Interdisciplinarity In The 19th-20th Century

The concept of interdiscipinarity relies strongly on the past for its integrative information. Even the way that we live out our daily lives is a reflection of the past and how it has shaped who we are today. If we are able to dig through the past for answers that we are looking for to problems we are facing today, we are forced to use and interdisciplinary approach in order to successfully achieve this method of research. The concept of “disciplines” was coined by the Romans who were trying to come up with a purpose for divisions of labor. Then during the scientific revolution, it was pushed even harder by having students specialize in specific areas of study. But it wasn’t until the 19th – 20th century when universities began to explicitly
It was in a way preventing progress. Fortunately, after WWI people began to see a need for individuals to be experienced in multiple fields beyond their own disciplines. Thus, interdisciplinarity was seen as essential. With an increase in immigrant population we had to build up our knowledge of cultures and viewpoints beyond our own. This is when a push for general education began to explode. Then, post WWII there was another push to keep up with interdsciplinarity and a rejection to traditional education. People started to realize that they wanted to feel empowered enough to solve more than just simple life problems. This generation of students were driven to discover new things about the world that had never been known before. It wasn’t until the 1980s that fields of interdiciplinarity were actually recognized as credible educational fields of study. Discplinarity was increasingly critiqued for its narrow mindedness, specialization, ignorance of fields outside of its own, prevention of creativity, failure to solve large problems holistically, and that it tends to focus on the past and not look to the