Transdisciplinary knowledge creation

Abstract

This chapter frames the transdisciplinary enterprise as an educative process by which people become a more complex self as they engage in transdisciplinary work using the transdisciplinary methodology. In turn this complex self, who has experienced a series of inner changes (paradigmatic, intellectual and philosophical), can better contribute to solving the problems of the world using the transdisciplinary methodology. To develop this idea this chapter introduces the concepts of transdisciplinary self and transdisciplinary maturity.The genesis of transdisciplinarity is briefly discussed, followed by a detailed overview of Basarab Nicolescu’s transdisciplinary methodology. Using his approach, the chapter develops the idea that the transdisciplinary educative process (emergent through co-solving complex, wicked problems) is the catalyst for the emergence of a new, more mature transdisciplinary self, couched in the transdisciplinary methodology.