Interdisciplinarity and scientific waves

One of the classical topics in Sociology of Science is the concept of two opposing ideas cycling over time in relation to a scientific field (see, for example, Pauline Mazumdar's Species and Specificity). To give an ongoing example, it is likely that after the two recent economic crises there will be a stronger return of government-centric, Keynesian thought in the global economy compared to the libertarian thought that was prevalent since Hayek won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974. Of interest, Keynes' ideas were popular after the crisis of 1929, lasting roughly until Hayek won the Nobel prize in 1974, and so one could argue that our times will just be seeing the resurgence of an old idea, obviously with contemporary flavors, data, and methods. These cycles can obviously have a big amplitude or delay, and the tipping point might be triggered by new data (e.g., the recent economic crises) or a methodological improvement (our ability to conduct fancy analyses that extract a lot of information of the data to support the idea of a stronger government when it comes to economic policy).

Now out of economics and back to interdisciplinarity, can we predict when interdisciplinarity would reach a tipping point? One could argue that, despite all the talk about the need for interdisciplinarity, our scientific training and institutions still focus and reward hyper-specialization. Although large funding programs such as the Clinical and Translational Sciences Awards (CTSAs), in practice what we see is that in order to sustain funding researchers continue digging deep in their own fields. This is quite a different scenario from what happened at, say, the Renaissance, where the ability to engage multiple disciplines was considered a good thing. With the growth of knowledge, hyperspecialization became a necessity, otherwise it would be nearly impossible to make any significant progress in any area.

Does it all mean that there is no place for interdisciplinarity? Well, a possibility is that if an efficient, reliable, and reproduceable interdisciplinary mechanism could be created that would act as a catalyst for innovation in science, then interdisciplinarity would leave the world of words and would come to practice. Unfortunately, up to this point no such formalization of an interdiscipllinary model exists, but only isolated cases.

Take for example Herbert Simon, arguably the icon of interdisciplinarity in the 20th century. Although he has made an incredible amount of progress by merging a variety of disciplines focusing on decision sciences (e.g., computer sciences, psychology, philosophy, sociology, among others), it is highly questionable whether he left a school of people who can do today what he did as a researcher. In other words, he was an exceptional example of interdisciplinarity, but perhaps so exceptional that it cannot be reproduced in a scalable way, creating a legion of Simons right out of graduate school.

Interesting times ...