Philosophy of Interdisciplinarity: Jan Cornelius Schmidt's Critical-reflexive Problem-oriented Interdisciplinarity

Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems 21(3), 214-229, 2023 PHILOSOPHY OF INTERDISCIPLINARITY: JAN CORNELIUS SCHMIDT’S CRITICAL-REFLEXIVE PROBLEM-ORIENTED INTERDISCIPLINARITY Demian Papo* and Hrvoje Potlimbrzović Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek – Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Osijek, Croatia DOI: 10.7906/indecs.21.3.1 Regular article Received: 13 June 2023. Accepted: 26 June 2023. ABSTRACT Philosophers were reluctant to address interdisciplinarity during the 20th century. But things have changed in the 21st century, since a two-level relationship between philosophy and interdisciplinarity has been established: philosophy of interdisciplinarity and philosophy as interdisciplinarity. Thus far scholars have shown more interest in exploring the first level of that relationship. The aim of this article is to closely examine the developmental path of a philosophy of interdisciplinarity envisioned and constructed by Jan Cornelius Schmidt in the past two decades. In our opinion, it has reached two milestones. The first (2008) being the one in which he clarified the vague notion of interdisciplinarity and classified its four types with the help of philosophy of science, and the second (2011) being the one in which he opted for problem-oriented interdisciplinarity. Schmidt’s philosophy of interdisciplinarity has reached its (current) peak (2022), resulting in a philosophical framework which promotes problemorientation and critical-reflexivity in interdisciplinary endeavors. Thereby Schmidt has created prerequisites for the construction of philosophy as interdisciplinarity. KEY WORDS philosophy of interdisciplinarity, problem-oriented interdisciplinarity, critical-reflexive interdisciplinarity, Jan Cornelius Schmidt CLASSIFICATION JEL: I23 *Corresponding author, : ; -; *Sveučilište Josipa Jurja Strossmayera u Osijeku, Filozofski fakultet, Lorenza Jägera 9, 31000 Osijek Philosophy of interdisciplinarity: Jan Cornelius Schmidt’s critical-reflexive problem-oriented ... INTRODUCTION Specialization, professionalization, disciplining and departmentalization were some of the main outcomes of the establishment of the modern university in the 19th century, and these outcomes have not, expectedly, circumvented philosophy. Ever since, academic philosophy has been on a quest of finding its own disciplinary identity, as well as discovering its relationship with other disciplines. The latter has especially been so in the past 50 years, since new scientific paradigms or approaches have been presented to the general academic public in the 1970s, namely multi-, pluri-, cross-, inter-, and transdisciplinarity [1-3]. Here we shall offer a brief history of the relationship that academic philosophy has established with one of the aforementioned scientific paradigms: interdisciplinarity. Unfortunately, philosophers have not sufficiently considered the role and relationship of philosophy towards it. Evidence to support this claim is abundant. On this occasion we shall mention just one of them: e.g., Michael H.G. Hoffmann, Jan C. Schmidt and Nancy J. Nersessian state that “in general, philosophers have remained reluctant to address ‘interdisciplinarity’ ” [4; p.1858]. However, in spite of the inattention of philosophers towards interdisciplinarity and the fact that “until quite recently the field of interdisciplinary studies has attracted few philosophers,” Julie Thompson Klein and Robert Frodeman rightfully argue that the situation is changing today [5; p.150]. This change has been going on for at least 15 years. The development of a more intense relationship between philosophy and interdisciplinarity can be traced to a series of international workshops and conferences, starting with a workshop held in Atlanta in 2009 and ending with a conference held in Tübingen in 2012. According to a report from the Atlanta workshop, the primary purpose of it was to “reflect on interdisciplinarity – for the first time – from a philosophical point of view” [6; p.42a]. Two outcomes have emerged from this workshop: (1) it developed “the idea of philosophy not as a metadiscipline, but as an engaged participant and partner in interdisciplinary discourses”; (2) it resulted in establishing a network of philosophers and other scholars interested in interdisciplinarity named Philosophy of/as Interdisciplinarity Network (PIN-net) [7; pp.169-170]. Therefore, the mentioned workshops and conferences stimulated the progress of the relationship between philosophy and interdisciplinarity. Moreover, two levels of that relationship have been identified and defined during the Atlanta workshop: philosophy of interdisciplinarity and philosophy as interdisciplinarity. According to Hoffmann and Schmidt, philosophy of interdisciplinarity encourages “philosophical inquiry into problems regarding the practices and theories of interdisciplinary research in the style of traditional philosophy of science.” On the other hand, philosophy as interdisciplinarity is focused upon “initiating a new philosophical practice of reflective and reflexive engagement in the world – one that questions and overcomes the boundaries that have constituted philosophy as a discipline in the 20th century,” with its leading idea being that “philosophers leave the study and enter the field, integrating their work with scientists, engineers, and policy makers” [7; p.170]. Besides the mentioned workshops and conferences, other proof of the ongoing progress of the relationship between philosophy and interdisciplinarity can be found elsewhere. One of them is provided by the 2010 edition of The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity. As the handbook’s editor-in-chief Robert Frodeman claims in the introductory text, this edition “heralds the centrality of philosophic reflection for twenty-first century society,” since interdisciplinarity is “inherently philosophical, in the non-professionalized and non-disciplined sense of the term” [8; p.xxxi]. This 215 D. Papo and H. Potlimbrzović edition of the Oxford’s handbook contains a short yet noteworthy textual addendum on prospects for a philosophy of interdisciplinarity authored by Schmidt [9]. The handbook’s 2017 edition contains only one contribution which discusses not the relationship between philosophy and interdisciplinarity, but the one between interdisciplinarity and a single philosophic discipline, i.e., ethics, authored by Carl Mitcham and Wang Nan [10]. The other two hallmarks in the history of considerations on philosophy of and as interdisciplinarity we would like to point out are two special issues of scientific journals: (1) issue 11 of the 190th volume of Synthese (2013) edited by Hoffmann, Schmidt and Nersessian; (2) and issue 3 of the 6th volume of European Journal of Philosophy of Science (2016) edited by Uskali Mäki and Miles MacLeod. Due to the fact that more literature regarding the first level of the relationship between philosophy and interdisciplinarity ha (...truncated)