The scientific reductionism of the past centuries have led the to overlook the global observation of reality and phenomena, addressing problems from a single and increasingly specialized point of view. Disciplines in science are...
moreThe scientific reductionism of the past centuries have led the to overlook the global observation of reality and phenomena, addressing problems from a single and increasingly specialized point of view.
Disciplines in science are artefacts: they are artificial. They are often necessary but they are an abstraction of reality and often introduce artificial limitations in the research. Coordination between disciplines and the overcome of their boundaries (which should be considered permeable, expandable and transferable) is now increasingly necessary. Only when we are able to overcome these limits, then the knowledge will expand beyond disciplinary boundaries.
Transdisciplinarity wants to present itself as a new epistemological approach, an intellectual space in which the links between the various domains of knowledge are explored in order to heal the split within the knowledge.
Basarab Nicolescu has introduced, through his extensive studies on the subject, the three main axioms of transdisciplinarity: the different levels of reality in nature, the logic of the included middle and the complexity of thought. The detailed analysis of the differences between disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, multidisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, shows that these modes represent four arrows of the same bow: that of knowledge within a single 'Science of Man' which aims at overcoming the division between subject and object, between the outer man and the inner man.
It is then introduced a '"Heuristic of Transdisciplinarity," as proposed by Alfonso Montuori through his five fundamental dimensions which together define transdisciplinarity as a completely different way of thinking about knowledge, highlighting that its focus is in how knowledge itself is created.
As a result of the need for an integrated development of techno-science, a new branch of engineering called Mechatronics was born, which integrates several disciplines through a transdisciplinary approach to start a new process design and achievement of knowledge. The same analysis of current huge collections of data (Big Data) proves to be an area in which the aid of a transdisciplinary approach avoids the risk of a partial result of research. Houses hide the city and trees hide the forest!
Deepening the concepts of the new transdisciplinary approaches, it is emphasized the need to introduce the symbolic/imaginative/creative feature of the man, which takes him beyond himself. Every science cannot be that 'Science of Man'.
It is therefore necessary to take into account all the possible levels of reality pertaining to any problem remembering that the key element is the Man.
To encompass the Man in the transdisciplinary process, we must start from the key feature that makes him so: the symbolic/imaginative/creative function. This function, the identity card of Homo Sapiens, leads him beyond himself, allows him to invent new creative solutions based on new possibilities of understanding reality and to see 'new skies and new lands'.
