MacLeod Miles, Nagatsu Michiru
University of Twente, The Netherlands.
University of Helsinki, Finland.
Stud Hist Philos Sci. 2018 Feb;67:74-84. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2018.01.001. Epub 2018 Feb 3.
In this paper we take a close look at current interdisciplinary modeling practices in the environmental sciences, and suggest that closer attention needs to be paid to the nature of scientific practices when investigating and planning interdisciplinarity. While interdisciplinarity is often portrayed as a medium of novel and transformative methodological work, current modeling strategies in the environmental sciences are conservative, avoiding methodological conflict, while confining interdisciplinary interactions to a relatively small set of pre-existing modeling frameworks and strategies (a process we call crystallization). We argue that such practices can be rationalized as responses in part to cognitive constraints which restrict interdisciplinary work. We identify four salient integrative modeling strategies in environmental sciences, and argue that this crystallization, while contradicting somewhat the novel goals many have for interdisciplinarity, makes sense when considered in the light of common disciplinary practices and cognitive constraints. These results provide cause to rethink in more concrete methodological terms what interdisciplinarity amounts to, and what kinds of interdisciplinarity are obtainable in the environmental sciences and elsewhere.
在本文中，我们深入审视了环境科学中当前的跨学科建模实践，并指出在研究和规划跨学科性时，需要更加关注科学实践的本质。虽然跨学科性常常被描绘为新颖且具有变革性的方法论工作的媒介，但环境科学当前的建模策略较为保守，避免方法论冲突，同时将跨学科互动限制在相对较少的一组预先存在的建模框架和策略内（我们将这一过程称为固化）。我们认为，这种实践在一定程度上可以被合理化为对限制跨学科工作的认知约束的回应。我们识别出环境科学中四种显著的综合建模策略，并认为这种固化虽然在一定程度上与许多人对跨学科性的新目标相矛盾，但从常见的学科实践和认知约束的角度来看是有意义的。这些结果促使我们从更具体的方法论角度重新思考跨学科性意味着什么，以及在环境科学和其他领域可实现何种类型的跨学科性。
