Interdisciplinarity in Technology Assessment

Abstract

Foreword The modus of interdisciplinarity has become a familiar feature in modern research despite of the ongoing specialisation of disciplines in science and humanities. Today, many questions addressing the science system are of complex nature and are thus directed towards a diversity of relevant disciplines. Hence, these disciplines have to organise themselves within inter-disciplinary research frameworks in order to introduce their specific perspectives to these problems and their reflection appropriately. However, crossing disciplinary borders in this way is not trivial, especially with regard to the epistemic and procedural restrictions of such endeavours. Moreover, the topics of interdisciplinary research are often societally relevant, either simply in form of explicit research mandates from the addressees or implicitly by problems of uncertainty, incompleteness and ambiguity of modern scientific knowledge with respect to their impact on and utility for society. Hence, the extra-scientific dimensions of interdisciplinary deliberations might challenge the results and validity claims of these efforts. From this background, the present study aims at critical reflections of the practise of inter-disciplinary research and at its validity conditions within and beyond the scientific system. It is not a manual or recipe book for meaningful or best-practise interdisciplinary research but a basis for further discussion and improvement of interdisciplinary endeavours-no more, no less. The content of this volume is the result of a more than three years' exercise by a working group, which has been established at the European Academy GmbH. The group met fifteen times to discuss and frame the topic and to reflect relevant initial theses and papers, which were finally developed to the chapters and conclusions of this present study by iterative refinement in the course of the whole project.