Multi-Disciplinary, Inter-Disciplinary, Trans-Disciplinary

You may have come across these terms in scholarly work and you definitely have come across these types of activities in your everyday life. In this post I tell you the meaning of each and how to differentiate one from the other.

What Do the Terms Allude To?

The terms broadly speaking are three different ways to think about and approach reality. They can be applied to learning outcomes, research paradigms, as well as private and public practice in any field.

Multi-Disciplinary:

Multi-disciplinary work is done when knowledge, opinions, and practical know-how on a topic is sought from many disciplines, then collated into a logic progression of ideas and presented as what the world knows and thinks on a topic.

Importantly, none of the sources/authors who contribute information have spoken to or even know about one another.

If you have ever prepared a speech or an essay on a particular topic, you would most likely have collated all kinds of information from all types of sources to substantiate the arguments you wish to make. The search across multiple disciplines and your speech or essay, a carefully crafted logical interweaving of all that you found into one place, would classify as multi-disciplinarian.

Multi-disciplinarian activities leave you feeling well informed on a topic of your choosing. They do not provide you with how you should apply any of the knowledge you have gained, nor do they allow you to extend the current knowledge of the world other than presenting it in order to enlighten others.

Inter-Disciplinary:

Inter-disciplinary work is carried out when a variety of disciplines come together to discuss a particular issue with the intent of creating new solutions or approaches.

Each discipline knows its role in addressing the issue at hand, its strengths and limitations in relation to existing knowledge, to resolutions or approaches it can offer, and its relationship with every other discipline working on the issue.

If you have ever watched those police and law television series, you will be familiar with inter-disciplinary work. The police investigate a crime; they know what type of evidence the lawyers will need in court and start documenting for that. In the meantime the medical examiners do their jobs liaising with the police and preparing their report for use by police and lawyers alike, et cetera. All the aforementioned professions come together to resolve a crime (the issue at hand), each knows their role, each knows how their work will be used by the other professions, and each knows what they can do and what best to leave to others in the team.

Well organized inter-disciplinary activities are what make economies boom and businesses thrive. They work well to maintain the status quo and mainstream thought, and can be effective vehicles for integrating technological advances provided these are easily understood under mainstream paradigms.

Inter-disciplinary approaches are appropriate until the methods used to continue the status quo are no longer effective. An example of interdisciplinary approaches beginning to show ineffectiveness is antibiotic manufacture, prescription, and use due to rising bacterial resistance to these drugs.

Trans-Disciplinary:

Trans-disciplinary work is being carried out when a team of people come together to resolve an issue with fresh ideas that require thinking outside of the box.

Scholars who wish to be trans-disciplinarian are by definition required to transcend their discipline’s traditional understanding and interpretation of the world. For scholars and non-scholars alike transcending means to think beyond or to rise above the way things are done.

Everyone involved in trans-disciplinary work commits to moderating the certainty they feel about their knowledge or specialization, tempering their habitual exertion of influence over particular decisions or courses of action, being open to learning something new, pledging to exchange their ideas and logic with all disciplines, and integrating any newly gained knowledge into their own discipline.

Trans-disciplinarian activity is a little difficult to come by especially since inter-disciplinarian activity (the previous one) is rather lucrative. Perhaps one of the best known trans-disciplinarians is Leonardo da Vinci. He was interested in and pursued many disciplines throughout his life and blended these into knowledge that is still all around us.

Examples are his blending of illustration and geometry to create aerial perspective as seen in the background to the Mona Lisa; his biological observations of birds and his physics interpretation of flight as a form of air resistance over wing span which resulted in preliminary designs for air gliders; and the application of the golden spiral, a shape found in ancient and classical art, to the study of water resulting in various precursors of modern fluid dynamics theories and practices.

Trans-disciplinary is the stuff of inventors who have a propensity for learning from varied disciplines, are fastidious about mastering both practice and theory in any discipline, have the tenacity to persevere through setbacks, all the while maintaining a balance between humble and maverick traits.

What about Cross-Disciplinary?

Cross-disciplinary is a collective term used to describe research collaborations between disciplines including those that take place in mutli- inter- and trans-disciplinary modes.

References – websites accessed and correct at time of publishing.

For more on Leonardo da Vinci:

Marusic, Ivan, and Susan Broomhall. “Leonardo da Vinci and Fluid Mechanics.” Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics 53 (2021): 1-25.

For more on trans-disciplinary, multi-disciplinary, and inter-disciplinary concepts:

Bruce, A., C. Lyall, J. Tait and R. Williams (2004). “Interdisciplinary integration in Europe: the case of the Fifth Framework programme.” Futures 36(4): 457-470.

Jeffrey, P. (2003). “Smoothing the Waters: Observations on the Process of Cross-Disciplinary Research Collaboration.” Social Studies of Science 33(4): 539-562.

Harriss, J. (2002). “The Case for Cross-Disciplinary Approaches in International Development.” World Development 30(3): 487-496.