Trowels, Processors and Misunderstandings: Concluding Thoughts

Abstract

This conclusive text deals with the challenges of interdisciplinarity: although conceptual and formal thresholds are well-known within the scientific community, one may encounter difficulties for answering such related requirements: among them, the tension between the inherent holistic pretence of modelling and data-related prosaicism is important as well as the simple fact that things, practices, assumptions and words are not the same among disciplines inducing unsolved misconceptions, misunderstandings and social bias. Also, seeking legitimacy and validity but also efficiency at the modelling project level, implying simplifications, interpolations and generalisations, is often in contradiction with the need for legitimacy at the level of each discipline involved. This is due of course to potentially contradictory scientific requirements of both levels and for a weight at least equivalent to the perfectly normal social need for recognition of each researcher, usually within its own discipline, to compare with the risky “business” in terms of reputation, results’ overexpectation and time consumption of modelling approaches.