| Author | : Stephen Jay Kline |
| File Size | : 53,6 Mb |
| Publisher | : Stanford University Press |
| Language | : English |
| Release Date | : 01 January 1995 |
| ISBN | : 9780804763936 |
| Pages | : 356 pages |
Conceptual Foundations for Multidisciplinary Thinking by Stephen Jay Kline Book PDF Summary
Our current intellectual system provides us with a far more complete and accurate understanding of nature and ourselves than was available in any previous society. This gain in understanding has arisen from two sources: the use of the 'scientific method', and the breaking up of our intellectual enterprise into increasingly narrower disciplines and research programs. However, we have failed to keep these narrow specialities connected to the intellectual enterprise as a whole. The author demonstrates that this causes a number of difficulties. We have no viewpoint from which we can understand the relationships between the disciplines and lack a forum for adjudicating situations where different disciplines give conflicting answers to the same problem. We seriously underestimate the differences in methodology and in the nature of principles in the various branches of science. This provocative and wide-ranging book provides a detailed analysis and possible solutions for dealing with this problem.