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General problems of interdisciplinary research and common mechanisms 471
ces in the past is the idea that going over the bounds of one’s own discipline
implies a synthesis and that the discipline specializing in synthesis, if any can be
said to do so (and the very fact of expressing oneself in this way shows the
weakness of such an assumption), is no other than philosophy itself. Now philos-
ophy, as we saw in the ‘Introduction’, certainly includes a position of synthesis,
which relates, however, to the co-ordination of all human values, and not to the
coordination of knowledge alone. Consequently if disciplines such as scientific
psychology or sociology have after much difficulty achieved their independence
by opposing experimental or statistical test methods to methods of abstract
reasoning, it is not in order to return to these methods when interdisciplinary
links imposed by the facts and not by the desire for systematization are involved.
Nevertheless, if we want to have an idea of the future of interdisciplinary
research between sciences all of which have their tried methods of approach and
testing, but are not yet accustomed by tradition to what is now current practice
in the natural sciences, the best course is perhaps to begin by comparing their
problems.
Here we are immediately struck by three fundamental facts: firstly, the
convergence of certain general problems, which are to be found in all the
sectors of our huge field; secondly, the fact that these general problems have
little connexion with those of the inorganic world, but do link up fairly directly
with certain central questions of the life sciences; thirdly, that in order to solve
these problems, we must have recourse to certain cardinal ideas which actually
rest on common mechanisms. If all this is true, we see immediately to what
extent the study of these common mechanisms demands, and wil increasingly
demand, a concerted interdisciplinary effort which should be encouraged in
every way, among the human sciences of course, but sometimes also in relation
to biology.
First of all, confining ourselves to the most general problems, there is little
doubt that the three questions most central and most specific of the biological
sciences (for they have little significance on the physico-chemical level) are :
I) that of the development, or evolution in the sense of gradual production, of
organized forms with qualitative transformations at different stages; 2) that
of organization in its balanced or synchronic forms; and 3) that of the
exchanges between the organism and its environment (physical environment
and other organisms). In other words, the three cardinal ideas expressing the
principal facts to be explained are: I) that of the production of new structures;
2) that of equilibrium, but in the sense of regulation and self-regulation (and not
merely the balance of forces); and 3) that of exchange, in the sense of material
exchange, but equally (for this is also the language of contemporary biologists)4
the exchange of information.
It is worth noting that the study of these central problems is conducted more
and more in the light of three instrumental methods inspired more or less
directly by the human sciences, or in any case by human activities. Although
there is no common semantic correspondence between these problems and
methods (each method helps to solve each problem), those methods are games or
decision theories (Waddington refers in this connexion to the ‘strategy of