Searching for Meaningful Communication Across Disciplines
Updated 28 February 2019
AN ISSUE OF IMPORTANCE
The unprecedented differences in economic, racial, cultural, and religious outlooks now manifest in our experience with the contemporary world have unleashed economic, social, and political forces that are destabilizing what was a long period of post-World War II international balance. Widespread availability of digital connectivity enables contact between individuals and groups within and across societies on a scale not previously imaginable. But it is becoming increasingly clear that “contact” does not insure substantive communication or the emergence of understanding, in the sense that one grasps the other’s orientation, needs, and intentions. Political turbulence in the US and abroad shows the impact of such mutual incomprehension on an individual basis and increasingly on the level of societal sub-groups. Whether each of us as individuals can learn to listen to and speak with others who do not share our orientation has become a central question of our time. Whether some or all of these forces will come into a new balance is unclear, but it is unlikely to occur in the near term. In addition to the clear societal manifestation of such disjunction, there is also an infrequently discussed, parallel reality that exists on a smaller numerical scale, but that may, in fact, exercise an even more decisive influence on our collective futures.
This parallel is the accelerating inability of individuals with deep expertise in one disciplinary area to characterize the fundamental insights and deeply ingrained values inherent within their fields in such a way that receptive others—individuals who are similarly accomplished but in markedly different ways—can grasp central identities, methodologies and aims of disciplines not their own. Because this circumstance—the impenetrability of one field to the practitioners of another—exists on a numerically reduced scale in the more rarified spheres of academic, associational and institutional interactions addressing it might prove less intractable than its general, societal parallels.
The tools and strategies that could improve cross-disciplinary communications that are sought in the Bridging Chasms initiative are not conceived of in terms of “popularization”; they cannot be usefully served with watered-down portrayals that diminish the substantiality of content. What is rather sought here are two collections of points to be considered in any intensive cross-disciplinary communication effort: elements that can improve communication, elements that inhibit it.
The framers of the Bridging initiative are convinced that a process that results in the identification and useful characterization of such elements (tools and strategies) cannot proceed in a “public” context. The process envisioned must be limited to small groups of disciplinarily skilled individuals who seek to forge a local trust, understanding, and focus that is not disturbed by even a hint of “performance” or “grand-standing”. It is a process that requires quickly forged and scrupulously maintained trust. What this project terms “Events” will be relatively brief, intensive, and inward-looking.
In brief, an Event is a two and a half day convening of 6 to 8 individuals each embedded in their diverse disciplines. Events involve various ways in which interdisciplinary communication is attempted and simultaneously evaluated. The evaluation centers on the particular ways in which those seeking understanding characterize to an “other” the content and intellectual processes they value. Details regarding the proposed exploratory process follow below and in a separate Planning document that is available if needed.
The envisioned Bridging Chasms process will involve ongoing access to its activities through the internet and, as appropriate, the publication of results, as well as the convening of events to explore them. But we also recognize that achieving the kind of impact and long-term productivity our initiative seeks will also require that the larger public have access to and become aware of our central effort while it is underway. We therefore envision two associated dimensions to the concentrated and necessarily limited scope of Events themselves:
First, in the days immediately following each Event, participants in the just concluded discussions would also take part in a public exploration of the aims of the Event itself and also what issues emerged in it, what insight into the improvement of inter-disciplinary communications was achieved.
Second, we suggest that students at a host institution (or, alternatively, at a nearby partner institution) undertake a parallel process of exploration and public reflection thereon, on the weekend following the Event that involves more senior participants.
"These two components—a proximate public forum that would report on and allow discussion of Event results, and a parallel effort on the part of students currently engaged in seeking the sort of disciplinary expertise (and thus inevitable insulation from others) that is the Bridging project’s focus—will open our project to larger audiences and a diversity of potential constituents, without disturbing the central focus that we believe the effort to improve interdisciplinary communication through the use of specific strategies necessarily entails.
The Bridging Chasms initiative aims to incrementally tease out strategies that could foster deeper apprehension and comprehension between individuals whose lives center on radically different pursuits. There is an inevitable insularity that comes about when one is continuously and deeply engaged with a particular set of tasks, problems or methods. One increasingly relies on a narrower and more inwardly directed set of vocabularies, portrayals, and protocols. While this circumstance enables focus and discovery within a discipline, it simultaneously degrades the capacity to communicate with an “other” whose set of conceptual tools has its own evolved and distinctive integrity. The diminishment of common terms and ways under discussion here is certainly not lessening over time, and will continue to increase to the point that inter-personal comprehension of complex subject matter becomes virtually impossible. There is awareness of this issue within the science community, but the present initiative asserts that a similar disconnection exists between all disciplines, whatever their central concern, and, further, that the phenomenon of uncommunicative “disciplines” is not confined to technological or academic fields.
A PROPOSED RESPONSE
It is proposed that a series of Events aimed at exploring the circumstance described above be convened in appropriate locations (those that foster a more relaxed, less institutional atmosphere for the Event period). A minimum of five such encounters is proposed in order to be confident that potentially significant ways are discovered and explored. Each Event brings together a small group of significantly diverse persons whose individual expertise and achievements are distinctive and unquestioned, individuals capable of grasping (not by intelligence alone, but by their nature) the potential value of such an undertaking. And the presence of diversity mentioned above will be sought both in terms of Identity and also cognitive diversity.
Events will allow participants to engage with, directly experience, and speculate upon ways by which the widening inter-disciplinary chasms might be bridged. Carefully chosen individuals (in thoughtfully curated combinations) would be expected to commit to exploring intensively the characterization of their disciplinary worlds in direct, person-to-person interactions with others markedly unlike themselves. The Events would not be primarily speculative, and would center upon instances of actual cross-disciplinary encounters. These would be observed and discussed by the Event participants, and arouse proposals for useful approaches, tools, mechanisms that could aggregate, over time (in successive Events), into general paradigms that seek to facilitate the bridging of disciplinary divides.
The nature of the interactions undertaken would require careful consideration and preparation overseen by the Bridging Chasms Steering Committee. Each participant in an Event discussion could, for example, identify a crucial point of information embedded in his/her discipline and attempt to explain it to the other. The “elevation” of such points would be gauged so as to avoid either extreme complexity or comparative simplicity. These interactions would not be lectures to an audience, but prepared (though not scripted) and interactive conversations that balance a primary content with interjected clarifications requested by the “other”. They would be extended, searching, back-and-forth engagements.
The facilitating function of what we term a “theme” would be specified for each cross-disciplinary encounter. Examples of themes include “pattern” and “empathy”. They serve to establish a general commonality from which a more detailed discussion could then arise. The specific conditions and relevant considerations that the initial planning committee of Bridging Chasms arrived at are available in a separate document that reports comprehensibly what is proposed and how it would be accomplished.
How will different individuals approach the task of explaining their discipline: through defining basic terms, through metaphoric parallels, through graphic representations, through tangible physical objects or manifestations to be mutually examined? Such data would in themselves be instructive. Which presentational strategies, which staged sequences, which fashioned tools, which forms of response would prove most helpful? On a mundane level acronyms would be banished.
Insuring that there is a serial succession of Events is an essential component of the project proposed; the experience of varied cohorts, convened under different conditions, learning how to seek communication and what behaviors to avoid, building upon insights gained about both productive and also un-useful ways—all this would accrete over time, Event by Event and be subject to thoughtful appraisal by similarly diverse groups under the general guidance of the Steering Committee.
The Events proposed will involve individuals with a curated diversity of outlook, each a member of a definable discipline. And “discipline” does not only refer to academic entities, but rather to any societal sub-group that manifests the “inner-directed” characteristics enumerated here. The situation is comparable whether one is speaking of a university department, or a school of oriental ceramicists, or an alliance of mountain-climbers. Such groups consist of similarly directed individuals who have cultivated, over time, distinctive “vocabularies, portrayals, and protocols” so as to become a disciplinarily aligned “micro-society”. Events would seek enabling capacities for cross-disciplinary communication, begin to posit promising paradigms that could aid such communication. Perspective gained over a series of such gatherings will suggest next steps: which particular processes and venues prove more effective than others, the enumeration of a set of factors worthy of use. In order to enable the continuing consideration and re-consideration of what actually happens in the Bridging process, it would be essential to have audio and video recordings and derived transcripts of selected occasions during each Event. A body of evidence will accumulate. We will seek an appropriate ethnographically oriented observer(s) to track and develop an overall picture of the entire Bridging Chasms process.
Consider the situation we now face: Within a discipline, expert practitioners are working in their individual (metaphorical) trenches digging steadily deeper, seeking a gem of fresh wisdom, however esoteric from the perspective of an outside observer. So if one injects into such individuals's lives an invitation to reorient, what would be the right time to pull them out of their individual trenches? When one is only starting to dig with an entire career ahead during which to practice cross-disciplinary understanding? Or, alternatively, when one is done with their digging? There is more time for mental excursions in the later phases of life, but, if a change “took”, it would have very little chance of benefiting others. An equally crucial question is, how might such an “invitation” to change be proffered? The present document seeks to open a door to the consideration of such questions.
