 2013

12. “The interdisciplinary character of a research effort
cannot be derived from the pure labels of the
participating fields, but must instead be assessed on the
basis of how the fields are represented, how they
are related to the research problem and to each
other, and to what extent the researchers
themselves experience that the encounter of
fields contains a special epistemic
challenge.” (Klein et al. 2009: 15, my emphasis)
Wednesday, September 18, 2013

13. the epistemic challenge posed by the
highly differentiated epistemic cultures in
biology and physics
Wednesday, September 18, 2013

14. On physics and biology
“It is true that physics and chemistry have a
firm hold over biology by virtue of two
great generalizations: living matter is made
up of the same elements as those of the
inanimate world, and conservation of
energy is valid for processes occurring in
living matter, just as it is for all processes in
the inanimate world.” (Delbrück 1966: 261)
Wednesday, September 18, 2013

15. Molecular Biology (MB)
vs.
High-energy Physics (HEP)
Wednesday, September 18, 2013

16. MB HEP
Leadership style &
power structure
Individually
embodied by the
lab director
Collectivized in
large-scale
experiment under
which individuals
are subsumed
Epistemic
apparatus
Immutable mobiles
and standardized
lab manuals
The
“superordering” of
components &
instruments
Epistemic goal Positive knowledge
Negative/liminal
knowledge
Epistemic site
Laboratory as an
internal processing
unit for experiment
Separation of
experiment and
laboratory
Wednesday, September 18, 2013

17. The research questions
1. What are disciplinary-distinct ways of knowing and
legitimation in biophysics? How are specific differences
between physics and biology instituted and re-configured
in biophysics?
2. Is biophysics constructed in the same way universally?
How are the epistemic conflict between physics and
biology reconciled and re-instituted in different countries?
Wednesday, September 18, 2013

18. Lab studies as emplaced in
the national capital?
The argument: The way place imposes a
territorialized normative order to the
laboratory ecology is rendered explicit in
the period-specific politics of urban
planning in Beijing.
The next step: mapping lab-specific politics
as embedded in the period-specific politics
of urban planning of Beijing
Wednesday, September 18, 2013

19. The epistemic subjecthood of biophysics: at
the intersection between physics and
biology or a migration from physics to
biology or vice versa?
Wednesday, September 18, 2013

20. Bio Biophysics Phy
Membership
“some traditionally trained physicists have transformed themselves
into biophysicists and found rewarding new challenges. Wingreen
and Laderman of Agilent Technologies have made that career trek,
and their experiences illustrate the fascination of biophysics and its
importance to shaping the theoretical basis of modern
biology.” (American Institute of Physics 2003)
“some traditionally trained physicists have transformed themselves
into biophysicists and found rewarding new challenges. Wingreen
and Laderman of Agilent Technologies have made that career trek,
and their experiences illustrate the fascination of biophysics and its
importance to shaping the theoretical basis of modern
biology.” (American Institute of Physics 2003)
“some traditionally trained physicists have transformed themselves
into biophysicists and found rewarding new challenges. Wingreen
and Laderman of Agilent Technologies have made that career trek,
and their experiences illustrate the fascination of biophysics and its
importance to shaping the theoretical basis of modern
biology.” (American Institute of Physics 2003)
Epistemic
tension
“Biology now faces two possibilities, either physicalization of biology
or biologicalization of physics. Physicalization of biology limits the
role of observer only to an external agent as physics does. The
viewpoint has been shown to be extremely successful and would
suppose to continue to be so in the name of mechanistic scheme.
However, this practical usefulness has been accomplished at the
expense of employing a form of ceteris paribus that allows for an
intrusion of interaction that remains reaction-free.” (Matsuno 1993)
“Biology now faces two possibilities, either physicalization of biology
or biologicalization of physics. Physicalization of biology limits the
role of observer only to an external agent as physics does. The
viewpoint has been shown to be extremely successful and would
suppose to continue to be so in the name of mechanistic scheme.
However, this practical usefulness has been accomplished at the
expense of employing a form of ceteris paribus that allows for an
intrusion of interaction that remains reaction-free.” (Matsuno 1993)
“Biology now faces two possibilities, either physicalization of biology
or biologicalization of physics. Physicalization of biology limits the
role of observer only to an external agent as physics does. The
viewpoint has been shown to be extremely successful and would
suppose to continue to be so in the name of mechanistic scheme.
However, this practical usefulness has been accomplished at the
expense of employing a form of ceteris paribus that allows for an
intrusion of interaction that remains reaction-free.” (Matsuno 1993)
Epistemic
construct
Biophysics as a disciplinary construct for physicists doing biology ?Biophysics as a disciplinary construct for physicists doing biology ?Biophysics as a disciplinary construct for physicists doing biology ?
Wednesday, September 18, 2013

21. Thank you for your
attention!
Wednesday, September 18, 2013