Reply to comment

I agree with Amanda that this essay ("Synecdoche and Suprise") as well as "Exploring Interdisciplinarity," written with Professor Grobstein, encompassed progressive content. Thus, the essays are productively collaborative. I want to talk about a sentence written in the first few paragraphs of the essay written with Grobstein. The essay reads:

"... remember the curiosity which brought us into intellectual work in the first place....(Dalke, McCormack, Grobstein)."

This sentence resonated with me, particularly. I felt like this comment truly strengthened the argument articulated in the paper. It is very true; why not utilize each discipline's strengths to balance out another discipline's weakness in hopes to solve an otherwise unsolveable issue? This is how I feel with philosophy of mind and psychology. While the two have similar fields of inquiry and both possess a strong inquisitiveness for the human mind, philosophers think while psychologists act. Philosophical psychology is still an up and coming field of study; however, thus far the two fields have made slow, but incredible progress to explain things such as human consciousness.

While there are benefits, there are definitely more costs than "losing our harnasses." By mingling disciplines with one another, there is a sense in which you are losing the features that make certain disciplines attractive to students. For example, one of my friends recently declared a Biology major. She, like most Biology majors, is a pre-med student. She loves Biology for the natural science that it is and finds "interdisciplinary" assignments in her Bio. courses, such as writing papers, extremely unproductive and worthless. Additionally, in registering for courses, she was extremely disappointed that Grobstein's Neurobiology and Behavior course was less experimenting, more thinking. For those who don't know, Neurobio. is a 200-level course in the Biology department that studies philosophical inquiry instead of empirial study of the brain; it is like a philosophy class in a Bio. department. It is, I would say, the quintessiental interdisciplinary Bio. course. My friend LOVES biology, but dislikes writing and loathes abstract theory of philosophy. She is intrigued by neurobiology. In fact, she wants to go into medicine to study neurology. However, she resists from taking the course because she is primarily interested in empirical facet of neurobiology.

 
I brought up this anecdote because it is the type of problem that an interdisciplinary effort will encounter. For students who are interested in certain programs that the College  offers or a particular field of inquiry the change to multidisciplinary is disheartening and unproductive. For some, though, it is intellectually stimulating. The real concern, then, is finding a balance that can satisfy both types of students. We must remember that even some students of LAC's come for different reasons, not all of them seek a "liberal arts (aka interdisciplinary)" education. 

Question to the author(s):

1. Do you think the transition to a multidisciplinary academic standards will be an easy one for all types of schools (liberals arts as well as large, research universities)? If yes, then don't you think schools like MIT, Johns Hopkins, or Cal Tech among others would lose the rigorous single disclipinary aspect that sets them apart from competitive institutes of higher learning?

2. The paper (s) did not consider objections to interdisciplinary education. What are the types of difficulties that you will face in creating a new academia? What difficulties have you faced thus far in your efforts to change education at BMC?

3. How early should interdisciplinary education begin? Only in college? If so, how best can high school teachers prepare students for college (keeping in mind students hail from geographic locations with stronger college prep programs than others) ? What about magnet schools or schools with focus in math & science only? Should do, they, change academic standards?

4. How would the initative to get disciplines in conversation with one another effect the applicants to a college? Let's not get too far out, and take Bryn Mawr as an example. Do you think the interdisciplinary courses would increase applications to the College?

5. Do you think all disciplines should be all interdisciplinary all the time? Or should colleges offer more interdisciplinary courses in all subject areas?